By Scott Gilfoid: The IBF ordered purse bid between #1 IBF super middleweight contender James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) and #2 IBF Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) will be taking place today to determine who will be in charge of running the fight between these two guys for the vacant IBF 168 pound title.
DeGale and Dirrell’s management recently attempted to put together a fight between them, but DeGale’s promoter Eddie Hearn was unable to agree with Dirrell’s manager Al Haymon.
Hearn wants to have the DeGale-Dirrell fight take place on April 25th at the O2 Arena in London, on the same card as Lee Selby vs. IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich and unbeaten heavyweight contender Anthony Joshua in his fight against Kevin Johnson. However, Haymon wants the Dirrell-DeGale fight to be staged in the United States.
The winner of today’s purse bid will determine when and where the Dirrell vs. DeGale fight will be staged. They’ll be fighting over Carl Froch’s recently vacated International Boxing Federation 168lb title. This is the belt that Froch chose to vacate rather than face DeGale.
Froch said he didn’t want to stand in the way of DeGale getting a fight for a world title. Additionally, Froch wasn’t properly motivated to take the fight. Dirrell, however, is very motivated to take the fight with DeGale, and he can’t wait to get in the ring with him to give him a good pounding in the process of taking the IBF title.
You can make an argument that both DeGale and Dirrell should still be unbeaten. Dirrell’s only loss of his career was a questionable 12 round split decision defeat at the hands of Froch in 2009 in a fight that took place in Froch’s backyard in Nottingham, UK.
For many boxing fans who witnessed the Froch-Dirrell fight, they saw Dirrell winning a clear decision. But two of the three judges that worked that fight gave Froch the fight. As for DeGale, he lost a questionable decision to George Groves in their fight in 2011.
DeGale appeared to give away the first five rounds by not fighting hard enough and putting pressure on Groves. However, from the sixth round on, DeGale dominated the action and fought well enough to win a narrow decision.
I had DeGale doing enough to deserve a close decision win, but I’m not surprised that the judges scored the fight in Groves’ favor due to the crowd at the O2 being clearly in Groves’ favor that night. DeGale was booed a lot in that fight, while Groves had the fans cheering for him with every punch he threw. DeGale was really up against it that night, and I think he would have had to do something really sensational for him to have gotten the decision. It’s just too bad that Groves never fought DeGale again, because I think there would have been a much different outcome. Right now, I would clearly favor DeGale to beat Groves without too many problems. The fighters seem to be going in different directions right now.
To me, DeGale is like a much slower, flat-footed and less talented version of Dirrell. DeGale doesn’t have Dirrell’s defensive ability, hand speed, mobility or talent in my view. I see DeGale as a knockoff version of Dirrell, but without any of his talent.
You can see why Hearn wants to have the DeGale-Dirrell fight staged in the UK, because DeGale is going to need everything he can get in his favor to have a chance of winning this fight. If the fight were to be staged in the UK, DeGale would have a much, much better chance of winning than if the fight were to be staged in a neutral venue for in the United States.
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