Hearn: DeGale vs. Dirrell fight to take place in May in U.S

By Boxing News - 03/25/2015 - Comments

degale778By Scott Gilfoid: For boxing fans dying to know when the James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) vs. Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) will be taking place, it looks like the fight will be taking place in May, according to DeGale’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport.

Hearn says the DeGale-Dirrell fight will be taking place in mid to late May on the East Coast of the United States. Hearn says he’ll know in the next 24 hours when and where the fight will be taking place.

Hearn wanted to place the DeGale vs. Dirrell fight in the UK, because he thought that was the best way to maximize profits for the fight. Hearn was probably right.

The fight would likely make more money in the UK than in the U.S, but Warriors Boxing won the purse bid for the DeGale-Dirrell fight and they want the fight to be staged in the U.S. Dirrell’s adviser Al Haymon also wants it to be staged in the U.S. So there it is.

“We should know in the next 24 hours [about when the Dirrell-DeGale fight will take place],” Hearn said via Fighthype. “People are talking about April 24th. It’s not going to be April 24; it’ll be the mid to end of May, probably on the East coast [of the United States]. We’ll see in the next 24 hours.”

Dirrell lives in Flint, Michigan, which is obviously why the Dirrell vs. DeGale fight will be staged on the East Coast rather than on the West Coast in Los Angeles or in Nevada. The fight has the potential of drawing a heck of a lot more fans on the East Coast than it will on the West Coast.

DeGale and Dirrell will be fighting for Carl Froch’s old IBF super middleweight title. By picking up the IBF title, they’ll be able to setup some bigger fights. DeGale really has his work cut out for him in taking on Dirrell, because he arguably does everything DeGale does but in a better manner. If these were two robots, I would see Dirrell as the much more advanced robot, even though he’s a couple of years older than the 29-year-old DeGale.

What we’re talking about here is DeGale facing a guy that is arguably better than Froch, a fighter who would likely have knocked DeGale out without any problems if the two of them had faced each other. Dirrell is likely going to be a real nightmare for DeGale in May. DeGale doesn’t have any real area he can speak of in terms of him having an advantage.

If the fight had been staged in the UK, then DeGale might have had a chance of winning a controversial decision like the one Froch got against Dirrell in the UK in 2009. Dirrell will have the hometown advantage, and he’ll also have the experience, speed, mobility, and power and talent advantage. The only advantage DeGale will have in this fight is his youth, but even that won’t be any real advantage because Dirrell is a young 31.

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DeGale has some boxing fans exciting and thinking he’s better than he used to be because he beat Dyah Davis, Marco Antonio Periban, Gevorg Khatchikian, and Brandon Gonzales in his last four fights. But you can’t look at those fights and get anything from them other than the fact that DeGale beat a bunch of easy marks. I mean, DeGale didn’t beat anyone that you can call a good fighter, so that’s why it’s impossible to say whether he’s gotten better since he was beaten by George Groves in 2011.

If DeGale had fought Anthony Dirrell and Sakio Bika and beaten them, then I would agree that DeGale has gotten better. But as far as I can tell, DeGale is still the same fighter Groves beat four years ago. The only difference is DeGale has been fighting easy marks for the past four years.



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