By Scott Gilfoid: The countdown has begun for the May 23rd showdown between #1 IBF James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) and #2 IBF Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) for their huge fight on Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) on NBC on May 23rd at the Agganis Arena, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The two former Olympians will be battling for the vacant IBF super middleweight title.
DeGale, 29, is counting on winning the IBF title so that he can potentially fight a unification bout either against the winner of the George Groves vs. Anthony Dirrell for the WBC super middleweight title.
For Andre Dirrell, he just wants the IBF title so that he can use it to try and lure Carl Froch, his old nemesis, who won a highly controversial 12 round decision over him six years ago in the Super Six tournament in Froch’s home city of Nottingham, England. To this day, many boxing fans still believe that Dirrell deserved to get the nod in that fight, with many fans seeing Dirrell still as an unbeaten fighter. Having recently seen a replace of the Dirrell vs. Froch fight myself, I couldn’t give Froch more than two rounds.
Try as I might, I just couldn’t see where Froch won more than two rounds. I also didn’t quite understand why Froch wasn’t disqualified in the fight for fouling Dirrell like mad. At the very least, I thought Froch should have been docked three points for rabbit punching and for his body slam of Dirrell in the 5th round. The referee looked like he was just there as a spectator rather than someone that was actively controlling the fouling in the fight.
DeGale would like nothing better than to defeat Andre Dirrell so that he can try and get Groves to face him in a rematch, as DeGale was beaten by Groves four years ago by a 12 round majority decision. Groves has shown zero interest in wanting to fight DeGale since then. However, if DeGale can win the IBF title, he’ll have the perfect lure to try and entice Groves to face him again, especially if Groves loses to Anthony Dirrell this year. It’ll be a last chance saloon type of situation for Groves at this point, and I can’t see him turning down a second fight against DeGale under those circumstances. Unfortunately, I don’t see DeGale beating Andre Dirrell in order to make the rematch against Groves a possibility. The more likely scenario will be Groves losing to Anthony Dirrell, and DeGale losing to Andre Dirrell. DeGale and Groves could then face each other as losers with one of them being weeded out of the 1st tier. The winner puts himself back in contention for another title shot, whereas the lower could find himself in skid-row, having to claw his way back into the 1st tier.
“After that defeat, for a year, it did bother me that I’ve got a loss on my record to him. But you move on – I’ve had 10 fights since then, won the European title, boxed top 10 contenders, and now I’m boxing for the world title,” DeGale said via Skysports.com.
What DeGale doesn’t say is that he hasn’t fought an opponent with a pulse ever since he lost to Groves in 2011. Yeah, DeGale has won his last 10 fights, but he’s done it against abominable opposition. I mean, he’s won his last 10 fights, but he’s been pooling from the 2nd tier and the fringe level guys from the 1st tier to get those 10 victories. And two of them wins were controversial over Hadillah Mohoumadi and Piotr Wilczewski. DeGale has said that he’s improved since the loss to Groves, but it’s impossible to say for sure whether DeGale has or not because he hasn’t faced anyone that you can call a good fighter in order to find out for sure if he’s improved. It’s nice that DeGale is bragging about how he’s improved, but how can you really tell when he’s beating guys like Stjepan Bozic, Cristian Sanavia, Fulgencio Zuniga and Stjepan Bozic.
Beating those guys really didn’t prove anything other than the fact that DeGale could defeat a bunch of tune-up type opponents. The true test of whether DeGale has world class is how he does against Dirrell, and I’m not so sure he’s going to be able to pass that test. Dirrell is faster, more elusive, and a stronger puncher. Further, Dirrell is the better defensive fighter with the better mobility of the two. DeGale won a gold medal in the 2008 Olympics, but he did in a weak year where he didn’t have to face a future world champion like Gennady Golovkin. DeGale’s opposition in the Olympics was nothing special. Dirrell lost to Golovkin in the 2004 Olympics, but it was a close match. Losing to a talent like Golovkin is nothing to be ashamed of.
A win over DeGale will put Dirrell in a good position to get bigger fights against some of the bigger names in the super middleweight division. Granted, I doubt that Dirrell will be able to lure Froch into taking a second fight against him because I don’t think Froch wants a second helping of Dirrell. Even if he were interested, I would expect that Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn would draw a line in the sand by telling Dirrell that he has to come back to Nottingham if he wants a second fight against Froch. What would be interesting about this is that Froch wouldn’t be coming to Las Vegas, Nevada, which is where he’s been saying he wants to fight. For a fight between Froch and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, Froch wants to fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. But for a rematch between Froch and Dirrell or Froch and Andre Ward, I wouldn’t be surprised if those guys had to come all the way to Nottingham to take a second fight against him.
DeGale is going to need to raise his game considerably if he wants to be able to compete against Dirrell. DeGale didn’t look that impressive in his recent fights against Marco Antonio Periban and Brandon Gonzales.
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