(Photo credit: Carly Gillis Photography) By Scott Gilfoid: Trainer Adam Booth believes that the talented Andre Dirrell (24-1, 16 KOs) should be considered the favorite for Saturday night against James DeGale (20-1, 14 KOs) in their fight for the vacant IBF super middleweight title at the Agganis Arena, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
The fight, which will be televised on NBC on Premier Boxing Champions, pits two southpaws with slick fighting styles. The main difference between them, besides age, is Dirrell’s superior hand speed, mobility, defensive skills, power and experience. DeGale has youth on his side, as he’s two years younger than Dirrell. That obviously isn’t a huge gap in age, which is why I don’t see it as being an asset for DeGale.
Booth likes Dirrell due to his athletic skills, hand speed and confidence. He sees all of those things as being big assets for Dirrell. But what Booth didn’t talk about in pointing out Dirrell’s attributes was in discussing his superior power, experience, defensive skills and mobility. Those are all key factors that are in Dirrell’s favor, and I’m frankly surprised that Booth would fail to discuss those assets.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a 50-50 fight because I would give Dirrell the slight edge,” Booth said to Skysports.com about the Dirrell vs. DeGale match-up. “Having said that, James has a great chance to win this fight because of the improvements he’s obviously made in recent times. He seems to have upped his game. The downside for Dirrell is he’s been inconsistent, and the one thing about Andre Dirrell is he may not be mentally tough as he needs to be.”
It sounds like Booth is more than a little mixed up here. He started off by saying he felt that Dirrell should be the favorite, but by the time he stopped yapping, he had DeGale pretty much even with him. If Booth hasn’t made up his mind enough to stay stand his ground when questioned on the subject, then he should just say he doesn’t know who will win.
It’s pretty easy to form an opinion about the fight because this is one that has two fighters with vastly different skills. I think it’s clear who the better fighter is, and I’m not sure that Booth has really sat down and thought about the fight enough to give an accurate analysis.
“James certainly has the skills set to make it difficult for him,” Booth said. “But Andre Dirrell is very quick, very athletic and very arrogant. He has a complete arrogant belief him himself that no one can be better than him and no one can tell him what to do. I do give James a big shot in this fight. I don’t think it will be a give and take type of fight. Both James and Andre like to fight on the back foot, but someone is going to have to go forward, and I think James is going to be the one more comfortable going forward. James has a big shot at winning the IBF world title.”
The one advantage that I think DeGale has for this fight is how dehydrated Dirrell looked today at the weigh-in. Dirrell looked like he might have taken off 15-20 pounds of water weight in getting down to the 168 pound weight limit for the fight. Dirrell weighed in at 167.8 pounds compared to DeGale’s 167.2.
While Dirrell looked like an emaciated statue, DeGale looked smooth with an obvious coat of fat over his muscles. DeGale clearly didn’t have any problems making the weight. Dirrell has looked weight drained all week long and not just today. That tells me that he probably drained down from the mid-180s to make weight.
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