By Scott Gilfoid: IBF 168lb champion James DeGale is picking unbeaten #1 WBC Callum Smith (17-0, 12 KOs) to defeat undefeated #10 WBC Rocky Fielding (21-0, 12 KOs) in their fight this Saturday night on November 7th at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK.
Personally, I don’t care who wins this fight. I see both of these guys as flawed, and I feel the same way about DeGale. The winner of the Smith-Fielding fight will still be no better off than they were before, because these guys have holes in their games that will be exploited when they eventually step it up.
Smith and Fielding will be fighting for the vacant British super middleweight title, but they’re fight means a lot more than that. The British strap is little more than just a trinket that will be on the line for the fight to give it some kind of meaning. In other words, I’ll be more of a prop than anything. The real important thing is that the winner of the contest between Smith and Fielding will be able to fight for the WBC title against champion Badou Jack at some point in the future.
“It’s a good scrap but I am going for Callum Smith,” DeGale said to skysports.com. “It’s a 50-50 fight but I am going for Callum. He’s the better fighter.”
I hate to disagree with DeGale, but I just got to. I don’t see Smith as being the better fighter than Fielding. I see him as the worse fighter. Smith has a fighting style that seems primitive to me. Despite being 6’3”, Smith fights on the inside like fighters from the 50s.
Not surprisingly, Smith gets hit a lot. His fighting style is a lot like contender Gilberto Ramirez in how he used to fight before his training team changed his fighting style recently so that he wouldn’t get hit as much. Ramirez now fights on the outside, and he’s going to need a lot of work before he eventually gets accustomed to no longer fighting in close.
I see the same thing eventually happening to Callum Smith. He’ll have to adapt his fighting style to where he fights from the distance to use his long reach in order to keep him from getting brained each time he fights. It would be in the 25-year-old Smith’s best interest to make that change in his primitive fighting style sooner rather than later.
“For me I think he’s [Smith] talented, I think he’s been looking very good in the past couple of fights,” DeGale said. “But Rocky Fielding had a good win against Brian Vera.”
I don’t see this fight as a 50-50 affair. Fielding looks a heck of a lot better than Smith to me. Fielding fights on the outside, uses his jab, and is a smart fighter. He’s where Smith needs to be. If Smith changes his backwards fighting style right now age 25, then in three years, he can be where Fielding is right now when he’s the same age at 28.
Fielding will have a big advantage in this fight because he can punch from every angle, and he throws shots from the outside unlike Smith, who absolutely needs to be on the inside for him to be comfortable.
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