By Scott Gilfoid: Badou Jack (22-1-2, 13 KOs) says he might under the right circumstances give his former foe James ‘Chunky’ DeGale (24-2-1, 14 KOs) a rematch in the future if he moves up to light heavyweight. However, Jack says he wasn’t impressed with the last two performances from the 32-year-old DeGale against Caleb Truax (29-4-2, 18 KOs), and he believes might not be the same he once was due to the hard fights he’s been in.
(Photo credit: CHRIS FARINA – Mayweather Promotions)
Badou says DeGale’s last fight against Truax could have been a draw or a loss. DeGale beat Truax by a questionable 12 round unanimous decision last April in Las Vegas, Nevada. The scores were 114-113, 117-110 [judge John McKaie] and 114-113. DeGale spent pretty much the entire fight holding and running. What’s interesting is DeGale wasn’t given a warning for all the holding that he was doing, and you can argue he should have been because he was stalling out all the rounds to keep Truax from throwing punches. DeGale had never been a clincher like that, but his game now seems to revolve around that for him to survive.
Some boxing fans believe Jack ruined DeGale with the punishing shots he hit him with last year. It’s hard to disagree with the fans, because DeGale looks like he’s fighting at 25% capacity of what he was going into the Jack fight.
Badou will be challenging WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson (29-1, 24 KOs) this Saturday night at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Canada.
“I wasn’t so impressed,” Jack said to skysports.com. “All the tough fights he’s been through, I think he’s not the same fighter anymore. If he comes up to light-heavyweight, and he continues to win, maybe yeah,” Badou said about fighting DeGale a second time.
I don’t think there would be much interest in a rematch between Jack and DeGale at this point. If DeGale wins his likely next fight against Jose Uzcategui, he should try and fight WBA super middleweight champion George Groves in a unification fight. It’s important that DeGale try and make the fight with Groves now, because this could be the last chance to make that fight happen.
DeGale looks utterly shot, and one loss away from there being any real possibility for a second fight between them. Groves isn’t going to bother fighting DeGale if he gets knocked out by Uzcategui. There would be nothing for him to gain other than to try and finish him even faster.
It might not be worth it for Jack to fight DeGale ever again. As bad as DeGale has looked in his last 2 fights, he’s about to be finished off as soon as he faces his mandatory challenger Jose Uzcategui. That’s a loss waiting to happen for DeGale, and there’s not much he can do about it to avoid it other than by vacating his IBF super middleweight title, which he’s obviously not going to do. DeGale has a little bit of time still before he has to face Uzcategui.
DeGale has a bad cut from his rematch with Truax that is still healing, and it’s unclear whether the International Boxing Federation will give him a voluntary defense or not. To be frank, I don’t think DeGale can even beat a bottom feeder contender rated at No.15 at this point in his career.
Truax was originally picked out by DeGale from No.15 in the IBF’s rankings last year in December, and that was supposed to have been a safe voluntary defense for him. It turned out to be a disaster for DeGale with Truax giving him a beating in winning by a 12 round majority decision. DeGale blamed the loss on recent shoulder surgery that he’d had. It was a reasonable excuse at the time, because he had surgery on his right shoulder 11 months earlier following his 12 round draw against Jack in January 2017.