DeGALE’S BLOWN IT
Defeat ruins plan for £30m jackpot
James DeGale defiantly swears he will be back just like arnie in The Terminator.
Unhappily, he appears to be cast now as the one-armed man being pursued by Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. Hopefully, his towering career is not in the infernal throes of being extinguished.
Plenty of movies have been made about the hardest game but the reality of the ring is not Rocky doing the impossible. It is DeGale on the ropes.
His saturday night nosedive in the Olympic Park ended with london’s fallen world champion in hospital, having those recently realigned nostrils put back in place yet again.
That bloody and painful process was not the root cause of DeGale’s surrender of his super-middleweight belt to american journeyman Caleb Truax.
This fall from grace for the first British boxer to win a world title in addition to Olympic gold gave every impression of resulting from the chronic shoulder injury which he had proclaimed healed by surgery this summer.
DeGale and Frank Warren trod gingerly. The fighter conceded: ‘The shoulder did not feel as fluid as it should.’ His promoter ventured: ‘Psychologically he may have been worried about letting go with his right.’
The evidence of our eyes pointed to a relapse. He looked cured in the first round, in which he landed more of his southpaw jabs than the seven to which he was restricted throughout his entire January fight with Badou Jack. He also threw into those three minutes some stinging crosses and body shots.
after that, next to nothing with his right. DeGale added: ‘maybe I came back too soon.’ some interpreted that as a reference to the brutality of that epic draw with Jack, but that was all of 11 months ago. so if he was not ready to go again this weekend, when will he be?
at 31 and after just 26 professional fights, this cannot be a shot fighter, no matter how exacting the war with Jack. as Warren suggests, the problem resides somewhere between DeGale’s psyche and that shoulder joint.
either way, this was a catastrophic homecoming after three years of success in North america. This blew his plans for a summer of huge fights in english football grounds and las Vegas arenas out of the Copper Box window.
His vaulting project for securing a £30million future is in deep freeze. The anticipated domestic stadium extravaganza against whoever out of George Groves, Chris eubank Jnr and Callum smith wins the super-middleweight super series lies in ruins.
It may be possible to extract a Groves- DeGale rematch. DeGale’s lacklustre effort prompted Groves to taunt his old enemy with this tweet: ‘Call it a day mate, you ain’t got it no more.’ But the narrow winner of their first fight is a shrewd salesman and this could well be saint George fanning the flames.
Warren raised the prospect of a spring rematch with Truax, perhaps back at the Copper Box. But the american’s mentor, the shadowy al Haymon who made this upset match, may now want his new IBF champion to meet another of his stable, WBC beltholder David Benavidez, in a world title unification bout over there.
The inconvenient truth is that DeGale did not just lose to the unheralded Truax. He was beaten out of sight, albeit not in the view of the one english judge. This was the final engagement at a British fight for Dave Parris before compulsory retirement at 65.
The 114-114 draw he declared was, to put it mildly, an inauspicious way to bow out.
Thankfully, yet another travesty of a decision was averted by the foreign officials at ringside. Yet even their scores of 115-112 and 116-112 in favour of Truax were generous to DeGale.
after DeGale took that first round, Truax whaled away with both fists to such punishing effect that it would not have been unreasonable to score a couple of the middle rounds 10-8 in his favour, even though he did not send DeGale to the canvas.
If DeGale’s right arm had been in full working order, there would be no understating the worst performance of his career. If, as many suspect, there was a problem then he was more heroic than Guillermo Rigondeaux later that night. The Cuban pulled out of his much-hyped but disappointing New York fight against Vasyl lomachenko at the end of the sixth with a damaged left hand.
DeGale took his beating like a man. Then, as Truax celebrated the huge shock with which he achieved his lifetime ambition in the ring, DeGale refrained from raining on the american’s parade by making excuses.
Now comes the even harder part.