Heroic DeGale loses tooth as he’s forced to settle for a draw
WHEN James DeGale got back to his dressing room, he picked up the tooth knocked out at the height of his heroic battle of Brooklyn and tried to push it back into his mouth.
‘Won’t click in the hole,’ he said with a rueful, lopsided grin and put the offended incisor down again. It will be simpler for him to get an implant than it is proving to sort out boxing’s super-middleweight division.
After 12 merciless rounds, the fight which was supposed to unify the IBF and WBC titles ended with those belts still separately wrapped around the waists of DeGale and his rival champion Badou Jack.
All that punishment, all that pain, all that effort, all that courage ended in the anti-climax of a majority draw. As you were.
After all this: Jack put down by DeGale in the first round; DeGale decked by Jack in the last round; even referee Arthur Mercante hit by a stray punch somewhere between those two knockdowns, as the argument became increasingly belligerent and the pendulum swung one way and the other.
Two of the judges could not separate them, returning points verdicts of 113-113. The third official scored it 114-112 for the first British Olympic gold medallist to win a world title. Me too.
But when the rounds are this close and the scoring so tight, reasoned observers don’t complain.
Jack and his celebrity promoter Floyd Mayweather questioned whether the New York judges were paid to give DeGale a majority draw but then they were not impartial.
Mayweather said: ‘This is the second time Badou’s been robbed. I may not come back to New York after this. Something isn’t right. Are they (the judges) being paid under the table?
‘I just want to be treated fair. This is happening because of my flamboyance.’
Jack himself argued: ‘The stats show I landed 59 more punches, so I see no need for a re-match because I proved I won.’ But when Mayweather was asked if he would like DeGale to join his stable of fighters, he said: ‘Absolutely. He has the star power to be a superstar.’
Yet this was not quite the statement DeGale intended to send back from the Big Apple to Blighty via satellite late on Saturday night.
Chunky envisaged proclaiming his confirmation as an elite champion by out-boxing the burly Swede called Jack the Ripper.
He did that for a marginal majority of the time, so the message was still worth transmitting.
He acquitted himself splendidly in the Barclays Center and only the most churlish of critics will withhold recognition of his ability and his fighting spirit.
He said this as a question: ‘I don’t think anyone can deny I have the heart?’ No, they should not. But can he return home in glory from his four-fight exile in the Americas and into a mandatory defence this spring against Liverpool’s Callum Smith? Much depends on what happens next.
Plan B was being hatched as soon as this fight was over. A repeat of this thriller would have delighted the excited 10,000 crowd, the worldwide TV audience and DeGale.
But the burly Jack will vacate the title he fought so valiantly to keep this weekend by giving up the struggle to make the 12-stone limit and moving up to light-heavyweight.
One door closed. Then young Smith said of the draw he had just witnessed from ringside: ‘This was the only result which could spoil the plan. I could have fought whoever won.
‘Now Plan B is for me to fight Anthony Dirrell for the WBC belt Jack is giving up. And while I believe I can beat them all, that might be a better fight for me to get a first world title.’
That prospect quickened with the promoters assuming that DeGale will need a spring break after such bruising exertions. That is not his view.
He says: ‘I still want Callum in May for my homecoming. He is the mandatory challenger for my title.’
And whatever anyone’s opinion may be of DeGale’s obsessive desire for his own country’s respect, he is a damned good man in the ring.
The smile is gap-toothed. There is an ugly weal under his right eye. He will be peeing blood after withstanding so many of Jack’s trademark body shots.
DeGale took his punishment like a man and inflicted enough himself to ensure that he returns from his foreign travails still undefeated abroad, still one of the best of our 13 world champions.
Isn’t it time to cut him a little slack?