This weekend super middleweight contender James DeGale will be aiming to become the first British Olympic Gold medalist to win a world title as he challenges Andre Dirrell for the IBF crown at the Agganis Arena in Boston.
Travelling to America and beating Dirrell in his back yard will be a tough ask for DeGale. Tony Bellew, Paul Smith Jr, Martin Murray, Brian Rose are all British fighters who have recently fought abroad in their quest for a world title and all have failed but why?
Firstly there is the pressure of the fans, especially if you are fighting in your opponent’s home country. Footballers often talk about the support they receive and how a home crowd can become their ‘12th man.’ Unlike boxers, footballers have 10 team mates they can rely on if things get tough. Boxing is an individual and often lonely sport. You can be the most confident and gifted fighter with the most resilient character but thousands of fans booing and jeering you as you’re confined to just a 6 meter squared ring, you have to be something special to not let that get to you.
More often than not the fighters Britain sends abroad are just not at world level. This writer doesn't completely buy into the notion that ‘boxing is a punchers game and anything can happen.’ Many of these fights could have been held in their own living room and the Brit would still be destined to lose. The likes of Matthew Macklin, Matthew Hatton and Brian Rose were solid domestic level fighters, who had either earned a mandatory shot at the title or were picked as an easy title defence or tune up to a bigger fight. You can’t blame the British fighters for taking the opportunities presented to them. The purse they receive from fighting the elite trumps anything they have earned before. But one questions how many of them truly believed they could win?
Most British boxers fail in their world title quests abroad, especially fighting in America. There have been some exceptions to that rule however; Lloyd Honeyghan, Darren Barker and Kell Brook to name a few.
In September 1987 Honeyghan beat the odds and pulled off a shock victory against Donald Curry, one of the top pound for pound boxers of that time. There is no doubt that Honeyghan went into that fight as a clear underdog, but he already held a world title, was in a unification fight and was an undefeated fighter. Underdog yes, but he certainly wasn’t a novice on the world stage.
Barker was a successful amateur fighter who had a professional career plagued by injury and personal problems. In 2013 he travelled to Atlantic City to face Australian Daniel Geale for the IBF Middleweight crown. Barker came back from a brutal knockdown in the third round to win by a split decision. It was a great triumph but was his win a shock? Again, he was an underdog but here we had a guy with a stellar amateur career of 55 wins out of 68 fights and was once considered one of the country’s top prospects. And despite being champion, Geale was a very beatable fighter and many observers fancied Barker’s chances.
However, the standout is Brook, who last year lived up to his nickname ‘The Special One’ by producing a more than special performance in beating IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter in Carson, California. Calling Brook an underdog would be like calling Chris Eubank Senior “just a tad eccentric.” Yes Brook was unbeaten but he had never been tested at world level and it was well documented that his lifestyle out of the ring was not what you would expect from a potential world champion. Porter, with his awkward come forward brawler style of boxing, had been likened to Mike Tyson and was coming fresh off a ferocious KO victory over Paulie Malignaggi. Brook produced a boxing master class and won by majority decision. Before the fight we didn’t know whether Brook was world class or not, 12 Rounds later and he had become a pay per view star in the most lucrative boxing division.
It is well known that Brits love their fighters winning titles wherever they box. Ricky Hatton’s schooling of Kosta Tszyu at the MEN Arena is something that will forever live in the memory of every British boxing fan. But for many it is incomparable to seeing a British fighter capture a world title on foreign soil. The most memorable fights are the ones where we sacrifice sleep to watch in the early hours of a Sunday morning, fiddling with the volume controls on our television remotes so not to wake the other half, to finally hear the words “And the New …”
Maybe it’s not fair on those who have become world champions on British soil, but we often have an added respect for boxers such as Kell Brook. Like it or not, Brook beating Porter in the United Kingdom would not have given his fans the same level of satisfaction.
So where does James DeGale fit into this? Is he an underdog? At the time of posting, Sky Bet makes Andre Dirrell a very slight favourite. It certainly won’t be a walk in the park for the Londoner. A hugely talented southpaw, Dirrell has shared the ring with the classier opponents and his only loss came in a very close points defeat to Carl Froch. Like DeGale, he has a strong amateur pedigree and is a former Olympic Medallist, winning Bronze in 2004 after losing to middleweight superstar Gennady Golovkin. But Degale is no underdog. Since signing with Matchroom Sports he has improved his work rate, stamina, defensive skills and he is a clinical finisher. Both his technical skills and his attitude have improved vastly since his defeat to rival George Groves in May 2011.
The Dirrell camp should not be taking DeGale lightly. If he does not let the occasion to get to him, this writer can see him being another exception to the rule and bringing that world title back to Britain.