BoxRec

I never paid any attention to the line up to last nights card prior to fight night, i had assumed DeGale, being an Olympic, British, European champion and mandatory for Froch's IBF belt and him being a Matchroom fighter on a Matchroom card, and being in against, on paper at least, a live oponent with a decent world ranking, that he would be chief support to Bellew v Celeverly. His fight against Periban was the most appealing on the card for me. I was shocked to see him relegated to 4th in line.

I appreciate Groves is a bigger name based on the exposure he recieved during his two fights with Froch, and that he has a win over DeGale (on paper anyway, i had DeGale edging it), but he's not a matchroom fighter and prior to his fight with Mamma's Boy nobody really expected it to be competitive. Why was he above DeGale on the card???

Joshua was also an olympic gold medalist. He is probably a future PPV star if he makes it to elite level, everybody loves a heavyweight, we have not seen this level of raw talent at heavyweight since Lewis, but he's still at the early stages of his career, he's a 9 fight novice fighting fighters he's expected to handle with relitive ease, most would have predicted an early blow out against Sprott and thats exactly what we got, so why the eff was he chief support?

IMO James DeGale is the best talent we have right now at any weight, I rate him highly. I think Matchroom did him a serious diservice last night by shoving him so far down the card. Is a fighters place on a matchroom card simply down to the number of tickets they sell? DeGale is a matchroom fighter, they should be working their socks off to build him into a big star, not jobbing him in favour off other promoters fighters and the likes of novices such as Joshua who Matchroom deem a better future investment. Joshua's time will come, right now it 'should' be DeGale's time!

Matchroom should have had him as Chief support last night!

good point, I think what happened was that Sauerland and Sky negotiated the higher billing as part of the deal to get this fight onto a Matchroom show. Let's face it, Sky needed to sell the PPV, and they've earned millions from Groves recently. Hearn knows Groves has a fanbase, although perhaps not in Liverpool.

DeGale has quickly turned from a sneering struggler to one of the best in the division

ALI wrote:I never paid any attention to the line up to last nights card prior to fight night, i had assumed DeGale, being an Olympic, British, European champion and mandatory for Froch's IBF belt and him being a Matchroom fighter on a Matchroom card, and being in against, on paper at least, a live oponent with a decent world ranking, that he would be chief support to Bellew v Celeverly. His fight against Periban was the most appealing on the card for me. I was shocked to see him relegated to 4th in line.

I appreciate Groves is a bigger name based on the exposure he recieved during his two fights with Froch, and that he has a win over DeGale (on paper anyway, i had DeGale edging it), but he's not a matchroom fighter and prior to his fight with Mamma's Boy nobody really expected it to be competitive. Why was he above DeGale on the card???

Joshua was also an olympic gold medalist. He is probably a future PPV star if he makes it to elite level, everybody loves a heavyweight, we have not seen this level of raw talent at heavyweight since Lewis, but he's still at the early stages of his career, he's a 9 fight novice fighting fighters he's expected to handle with relitive ease, most would have predicted an early blow out against Sprott and thats exactly what we got, so why the eff was he chief support?

IMO James DeGale is the best talent we have right now at any weight, I rate him highly. I think Matchroom did him a serious diservice last night by shoving him so far down the card. Is a fighters place on a matchroom card simply down to the number of tickets they sell? DeGale is a matchroom fighter, they should be working their socks off to build him into a big star, not jobbing him in favour off other promoters fighters and the likes of novices such as Joshua who Matchroom deem a better future investment. Joshua's time will come, right now it 'should' be DeGale's time!

Matchroom should have had him as Chief support last night!

Your points are very valid ALI but you have forgotten the business side of boxing. James deGale is not selling tickets and certainly is not a PPV name.
His deal with channel 5 turned him into the forgotten man in the division.

If he fights Froch, he will get the exposure he deserves.

Obviously Periban didn't take the fight serious or he wouldn't have come into it overweight

Well, Degale is quite unlikeable.

I imagine the long-term plan is for a huge increase in numbers of PPV's. If Clev and Bellew can head one, so can Groves and AJ - they'll get more buys with a bit of exposure.

Can Degale ever head a PPV? I dunno. He did act like such a twat during the Groves build-up that I'm not sure he'll be forgiven for some time. That cheeky, arrogant cvntishness was done to the extreme by Hamed years ago.

I may be alone here but I think Degales channel 5 run had plenty of positives.

Firstly, he was being seen by close to two million viewers at points. Far more of a household name than most of the matchroom crew, although without the rewards.

Also, despite up and down performances (thank god he's stopped that trick of sitting on the ropes and trying to counter for rounds at a time) he got plenty of rounds in the bank, and steadily got his world ranking back.

Comparing him and groves now, and I'm sure degale would have taken groves last year with the cash and the world title shots, and you have to say that one looks ready for the step up to elite level at SMW, whilst the other looks like his world title hopes disappeared in the 9th round a year ago today.

UrbanFox wrote:
If he fights Froch, he will get the exposure he deserves.

The thing is, if Hearn had any intention of making a Froch v DeGale fight he would have used last night as an opportunity to hype it by making DeGale the chief support. Hearn has no intention of making Froch v DeGale.

Groves, in a post fight interview with IFL TV, when discussing the back stage bust up with DeGale at the weigh in, said about DeGale "right now he's in a very difficult situation because he's being screwed over, i'm sure, by the people he's supposed to put faith in and trust in, i'm sure he wont know which way to look, i thank my lucky stars i'm not in that situation, that the people around me are proffessional and very good at their jobs."

Something tells me he's not neccesserily talking about DeGales family/friends. Is he insinuating Matchroom dont have DeGale's best interests in mind?

Perhaps they shoved him out to go and wake everybody up?

Up until Degale the bill had been horribly boring.

ALI wrote:

UrbanFox wrote:
If he fights Froch, he will get the exposure he deserves.

The thing is, if Hearn had any intention of making a Froch v DeGale fight he would have used last night as an opportunity to hype it by making DeGale the chief support. Hearn has no intention of making Froch v DeGale.

Groves, in a post fight interview with IFL TV, when discussing the back stage bust up with DeGale at the weigh in, said about DeGale "right now he's in a very difficult situation because he's being screwed over, i'm sure, by the people he's supposed to put faith in and trust in, i'm sure he wont know which way to look, i thank my lucky stars i'm not in that situation, that the people around me are proffessional and very good at their jobs."

Something tells me he's not neccesserily talking about DeGales family/friends. Is he insinuating Matchroom dont have DeGale's best interests in mind?

Matchroom's have DeGale's best interests in mind if they line up with their best interests. No different to any other promoter in that respect. Groves has taken more control over his career, but in doing so is trying to carry too much on his own shoulders, he needs a proper team around him, but being from the Haye/Booth camp, he won't trust anyone.

ALI wrote:Something tells me he's not neccesserily talking about DeGales family/friends. Is he insinuating Matchroom dont have DeGale's best interests in mind?

Groves is just trying to upset deGale with his comments.
If the fight with Froch doesn't happen, he is still mandatory for the IBF. As stated in another topic, that means a likely fight with Rebrasse (current number 3) for the then vacant belt.

UrbanFox wrote:

ALI wrote:Something tells me he's not neccesserily talking about DeGales family/friends. Is he insinuating Matchroom dont have DeGale's best interests in mind?

Groves is just trying to upset deGale with his comments.
If the fight with Froch doesn't happen, he is still mandatory for the IBF. As stated in another topic, that means a likely fight with Rebrasse (current number 3) for the then vacant belt.

Will be Gilberto Ramirez Sanchez if it's the vacant title, Rebrasse was moved down to 11 after losing to Groves.

Rocky Fielding @ 9?!? Haha!!

Groves is 5 so him v Degale would have a good chance of being sanctioned for a vacant title I'd have thought?

http://www.ibfusbaregistration.com/ibfu ... w=rankings

Edit: link defaults to HW rankings but change to SMW to see the revised rankings with Rebrasse at 11...

Edit2: Interesting stats on the IBF website, listing Andre Ward as WBC champion...!