
Until six hours ago it was a foregone conclusion that James DeGale would beat George Groves, who has ginger hair. DeGale has unquestionably been developing faster than his rival. His victory pose where he imitates a statue in Trafalgar Square has looked far more assured as his career progresses, whereas Groves keeps getting punched in the face, which turns his whole body bright red. On that basis alone, you would be a fool to look past DeGale. However, a Twitter bombshell between David Haye and Andre Dirrell has changed everything.
Haye, as we all know, will be fighting a Klitschko or two this year and he realised that he needs to up his game, so he did what any smart boxer would do in that position.
He turned to Andre Dirrell.
We all know Dirrell is a great guy and is always willing to help a fellow professional, so naturally he was only happy to answer the call of Haye. After studiously watching him in action - like some kind of modern-day Freddie Roach - he knew he had his work cut-out, but he has been doing his best to impart his defensive genius on the Englishman. There has been particular emphasis on how to clinch, turn your back in a fight and throw less than 10 punches in a round. Once Haye masters the rudiments of this, Dirrell will show him some of the more complex techniques like using the whole ring to evade your opponent for 98.3% of a fight and how to effectively complain to the referee.
Naturally, Haye has been very excited about his progress under Dirrell’s tutelage, or ‘Dre’ as he is now allowed to call him, and has been quick to laud his younger mentor. “Andre is incredibly quick and agile for a tall guy, and he knows how to use every inch of the ring,” he said in an interview today. And he is absolutely right, Dirrell is a tall guy.
Haye has also been quick to develop a Twitter relationship with Dre. Some of the banter between them has been top-notch. One tweet read “Me @andredirrell & @5thstgymdino getting ready to start 2nd training session @ 5th st Gym”. Superb, it really is.
While reading all this banter, I came across the bombshell that George Groves is set to join them in Miami. The implications of this news is huge.
Dirrell will be training Groves for his fight with DeGale!
A quick look on the Hayemaker website confirmed as much. Haye said: “Andre... will be able to show George moves and punches that neither he or Degale will have seen yet.”
Once again Haye is bang-on. Dirrell knows moves and punches that haven’t even been invented yet... the world is not ready for them.
So tutoring Groves can only be a good thing for the ginger-haired Englishman. It’s a well known fact Groves’ defence is his biggest failing. It was perfectly illustrated in his fight with Kenny ‘FREEDOM!’ Anderson. The Scot had a cunning plan, which involved walking up to Groves and punching him in the face. Groves had no answer for the simplicity of Anderson’s tactics. He would bob and weave to the other side of the ring but Anderson would just walk over there and then punch him in the face again. Groves was nearly beaten until he realised he had to fight fire-with-fire, so he started throwing back. Luckily for him it worked and he stopped Anderson in the sixth.
Despite the victory it was clear that the blueprint had been written on how to beat Groves... you simply walk up to him and punch him in the face.
You can bet nobody would have known it better than DeGale either, but now everything has changed. Dirrell will be running a defensive clinic and Groves will be his number one patient. If he can only impart 1% of his defensive ability on the Englishman that’s still a 23.8% improvement in Groves’ overall ability. So there is no question that this will now install Groves as a massive favourite against DeGale.
This is good news because DeGale is not a very nice person and there are a lot of reasons to dislike him.
First and foremost, he has a stupid name. And when I say stupid, I don’t mean stupid like an American called Chip Gaylord, I mean stupid as in French. James DeGale actually means ‘James The Wind’ in French.
DeGale also beats up harmless waiters like in his last fight against Alpay Kobal. Not only that, Kobal was a French countryman of DeGale’s, which somehow made it worse.
As if that wasn’t reason enough to dislike him, DeGale also brings a small man called Jim (he says he is his trainer) to press conferences and uses him to unsettle opponents by shouting at them in a very high-pitched voice. It worked against Groves who looked shook-up. He obviously wasn’t used to being aggressively shouted at by a mini-Bee Gee. I can’t help thinking DeGale had intended that all along.
Thank God for Andre Dirrell. Now it looks like the arrogant and dastardly Frenchman James DeGale is going to get his just deserts while he gets knocked down a peg or two. It will be very interesting to witness the reinvention of Groves following his schooling by a defensive master. I just hope that when DeGale gets knocked around the ring, all proud Englishmen recognise the major part Dirrell played in that. Then thank him on Twitter or something.