For a sport that has left many of its participants lisping over torn lips, boxing has a track record of merging myth and mouth. The present king of self-promotion is working in a gym in Essex, beneath the graffiti slogan “pain’s temporary, pride’s forever”, and makes no attempt to hide his ambition.
“I’m not going to sit here and be humble” he says.
This is James DeGale, the Olympic middleweight champion, almost a year into his professional career. It started with boos and unwelcome Audley Harrison analogies. There was criticism from Chris Eubank, David Haye and Joe Calzaghe. DeGale, some felt, was all style and no substance.
“I know I’m good and where I’m going,” he says over coffee at The Academy in Loughton. “I don’t want to be famous, just very, very rich and get all the accolades. It sounds big-headed but I can’t see me losing until, maybe, the big, big fights in Vegas.”
Not everything in black and white makes sense and DeGale is far more charming and likeable than often comes across in print. He says he has already won people over after five unbeaten bouts and tomorrow’s London debut at Wembley Arena against Matthew Barr will be a happy homecoming for the Harlesden boy. The British title, he insists, will come by the end of the year, the world in 2012.
“I think in a few years he will be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the business,” Jim McDonnell, his coach, says.
McDonnell is the former super-featherweight who ended Barry McGuigan’s career and took Azumah Nelson, the brutal Ghanaian boxer, 12 rounds. He has a vested interest, but says a trip to train at Floyd Mayweather Jr’s gym in Las Vegas last August backed up the belief. “Over here they say James is overtraining, but he’s training for a six-round fight and a 12-round career,” he says. “Mayweather said rest is for the unemployed. I put the stopwatch on him and he was still going after two hours, 47 minutes. That’s why he’s the best.”
The ability to marry a work ethic with outlandish soundbites is often hard to grasp. Eubank, ironically, did not and questioned whether DeGale, 24 last week, had the hunger. “He’s been very, very silly,” DeGale says. “He said that and then rings me up chatting bears*** for hours. He says, ‘I can’t be your friend, I’m more like a father figure.’ David Haye, the muppet, said something daft, but me and him don’t get along because I’m better looking.”
The vanity smacks of Muhammad Ali, the undisputed epithet champion, and DeGale makes no apology for enjoying the spoils of hard graft. But one associate, who runs with McDonnell, said his initial doubts about the flash talk were silenced when he saw the sweat on the floor. He added that it is natural that young men talk about sex.
He is right and so as someone shouts out “Bridge too far” as a punchline to a gag about John Terry, DeGale holds court. “I used to get all the birds but now it’s gone unbelievable,” he says. “Boxing is my main bird now. One day I’ve got to find a girl and fall in love, but life at the minute is great. I won’t have sex for five days before a fight. I’ve heard fighters go eight weeks without. I could not go eight, six, four. That’s mental.”
DeGale is a fighter not a lover, but he says he was with a woman for six years. “It was sad and we still speak,” he says. “I don’t know, maybe in a couple of years we’ll be back together. She looked after me. She was like having another Mum.”
His real mum, Diane, sorted him out at the age of 15 when he was smoking dope and sneaking out of his bedroom at night. “She came and got me, gave me a little box and said, ‘James, I can’t hack it no more, I’m sending you to social services,’ ” he says. “I was crying and pleading with my dad. ‘Please help me, give me one more chance.’ I had to cut some people off after that and it hurt me.”
Soon after, he was boxing as an amateur in Las Vegas. By the time he got to the Olympics in 2008, the media realised he was different and referenced his brief spell at stage school. In the semi-final he beat Darren Sutherland, an Irishman who had won four of their previous five meetings, before overcoming a Cuban to take the gold.
Then, last year, Sutherland hanged himself in his London home. “He’d got everything,” DeGale says. “He’d got his Olympic bronze and he’d moved down to London, but you don’t know what’s happening in people’s heads. I thought it was a sick joke when I heard. Unbelievable. Me, I’m lucky. I wake up with a big smile on my face.”
A smile on his face and Sutherland’s initials on his shirts, DeGale’s conversation keeps returning to Mayweather. DeGale was made to pay $50 (£31) a round to spar in Las Vegas, but says it was worth it. “He has all the mouth and the entourage,” DeGale says. “But the impressive thing was the work.”
The swag and swagger also appeal. “I don’t think I’ll be like Hatton,” he says. “I’m a love-him or hate-him guy. Mr Marmite. I’d rather be like Mayweather than a silly boy who’s so boring. I’m here to make history.”
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