Is this fight as one sided as the Smith fight if Degale was to move up to 175 and fight Bomber? I think so. Degale is 100x more skilled and has a great defense. Bomber would look like a snail in there and Degale would tee off at will and simply outbox Bomber very easily. The stoppage would come around the 8-9th round.
Some things I noticed watching De Gale, when he comes foward, he doesn't really press in the conventional way, as his seemingly cautious/defensive nature seems to tell him to counter punch off the front foot, which might explain why he paws with the jab so much, he isn't putting it out there to keep you at distance at times, he is pawing with it so you think, hang on, he is'nt jabbing, I'll press the attack, then he will try and walk you into a left hand, or the uppercut, which he tried a couple of times, only this kind of waiting, pawing, trying to draw the attacks of the opponent, can lull you to sleep if they dont give you much to work off, now I felt there was an occasion where De Gale fell to sleep behind the wheel and Smith got off first at speed and managed to hit him, with a right hand I think it was, I also noticed how much De Gale got hit with the left hook over his shoulder, and that depite what I thought before, he doesn't really use that much upperbodymovement as what I first anticipated, although that might be just in this particular fighter, he also he seems to prefer to roll the shoulder, or block punches, he also doesn't seem to use his legs that much from what I have seen, will be interesting to see how his defense looks against better opposition.
His defence is strange plain and simple. Infact everything about him is a bit weird. He has really long arms but when he uses the shell he doesn't quite cover his whole body as Mayweather does. At times he'll just use a normal guard, and then sometimes he'll caught between using both at once and confuse himself. Fortunately his reflexes are solid and he reacts quickly enough most of the time. I've never seen anyone do some of the weird things he does, he looks...odd. His punches are odd, the way he hunches his back is a bit odd, the proportion of his arms and the way he uses that shell, looks extremely weird to my eyes. But hey, Smith only got off with single shots and only landed maybe 5 or 6 real clean. Not quite Mayweather but very decent compared to most of our fighters with porous defences.
Graham would make DeGale look stupid. DeGale is more talented than I like to admit though, and he's still a novice who could go really far.
