By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Badou Jack acknowledged that his fight against James DeGale was “a little closer” than his bout with Lucian Bute.
The WBC world super middleweight champion cannot understand, though, how he has been forced to accept a second straight majority draw. Sweden’s Jack (20-1-3, 12 KOs) thinks he did more than enough to defeat DeGale (23-1-1, 14 KOs) on Saturday night in their super middleweight championship unification fight at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.
“What can I say?,” Jack said during the post-fight press conference. “This is the second time in a row this sh*t happened. I don’t know why. I’m supposed to be the home fighter.
“Like Floyd said, we don’t pay no judges or anything. All I want is for them to treat me fair. Look at his face. I knocked his tooth out. … That’s why you can’t leave it to the judges’ hands. You’ve gotta knock him out.”
Each of the three judges determined their 168-pound championship match was close. Glenn Feldman scored the fight for London’s DeGale, 114-112. Julie Lederman and Steve Weisfeld felt the fight was even and scored it the same, 113-113.
CompuBox credited Jack with landing more overall punches than DeGale (231-of-745 to 172-of-617), who faded during the second half of the fight. Jack connected on more power punches (202-of-522 to 168-of-468) and more jabs (29-of-223 to 4-of-149).
Jack’s left hook/right uppercut combination floored DeGale with 1:50 left in the 12th round, but a resourceful DeGale figured out ways to survive to the final bell without getting knocked out. Had Jack not dropped DeGale in the 12th round, he would’ve lost a unanimous decision (115-112, 114-113, 114-113).
DeGale dropped Jack after connecting with a straight left hand during the first round, but Jack knocked out one of DeGale’s top teeth and opened up a cut underneath DeGale’s right eye later in the bout.
“He’s slapping a lot,” Jack said. “It looks good to the judges, but it’s not effective. It’s no clean punches or anything. When I heard [the] CompuBox [statistics], that I landed more cleaner shots, a hundred more punches or something like that – I don’t know [63 more punches].”
When asked if he feels he defeated DeGale as soundly as he beat Bute on April 30 in Washington, D.C., the 33-year-old Jack responded, “I don’t know. Maybe it was a little closer, but I still thought I won.”
Two judges – Glen Rick Crocker and Omar Mintun – scored the Jack-Bute bout even, 114-114. The third judge, Steve Rados, thought Jack was as a decisive victor over Bute (117-111).
His majority draw with DeGale marked a fourth straight close fight for Jack. Before back-to-back majority draws against DeGale and Bute (32-3-1, 25 KOs), Jack defeated Anthony Dirrell (30-1-1, 24 KOs) by majority decision to win the WBC 168-pound championship in April 2015 in Chicago and overcame England’s George Groves (25-3, 18 KOs) by split decision to win his first title defense in September 2015 in Las Vegas.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing
