By Ben Jacobs

Jim McDonnell admitted to it being a “crazy time” following James DeGale’s points win over Andre Dirrell on May 23.  The victory brought particular joy to McDonnell who has trained ‘Chunky’ for his entire professional career, overseeing the Londoner’s ascent to British, European and now world champion status in a high level super middleweight division.

“It was a long camp, probably a bit too long but it all paid off for him in the fight,” Jim told BoxingScene.

“It was funny, we did an interview with CBS television or something, with Sugar Ray Leonard.  Sugar asked me if there was any punch in particular that we've been working on, I said to him that one of them was the Sugar Ray Leonard combination.  He said, 'Sugar Ray Leonard?'  I said, 'Yeah, it's a three punch combination and James has mastered it.’  He started laughing.  Then I said one of them is the Pacquiao shot which works well when there are two southpaws.  Funnily enough the shot he dropped him with in the second round was that and apparently on television Sugar Ray was saying, 'That's the Pacquiao shot right there!'.

“We knew that Dirrell was the real deal, James couldn't have had it tougher,” continued McDonnell. 

“He won a gold medal in Beijing, won the British title in Liverpool and won the world title in America in the lion's den.  James deserves a lot of credit, he's gone out there and boxed a great fight.  Dirrell was an undefeated fighter, he never lost to Froch.”

Although he admits his charge was losing rounds after the midway point, McDonnell insisted he wasn’t overly concerned about the result going to the scorecards.

“Not at all.  The Canadian judge had it by eight rounds.  There was nothing in those rounds (seven through ten) so they gave them to the American.  We heard that Dirrell was looking really good in sparring and he was dropping people with the backhand so we worked on that in sparring.  James didn't want to walk into a shot and let it be a game changer, as Dirrell found out in the second round.  The reason why he got out of that round is that he was in great condition and there was only 15 seconds left of the round.  If the fight had been in the UK I wouldn't have worried, but because he was on away soil it made me tell James, 'Don't cry tomorrow about what you have to do today.  Listen to me, you've got six minutes, what you do in those six minutes is going to be career and life defining, they could be crucial.'  He looked at me and winked and he went and won the last two rounds, he always had that in his locker. 

“After six rounds he did seem to switch off to be fair but he responded brilliantly in the eleventh and twelfth rounds.  I've not met one person who saw Dirrell winning the fight, no judges or sportswriters.  The judges got it right,” he affirmed.

McDonnell also believes that a potential all British clash between DeGale and Carl Froch will never materialise and feels it is more likely that the Nottingham man will retire.

“The only reason Carl Froch would fight James would be for money.  He never wanted to fight him.”