Catching up with Daniel Geale ahead of his world title defence
Sportingbet’s Brendan Curran spoke to Daniel ‘The Real Deal’ Geale ahead of his World IBF Middleweight title defence against Osumanu Adama in Hobart on Wednesday night.
Brendan Curran – You’re defending your IBF World Middleweight title in front of your home crowd. What sort of feeling do you get from that?
Daniel Geale – It’s very exciting, it’s great to be able to take such a big event down to Tasmania. The last one that myself and The Grange Gym put on down here was a sell out and a huge night of boxing. This time we’ve got two IBF world title fights on the card as well as a great heavyweight fighter in Kali Meehan, so it’s looking it could be even better.
BC - What are you expecting from Adama and would you rate him as your toughest opponent to date?
DG - Yeah, I definitely think he’s potentially my toughest opponent. He’s hungry, he believes in himself and like a lot of the African fighters they are always fit and very powerful, so it’s going to be a real tricky fight. I have to be very smart about the way I do things against this guy and if I make a mistake I’m going to get caught so I have to keep that in mind at all times.
BC - We saw Adama’s trainer come out and say you should take up ballet. Obviously you’re known for not getting caught up in that sort of stuff. Is that something you are conscious of?
DG - I don’t feel like I need to be. Sometimes they try to push you into saying things and getting too emotional. There’s going to be points where I’ll get a little bit more emotional and fire up a little bit but that’s when I decide that I want to do that. At the moment I’m keeping nice and relaxed and I’m not going to let them affect me in any way.
BC - I know that you’re probably not looking past Adama but who would you like to fight after Adama once you get past him?
DG - Like you said I’m not looking past this fight at all but we have spoken about it a little while back about a possible opponent for the future. I know negotiations have taken place between Dimitry Perog’s camp, the WBO champion, as well as Felix Sturm’s camp, the WBA champion and Sergio Martinez’ camp as well. So things are looking very very positive. For me I’ve got to do my job, my management always does such a great job in negotiating and getting me these big fights, so I’ve just got to do my job and they’ll keep doing their job. After this fight I’ll be able to sit down and if the options are still there after this fight then we’ll be taking them.
Billy ‘The Kid’ Dib will also be defending his IBF world title on the night. The featherweight will have a fight on his hands when he takes on Eduardo Escobedo.
Dib is undefeated in his last 13 fights while Escobedo has racked up 11.
Dib has been touted as the next big thing in Aussie boxing for some time and says he’s already had discussions with American promoters Top Rank about the big fights ahead.
As he’s already said himself – a loss here would be disastrous.
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Nice work Brendan