Olympic golden boy James DeGale was taken the distance but still emerged victorious in his professional debut.
Golden boy taken the distance in tough first pro fight
Golden boy James DeGale made a winning start to life as a professional - even if he failed to deliver a glittering performance.
The Olympic hero was ridiculously jeered by sections of the Birmingham crowd as he boxed his way to a patient and not pulsating 40-36 four-round win over Vepkhia Tchilaia of Georgia.
DeGale failed where Beijing team-mates and close buddies Frankie Gavin and Billy Joe Saunders succeeded by stopping their men, but as he readily admitted, will have learned far more from going the distance than blasting someone away inside a round.
There were also one or two amateur traits that Jim McDonnell is yet to iron out of the west Londoner's make-up, not least the flicked jab with the back of the hand, which earned a ticking off from the referee.
But the win was the most important thing and DeGale's debut 'w' was never in doubt. He did get caught on a couple of occasions that Tchilaia dared venture from behind his guard, but by and large, was allowed to do as he pleased.
And DeGale was never going to come in and blow his man away. A cautious start, behind a tentative, testing jab showed that the smarts that saw him to success in the Olympics are still going to be the mainstay of his stint as a professional.
Forceful
There were brief flashes of his undoubted speed, a left-right-left-right combination battering Tchilaia's head and forcing him to cover up with less than a minute gone.
Superiority established, DeGale then danced about his man trying to find an opening, without any luck, it must be said. A more forceful jab might well have prised apart the defence of a man intent only on going the distance.
The second round saw the left uppercut enter the equation as DeGale came down the middle but there was still no way of getting in, or drawing Tchilaia out.
Then at the start of the third, the Georgian finally threw something and a left-right combination, the latter landing on the chin, drew gasps from the ringside seats and warned the 23-year-old Olympic champion that when money's on the table, even momentary lapses can prove all too costly.
Switching
It made DeGale think and ease off a little which in turn, increased the frustration in a National Indoor Arena crowd that had just seen local lad Gavin do the business.
A doubled up jab and a couple more bursts were all he could do to keep the critics quiet. Even switching to orthodox did little to change the pattern.
He won't be the first sporting champion to be booed by the British public but it was still grossly unfair on a young man who had saved the well-funded and much-vaunted British team from relative failure last summer.
And DeGale was doing all he could to instigate some decent action, but it takes two and he was the only one interested from first to last. In the end, there was no surprise when referee Howard Foster declared him a 40-36 winner - and a whole lot wiser for the experience.
