{"id":707616,"date":"2026-07-23T19:55:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T19:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/707616\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T19:55:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T19:55:19","slug":"james-degale-40-announces-comeback-and-plan-to-fight-likes-of-jake-paul-and-ksi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/707616\/","title":{"rendered":"James DeGale, 40, announces comeback and plan to fight likes of Jake Paul and KSI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>James DeGale, 40, is planning a comeback of sorts more than seven years after he looked a shell of himself while losing to Chris Eubank Jnr.<\/p>\n<p>The former two-time IBF super middleweight champion, 25-3-1 (15 KOs), is scheduled to take on 45-year-old Marcus Portman on September 26 in Wolverhampton, England.<\/p>\n<p>Portman, 20-8-2 (3 KOs), hasn\u2019t fought professionally since losing in three rounds to Jamie Cox in 2011. The former English welterweight champion \u2013 a title won in 2004 \u2013 has been active on the unlicensed circuit but his bout with DeGale is unlikely to be a British Boxing Board of Control-sanctioned fight.<\/p>\n<p>The event is being staged by Andy Sahota of ShowFighter UK, who doesn&#8217;t hold a promotional licence with the Board.<\/p>\n<p>DeGale \u2013 beaten widely over 12 rounds by Eubank in 2019 \u2013 was last seen in combat last September when he fought a bare-knuckle draw with Matt Floyd.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>DeGale has told <a href=\"https:\/\/talksport.com\/boxing\/4444771\/james-degale-boxing-comeback-retiring-marcus-portman\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TalkSport that he is not coming back to reclaim world titles<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t go out how I went out against Eubank,&#8221; he explained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve stayed in shape, and after Floyd, I want to have one more in boxing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Boxing has changed since I left. There is Misfits, and the Saudis have come in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy world title days are done but there are fights out there like Jake Paul, Darren Till, Ty Mitchell, KSI and Tommy Fury.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James DeGale, 40, is planning a comeback of sorts more than seven years after he looked a shell&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,35978,6566,56186,14973,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-707616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-comeback","tag-jake-paul","tag-james-degale","tag-ksi","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}