ON A dreary Wednesday afternoon, James DeGale and George Groves sit a couple of feet away from each other in the otherwise empty upstairs function room of a west London pub.
They are about to conduct a joint interview for the first time in almost a decade and the production team are putting the finishing touches to the set while the pair shoot the breeze.
There was a time when a meeting between these two would certainly involve a number of people from the two respective teams; family, security, trainers and everyone else in between. It would almost certainly be underpinned by tension and the very real threat of physical violence, and not just between the fighters.
“The rivalry was serious and fierce because it wasn’t just me and him,” DeGale explains. “It ended up being his team against my team, too. It cuts deep.”
But all these years on, two of British boxing’s greatest ever super-middleweights do not look too dissimilar to the punters who might frequent the downstairs bar in the same establishment. “How’s the family?” They ask. “Still training a bit then, yeah?” For a moment it is hard to believe that they shared the fiercest rivalry in the country since Benn and Eubank.
Incidentally, Chris Eubank Jr was the man in the opposite corner the last time either DeGale or Groves boxed professionally, when the ghost of Chunky dropped a unanimous decision at the O2 Arena in February 2019. He announced his retirement shortly afterwards, following the path Groves had taken exactly one month earlier. Groves was just 30 at the time, DeGale 33.
There was a spiteful build-up when Groves and DeGale met as pros
Since early 2019, however, the pair have led very different lives. Groves has made a clear move into punditry and broadcasting with regular TV spots and his own podcast while DeGale has barely been seen at all. The man who never really liked interviews at the best of times was adamant he would go missing as soon as his career was over – and he did.
But in June, social media was sent into a spin when Groves uploaded a picture of the pair together, claiming they had bumped into each other randomly on the King’s Road. Groves admitted: “I did write that but actually I had shot James a message. I had a feeling our paths were going to cross soon, maybe in a work situation, so I thought let’s just see what he’s up to, let’s see what he’s thinking, see if we can break the ice a little bit. He asked me what I was thinking and I told him I just wanted to have a coffee.”
DeGale interjects. “I was thinking this guy wanted to have a fight but I thought let me just go and meet him and see what he’s saying. I met him and George was actually alright.”