CHRIS EUBANK Jr believes his July 15 clash with Arthur Abraham will lead him to a fight with James DeGale.

DeGale is an Olympic gold medallist and the reigning IBF super-middleweight champion. But Eubank has previously sparred him and maintains the DeGale is avoiding him.

“I sparred him years ago, I had just turned pro or just before. Everybody knows my side of the story, I got on top of him. I dominated the eight round spar. The words I used were I schooled him. I’ve just been waiting for the opportunity to show everybody what I was saying true,” Eubank Jr said.

As much as Eubank talk up a DeGale fight, the Londoner has just had an operation for a shoulder injury. But Junior scoffed, “He’s talking about shoulder surgery but it’s more like heart surgery. He’s got no heart.”

Eubank insisted that he confronted DeGale at Haye-Bellew earlier this year. “To be honest, DeGale doesn’t want to fight. I approached him at ringside at the David Haye fight and spoke to him man-to-man,” Chris Junior claimed. “I said ‘Listen, you’re a business man, you’re in this game to make money – you won’t get a bigger fight than me. He was just timid and shocked that I went up to him. He didn’t want to know. He was just trying to get away from the confrontation as quickly as possible. I could tell he doesn’t want to fight me. I looked in his eyes and could just tell he wasn’t comfortable engaging with me. He was stumbling, mumbling and stuttering saying ‘let’s see what happens.’”

james degale

“For a world champion it was embarrassing – I thought I would get a bit of heat from him but it was the complete opposite,” he continued. “I frightened him, he was afraid to engage me.

“If someone came up to me and told me they want to fight me I would put them in their place. He didn’t do that at all – he just scurried off.”