It has been a long and rocky road from Beijing 2008 for the 29-year-old Londoner who on Saturday week (May 23) locks fists with fellow southpaw Andre Dirrell in Boston for the vacant IBF world super-middleweight belt.

But apart from acquiring the title and pocketing a £1 million ($1.5 million/€1.4 million) purse, DeGale says what he wants more than anything is to be loved.

“I'd like to think once I win this title I will be appreciated by the fans,” he told insidethegames before leaving for a training base in Miami this week. “It’s been a battle. Remember my first pro fight when I was booed? That was embarrassing and stupid. I guarantee they won’t be booing me now.”

Despite being Britain’s golden boy he had an in-out relationship with the fans following his surprise Olympic middleweight victory over the Cuban favourite Emilio Correa.

A self-assured attitude, sometimes bordering on cockiness, hasn’t helped, especially in the heated build-up to his 2011 bout with George Groves, a bitter rival from their amateur days.

“I was a little bit up myself back then,” he admits. “Now my time is finally here - it has been a long seven years as a professional.

“You've seen me grow up. I'm 29 now, I've got more important things to think about than playing silly buggers.”

When "Chunky" DeGale controversially lost a split decision to Groves for the only time in his 21-bout professional career it was a wind-sapping blow to his pride. Hubris took a bad tumble that night. "Losing was bad enough," he says, "but losing to George Groves? The thought of it still makes me sick to the stomach."

DeGale says he can sympathise with those fighters who allow themselves to be driven towards despondency. Sympathise, but not identify. However easy as it may have been to hit the booze - or worse - DeGale, with a little help from his intensively supportive kitchen cabinet, convinced himself it wasn't the end of the world, or his world title aspirations.

His father, Leroy, recalls how they sat DeGale down the day after the fight. "Me and his mum simply told him, 'Pick yourself up, son. OK, so it was close and controversial, but you lost. Deal with it.'" So he did, and five months later in Liverpool he beat Poland's Piotr Wilczewski in a tough battle for the European title.

Yet his career then oddly took a downward spiral even though, plagued with knee and groin injuries, he continued to win against relatively nondescript opposition, boxing in obscure venues, twice in Kent’s Bluewater shopping centre and in a Bristol backwater.

“I thought to myself "Hell, what the f*** are you doing here? You’re the Olympic champion for Christ’s sake!”

“It was hard to get motivated. I had some depressing moments when I was thinking ‘Do I need this in my life?’”

But last year he came out of the shadows, signing with Eddie Hearn's mushrooming Matchroom stable and appearing in the chief supporting bout on the 80,000 sell-out Wembley show featuring the Carl Froch-Groves blockbuster in a final eliminator for the IBF title that Froch has since vacated.

"Now my career and my life are back on track and I am obsessed with making history,” he said.

“I want to be the first Olympic gold medallist from Great Britain to become a world champion and be bracketed with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar de la Hoya, Pernel Whitaker and Lennox Lewis.

"For me to be a part of that list and be the first from my country is just unbelievable. But it's a lot of pressure and I'm up against it with Dirrell, he's a good fighter. He comes from good pedigree, an Olympic medallist [bronze] from 2004, he knows what he's doing. He’s a tricky switch-hitter and I reckon the second half of the fight is going to be hard and a bit dirty. I can’t wait to get out there and stick one on him.”

DeGale says he owes a lot to the Olympics. "Even now I have a tinge of regret that I'm wasn’t up there defending my Olympic title in London," he added.

"To be in the Olympic Games was always my target, the only thing I ever talked about. I know my final wasn't the best to watch, it was a bit scrappy, a lot of hugging and pulling, and the Cuban got docked two points for biting me on the chest. It wasn't my best performance but the main thing is that I won.

"Winning a gold medal really is life-changing. Our coach, Terry Edwards, said to me, 'If you win this gold medal, Chunk, your life's going to change and I don't think you understand that yet'. I didn't realise what was going on at home, just how big it was. Everything just blew up.

"I've no regrets about turning pro. Hey, I made my decision and I'm happy where I am. To be honest, I think I'm one of the handful of Olympic champions who've been fast-tracked after the Games and have achieved. I was British champion within nine fights, and European champion after 12.

"But sometimes I wish I was good at something else. It’s madness. People, don’t realise what boxers go through. They think it is a few weeks in a camp, earn loads of dosh. I wish it was like that.

"There are many cases of retired boxers getting depression. I can half see it because of the lonely, mental side.

“Don’t be bamboozled by Mayweather-Pacquiao guff. It is not all glitz and glamour and bundles of cash.

“Boxing is not only the loneliest sport in the world, it’s the hardest. Painful in the ring and out. It is cut throat, worse than showbiz for the backstabbing and bitching. Honestly, you’ve got to look out for yourself with all the hangers-on around.

“There are some dodgy characters who will screw you over. I’ve been a pro for seven years and had three promoters. I manage myself now. I don’t trust anyone in boxing I don’t know really well.

“Family is paramount to me, mum, dad and my sister, they’re all part the team. That’s why I am taking them to Boston."

He also has a new lady in his life, Kelsey, a qualified lawyer. “How lucky am I? I left school in year nine and here I am with a good few quid in the bank, and an intelligent university graduate with a law degree as my partner who can take care of the contracts,” he added.

"I’m lucky, I’ve got a good team around me, people that advise me with money and that, otherwise I’d be skint.

“I’ve been paid well since day one but when some boxers tell me what they are getting it’s crazy. I don’t see how they can make ends meet. I know some who are on the breadline.

“Even fighting for a British title you might get £25,000 ($39,200/€35,000) top whack. Say two of them a year; when you pay tax, your manager, trainer, corner men and training expenses, its nothing if you have to run a family. You can’t live like that.

“There are very few who don’t have to worry about money. I read that only seven per cent of boxers can retire after their careers and not work again. Compare that to footballers. That’s crazy.”

Even though DeGale himself will pocket just over £1 million for the fight, he claims: "You know, I'm not joking, a million pound don't go far. They take 30 per cent tax off me before I leave the country. I've got to come back and pay people, put a big deposit down on a house, treat myself then I've only got a couple of hundred grand.

“A million pound is nothing. I've spent it already. Mind you, Eddie Hearn says he will treat me to a nice Rolex, £20,000 ($31,300/€28,000) I think, if I win."

The fight will start around 5pm because of TV scheduling in the UK. But DeGale knows this will be no Boston tea-time party.

Hopefully the gold medal that seems to have been a curse for those Britons who have acquired one in the Olympic ring finally may have become his talisman. “I can’t let this chance slip,” he says, “I just can’t.”