ESHAM PICKERING vs MATTHEW MARSH

If Esham Pickering retains his British super bantam title against Matthew Marsh on Friday night in London he will be all set to meet the European champion, Rendall Munroe, in a fight that would be a big attraction in the English midlands between two local rivals.

Pickering says he is taking Marsh seriously and isn’t looking ahead to a Munroe fight. The 31-year-old wasn’t impressive in his last two fights, when he lost to the unheralded Sean Hughes, then stopped Hughes in a rematch. However, Pickering talks confidently not just of beating Marsh but doing so in fine style. He told the British media that he is treating this as the most important fight of his life. “You’re going to see the old Esham Pickering back in this fight,” he promised.

Just looking at the records of the fighters, this looks a mismatch. Pickering has won 33 of his 39 fights and he is a former European champion who boxed for a world title almost seven years ago — an overly ambitious match against the Panamanian southpaw Mauricio Martinez.

Marsh, meanwhile, has had just 10 fights and in his biggest test he was worn down and stopped in 11 rounds by Derry Matthews last October. However, Marsh was moving up to 126 pounds to meet the bigger Matthews. The fight with Pickering is at Marsh’s natural weight of 122 pounds.

Despite his relative inexperience as a professional, Marsh is a mature boxer at 25 years of age. He was an English amateur champion and boxed in the world junior championships. I didn’t see the fight with Matthews, but it seems that Marsh was doing well early with smart boxing and hand speed, only to be overwhelmed as the fight went into the later stages.

Since then Marsh has boxed just once, a first-round KO over a fragile Tanzanian. He is not a puncher, with just that one stoppage win on his record. If he is to win on Friday he is going to have to do it by outboxing and outpointing the much harder-hitting Pickering.

It is going to be tough for him do this against a veteran who has fought in a lot of 12-round title bouts. Yet Pickering looked dreadful in his first fight with Hughes, and although he won the rematch in the ninth round he took a lot of shots in the early rounds — commentator Jim Watt, the former lightweight champion, noted with alarm: “Hughes cannot miss him as he comes forward.”

Pickering made the adjustments that were necessary, going to a style of moving around the ring and attacking in quick surges, and he broke down the southpaw Hughes and finally hammered him out of the fight. It was a gritty rally on a night when things started badly, and Jim Watt felt that under the circumstances it was “one of the best performances of his career”.

Fair enough, but there was a time when Pickering would have blown away an opponent such as Hughes, who although a nice enough boxer had stopped only one opponent in his 21 previous bouts and had been stopped four times himself.

The evidence of the Hughes fights suggests that Pickering is coming to the end of his career, but his promoter, Mick Hennessy, assured me over the phone from London this week: “No worries, Esham wasn’t himself in those fights but he’ll do a good job on Marsh.”

If Pickering wins he will capture the Lonsdale Belt outright, so this is a huge incentive in and of itself, plus having the Rendall Munroe fight in the pipeline.

Marsh, though, now knows what it is like to be involved in a long, hard title fight, one that was outside his own weight class. That fight could have taken something out of him, of course, but it is also possible that the experience of taking part in such a fight could benefit him even though he lost.

Munroe’s promoter, Frank Maloney, said over the phone from London this week: “I’ll be rooting for Pickering because if he wins it’s a big fight for my guy, but I think Marsh might be a bit too young and fresh for him.

Glyn Leach, the editor of Boxing Monthly, offered an opinion from his London office: “Esham seems to be going downhill but I don’t know that Marsh is the guy to push him right down the hill.”

The fight centres on how much Pickering has left. As ever, this will not be known until the first punches are thrown and landed. I like a line used by Steve Kim of MaxBoxing.com: “There’s a fine line between experience and erosion.”

For the second time this week I started a preview with one opinion in mind and closed it with another. My first thoughts were that Pickering will win in fairly convincing fashion, but I am shifting the other way. On paper, Pickering will get the win, but if Marsh can rise to the occasion and give the performance of his life, he can, I think, spring the surprise. With no great conviction, I lean towards Marsh to pull off the upset.