PAUL APPLEBY vs MARTIN LINDSAY

Unbeaten fighters clash in a superb match in Belfast on Saturday when Paul Appleby defends his British featherweight title against Martin Lindsay.

Lindsay will have home ground advantage in Belfast. Scotland’s Appleby would have preferred the bout to be in Glasgow but his promoter, Tommy Gilmour, says they were made an offer so good by Hayemaker Promotions, which promotes Lindsay, that they couldn’t turn it down.

Appleby is the favourite in this meeting of unbeaten boxers. He has twice been the 12-round championship distance, winning against more experienced opponents in John Simpson and Esham Pickering.

Only 21, Appleby was voted best young boxer of the year for 2008 by the British boxing writers. He is exciting and aggressive, throwing punches in combinations, and he has a good left hook to the body. He is a young man who sets a very high standard for himself, and after the comfortable win over Pickering he said he was disappointed with his performance because he felt he got caught too often and should have been sharper. As an amateur he was a junior champion and boxed internationally.

Lindsay, 26, will be boxing in Belfast for only the second time even though he is the home fighter. He has won twice in the Irish Republic, once in Italy, and for a while he was promoted in Canada by Orion Sports — the outfit that manages Steve Molitor: he won three bouts at Casino Rama in Ontario on undercards of shows that featured Molitor in world title defences.

On Saturday he is in a sort of Belfast homecoming. “As much as I enjoyed my time out there [in Canada], I was always hoping to come back and fight in Ireland and England,” Lindsay said in comments released to the media this week. “Nobody from home really got to see me fight out in Canada. Fighting in front of my home crowd will give me a lot more profile and will actually allow people to see what I can do.”

Lindsay was a highly regarded amateur, winning several all-Ireland titles and boxing in the Commonwealth Games and international events. He was beaten by a Polish boxer in a qualifying tournament for the 2004 Olympics.

Appleby is the better known of the two fighters because he has twice topped the bill on Britain’s Sky TV network and he is the champion, but Lindsay could be one of those boxers who are able to shine when the big opportunity arrives. I have seen articles boosting Lindsay as a “new Barry McGuigan”, praise that is surely far too high-flown, while his manager, John Rooney, describes him as a complete fighter who can box, punch and take a punch.

Lindsay’s biggest win by far came when he knocked out Derry Matthews in the ninth round of their British title eliminator last September. Matthews, tall, rangy and aggressive, seemed to be coming on strongly when Lindsay blew him out of the fight with one big left hook.

In Saturday’s fight, which will be televised on Setanta in Britain and Ireland, Lindsay is most unlikely to win in similar dramatic fashion. He will have to be prepared to go 12 hard rounds with a vigorous young opponent who will be taking the fight to him and looking to hurt him to the body. Lindsay will be under the sort of pressure he has never before experienced, but he does have good boxing skills and he might be able to make Appleby miss and counter him. Keeping it up for 12 rounds against the fierce Appleby will not be easy, but I believe Lindsay can do it.

The omens are certainly good for a Lindsay win, with Irish challengers Martin Rogan and Bernard Dunne having upset the odds in recent weeks.

Saturday’s fight curiously parallels a long-ago showdown between London-based Scot Bobby Neill and Belfast’s Jimmy Brown.

That fight, at the King’s Hall, Belfast, in January 1957, was also a match between unbeaten boxers meeting for the British featherweight title.

Neill, as with Appleby, had been voted best young boxer of the year by the British writers. He was a heavy-hooking pressure fighter — not unlike Appleby — and Neill was the favourite, as is Appleby.

Brown, however, gave the performance of his life to knock out Neill in the eighth round.

I would be extremely surprised if Lindsay stopped Appleby, but I do believe that he has the talent to score an upset points win 32 years after Jimmy Brown surprised Bobby Neill in this city.