STUART HALL vs MARTIN POWER

Coming back to face the man who stopped him is a tough thing for a boxer. The fighter who won first time has the psychological advantage. In a long, tough fight, the boxer who did the stopping might think: “I got this guy out of the fight before, if I keep fighting and keep punching I can do it again.”
 
Yet a fighter can gain revenge over the man who stopped him. Sometimes it is a matter of learning from past mistakes. Tactics might be changed, or tweaked a little. Or, sometimes, a boxer simply trains harder for the rematch, or gets himself into a better place mentally — more focused, more determined.
 
Martin Power, the former champion, attempts to turn the tables on a fighter who stopped him when he challenges Stuart Hall for the British bantamweight title on Friday, with Sky Sports televising in the U.K.
 
Power, 30, is doing things the right way for the rematch. He moved from London to train in Finland, with, I believe, a focus on conditioning and stamina. I understand that Power is a man who loves boxing and who desperately wants to be champion again, and he knows that this is probably his last chance. If he loses, Power becomes just an opponent or even has to consider retirement. Neither option is a palatable one for the gritty boxer from northwest London.
 
Hall is also aged 30, but he seems much the fresher fighter. He surprised many in the British fight fraternity when he overwhelmed Power in the eighth and final round 10 months ago. Hall suffered a cut on the scalp from a clash of heads in the opening round but he fought with intensity and by the fifth round he was hammering his way through Power’s defences. Although Power didn’t go down, he got caught too often by right hands. Power was in trouble on the ropes when the referee stopped the fight in the eighth.
 
That defeat was a tough one for Power, coming as it did against a boxer having only his seventh fight. He came back very well in his next bout, however, stopping Matthew Edmonds in the fifth round after knocking down the former British title challenger three times. The fight was in Edmonds’s hometown of Newport in Wales, which adds to the merit of Power's victory.
 
I think it is important for an individual, in boxing or any endeavour, to get a good result after a run of setbacks. It gives a surge of confidence and makes a person feel: “Yes! I’ve still got it. I can still do this.”
 
So, Power should be going into Friday’s rematch with a reasonable measure of self-belief. He is obviously the underdog, though. Hall is a tall bantam, he is unbeaten and he is boxing in his home area in the northeast of England. In his last fight, Hall upset the odds to take the title from Ian Napa, but it was a strange ending. Napa was winning on the judges’ cards, had his best round of the fight in the eighth, then, it seems, suddenly succumbed to heat exhaustion in a sweltering arena and was retired by his trainer before the start of round nine. (It was later revealed that Napa had been struggling to make weight.)
 
So, although Hall got the win, Napa looked the better fighter. There was a tenacious quality about Hall, though, that impressed me. He kept coming back at Napa, always contesting the issue. Napa was never allowed to go into cruise control. Weight-making and heat no doubt played a part in Napa’s defeat, but Hall was making him fight and obliging him to use up energy.
 
Hall is a competent boxer who knows how to use his height and reach, although Jim Watt noted in the Sky commentary that Hall didn’t like Napa’s body blows “one little bit”. It is my understanding that the Power camp believes Hall to be tight at the 118-pound limit. Power might well be trying to hurt Hall to the body. In the last fight, though, Hall was able to land the right hand all night.
 
I see this as being a spirited fight, with Power, his back to the wall, probably doing better than last time. Will he do enough to win, though?  One suspects not, but I don’t make Hall an overwhelming favourite.
 
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