By Terence Dooley

Stockport’s Jamie "Devil Child" Quinn had Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner on Saturday night then decided to take his dog for a quiet stroll to walk off his meal.  One text message and two hours later he was in the ring with Manchester's Zelfa Barrett at Middleton Arena after Barrett’s original opponent, Scotland’s Michael Stupart, had to withdraw on the night due to a cold sore, which is deemed a contagious virus by the BBBoC and therefore ruled him out of the four-threes contest.

The bill had been hit with the withdrawals of Blaise Mendouo, because of a licensing issue, and Billy "The Kid" Rehman, hand injury, so had been trimmed down to four fights featuring local favourites.

Cold sore-gate left promoter Pat Barrett facing the prospect of spiking yet another fight.  A text message SOS went out, and Quinn was soon en route to the venue.  He was a few pounds above his ideal weight due to his early evening meal, but was ready to save the show and provide Zelfa with a some rounds.

“I was out walking my dog when [his trainer] Joe [Pennington] sent me a text saying Zelfa’s opponent had failed a medical so could I step in,” he said when speaking to BoxingScene about the shortest of short-notice jobs.

“Dave Rafferty [who works at Pennington's Northside Gym] came up with me because Joe was in Blackpool with another one of the lads.”

Zelfa out-pointed Quinn by a score of 40-37 to move to 4-0 (1).  They fought in January, a 39-38 decision win for Barrett.  After the first fight, Quinn had promised Zelfa that he would try to attend his next outing—circumstances conspired to ensure that he was true to his word.

“We chat on Facebook—we fought in the amateurs an’ all and have a lot of respect for each other.  Zelfa said, ‘Thank you’—I was just happy to help.  I had told him (in January) that I would pop up for his next fight as long as I wasn’t busy with something else.  I said to him after the fight, ‘I told you I’d be here’, and we had a little laugh about it.” 

"To be honest, I had nothing else to do and it helped me out with the money,” he added.

With another fight scheduled for this weekend, Quinn’s primary concern was not to pick up a cut or wind up getting stopped, as that would have nixed his next one and prevented the 24-year-old from earning.

“I didn’t want to get cut so didn’t want a war—I saw it as a little warm-up,” added the 1-10-1 boxer.

As for that evening meal, it had barely digested by the time Quinn made his ring walk, so he had more than just the traditional butterflies his stomach.  “I could feel it just there (his stomach),” he said.

“I told them when I got there that I’d be overweight after just having a massive plate of Spagbol.  They couldn’t be too fussy, really.  I was four pounds over and they said, ‘That’s fine’.  I did take a bit of a shot to the stomach, but I’d had two hours to digest it so it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.

“I said, ‘Here we are again’, when we got there, but it’s helped me out pocket-wise and was a nice fight before I'm out again next week.”

The Birmingham-based matchmaker Jon Pegg told me he had once worked a corner and detected a whiff of alcohol from the fighter.  Luckily, Quinn was in training so didn’t have the added problem of boxing under the influence.  “Yeah, it’s a good job I’ve got that fight next week,” he said, turning his attention once again to what’s on his plate next weekend.

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