Joe Murray on Rendall Munroe, Jason Booth Title Tilts
By Terence Dooley
Leicester’s Rendall Munroe, 21-1 (9), and Nottingham’s Jason Booth, 35-5 (15), both bid for world titles this autumn when taking on Toshiaki Nishioka and Steven Molitor for the WBC and IBF super-bantamweight titles respectively. Munroe travels to Tokyo on October 24th for his challenge to Japan’s Toshiaki; Booth fights ‘The Canadian Kid’ at Sunderland’s Rainton Meadows arena on September the 11th. Both men draw a lot of support here in the UK and have been given the backing of one of Britain’s brightest prospects.
Joe Murray, who represented the UK in the bantamweight division at the 2008 Olympics, has fought his way to 7-0 (3) as a pro; the featherweight boxer believes that Munroe and Booth can both pull off world title wins.
“I hope Rendall does it,” said Murray. “I’ve sparred with him before and want to spar with him for this world title fight, he can go all the way. Rendall’s got a good engine and he’s navvy strong, I think he can go over there and out-work the guy.”
He added: “Rendall’s done it the hard way; he lost up at featherweight to Andy Morris early in his career and came back stronger. Rendall wasn’t shown on TV often early on but then came out and beat Kiko Martinez to get the title and hasn’t looked back. I want to go down there to the Shinfields gym in Derby and help him get stronger for the fight.
“The sparring between me and Rendall is hard and the Japanese fighters have a similar style to me. They box on the backfoot and keep it long so Rendall can get ready for him by sparring me and will be ready to upset the odds out there. I get a lot of confidence from sparring with Rendall. If I get in and spar him and do good then it makes me feel great.”
Murray feels that Booth’s vacant British bantamweight title points loss to Ian Napa back in 2007 galvanised the fighter, Joe believes it was the key to ‘2 Smooth’s’, 32, British and Commonwealth title winning 122lb run, a sequence of eight successive victories has led to the chance to dethrone Molitor, who is in his second spell as a champion and has looked vulnerable since a fourth-round TKO reverse to Celestino Caballero in 2008.
“Jason is a good fighter. He was written off after losing to Ian Napa but he’s got nice moves and has come back well. A fight between him and Rendall would be great if they can both bring titles to England,” declared Murray.
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