John Michael Bianco’s first main event comes two fights after his first career loss.

Bianco faces Brett Beaton in a 10-round super middleweight bout this Saturday at Collective Arts Brewery in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 

Bianco, 8-1 (4 KOs), is a local ticket seller and an action fighter. The elephant is the room is obvious – he’ll be headlining in his hometown, the biggest opportunity of his career coming not long after the roughest moment of his career. 

“There’s a little bit of pressure,” Bianco said. “I am not undefeated, but I think for now, any kind of loss, any kind of mistake going forward, would be so detrimental to my career that I’m not making any more mistakes. All I have in my mind is winning.”

Bianco, 31, noted that a happy fighter is a dangerous fighter, and that is what he is. After the loss, Bianco welcomed his newborn daughter, Brooklyn, into the world. To Bianco, any fighter he faces is trying to take food off his family’s table. 

So what went wrong on that night in March 2024, when Bianco was stopped in the third round against the 6-0 Mate Rudan?

“I feel personally that it was kind of like a mental thing,” Bianco said. “That was the first time I ever thought about losing, and crazy enough, it ended up getting to me and, after that fight, obviously the loss was hard. I took a massive hit to my ego and I went through a mental speed bump.”

Bianco returned in November, scoring a sixth-round technical knockout against the 13-26-1 David Ezequiel Romero.

“Once I got over that hump and moved on, I just started focusing on more important things. Instead of thinking about winning or losing, I thought about my performance,” Bianco said. “I was thinking about what I’m doing in the gym.

“They say boxing is 80% mental and 20% physical,” Bianco said. “I'm living and dying by that now.”

Beaton, 6-2 (4 KOs), of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, enters as the spoiler. Beaton has been stopped in his two career defeats, but he is coming off a December unanimous decision victory over the 2-4-1 Javon Blackstock-Sewell.