Mark Chamberlain leans back on his couch at home and pauses the action on the television.
It’s fight week, and ahead of a significant fight against unbeaten British and Commonwealth junior welterweight champion Jack Rafferty, Portsmouth’s Mark Chamberlain is doing some last-minute homework.
“My trainer [Jarred Partridge] does all that,” Chamberlain tells BoxingScene of studying tape. “But funnily enough, I’ve got Rafferty on the TV in front of me now. I’m just doing a bit myself. I’m in the fifth round of the Turner fight, just watching it.”
That victory over Henry Turner propelled Rafferty into a new space, gave his career a momentum it had not before enjoyed, and now he defends his titles against Chamberlain – at Planet Ice in Altrincham – on Saturday night.
There has been only mutual respect between the fighters, but Chamberlain is aware a win would breathe new life into his already interesting career.
“I’m feeling good,” he said.
“I’m really looking forward to this fight. I’m really buzzing for it, to be honest. Obviously, I always get the buzz to box and be back in there, but I know I’m in a competitive fight and a hard fight and I’ve put the work in, so I’m really looking forward to just getting in there Saturday night and putting it all together.”
Rafferty is on an impressive run, while Chamberlain has scored a comeback win after the only loss of his career, to Josh Padley, last September.
The South Coast man still can’t put his finger on what went wrong against Padley, but he knows victory over Rafferty will lift him to new heights.
He credits Rafferty with being the best he has faced to date.
“Yeah, it gets me back in the mix with all the big names,” Chamberlain said. “Obviously, I don’t want to look past Saturday night because we know we’ve got a hell of a job to do. So yeah, it will definitely propel me back into high rankings and get me on the path where I want to be back on.
“Listen, he [Rafferty]’s a great fighter. You can’t take that away from him. But like I said, styles make fights and I believe we’re going to make a hell of a fight on Saturday night and I won’t be doing what his previous opponents have done with him and that’s run. So expect a war.”
Chamberlain is still only 26. He’s 17-1 (12 KOs), and feels the 10-rounder with Padley was an important part of his education. He was dropped in the eighth and docked a point for pushing in the ninth, before losing by two cards of 96-92 and one of 95-93.
“You don’t lose, you learn, don’t you?” he continued. “And, if anything, it’s given me a new lease of life and kick up the arse to feel like, ‘oh, this is my future’ as such. So something’s got to change.”
Chamberlain said perhaps he had felt “a bit comfortable” with how things had been going, though he admits he’d tried to stay at lightweight too long.
“Simply, it was an off night,” he said of the Padley defeat. “No one to blame. It’s me in there on the night. I didn’t turn up and it cost me the fight. So, yeah, I mean it was just a bad night in the office. I don’t know what it was. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.”
There have subsequently been changes in the team, and the structure of how he works in camp. He returned to the drawing board, moved gyms, freshened things up.
All the while, the win saw Padley score a late notice fight with Shakur Stevenson in Saudi Arabia. Does Chamberlain feel he missed out?
“I wouldn’t have been able to take a Shakur Stevenson on fight on five, six days’ notice purely down to the weight, so if that did get offered to me, I wouldn’t have been able to do it because I was just too big as a lightweight, but yeah, I mean, fair play to him [Padley], opportunity knocked and he grabbed it. You can’t blame him for that. Any fighter would do that, not just him, you know?”
Padley didn’t win, but his stock rose while losing in nine rounds and he landed a promotional contract with Matchroom as a result.
Chamberlain, conversely, boxed an eight-rounder to get back on the horse in April.
One thing Chamberlain asserted was his routine win over Miguel Angel Scaringi was not required as a confidence builder.
“That’s a no-no for me,” he insisted. “I believe that the fight that I had in April was to get the rounds in, just to stay active and get a win and obviously the opponent I had, I didn’t really get out of first gear. The main thing was getting the rounds in because obviously I sat out for a while. If I’d have just blew him out in two or three rounds then I’d be jumping into another fight with lack of rounds.”
It also served as a bridge to the Rafferty bout. Rafferty defeated Cory O’Regan on the same bill as whispers of the Rafferty-Chamberlain fight became louder.
Of course, Chamberlain had been flying high heading into the Padley bout.
He was tabbed as the favourite fighter of Saudi Arabia boxing boss Turki Alalshikh, but welcomed the opportunities that brought rather than baulking at the pressure of the label.
An impressive victory in Saudi over Gavin Gwynne – his first of two successful trips to the Kingdom – followed a tough 10-round stoppage of Artjoms Ramlavs, which was the fight “that caught Turki’s eye.”
“I don’t let pressure get the better of me,” Chamberlain said. “Obviously, the pressure comes with it, but no, I definitely don’t let the pressure get the better of me.”
But there had to be a time when boxing’s most influential man being your advocate must feel surreal, when you’re walking the streets of your hometown of Waterlooville.
“Yeah, definitely,” Chamberlain agreed. “It’s more so now because of how much he’s got involved and done for boxing. At the start, it was all fairly new and obviously everyone’s getting a piece of it now, so it’s a bit more common, but I will never, ever, turn an opportunity down to fight on the Riyadh Season cards, 100 per cent.”
On Saturday, however, Chamberlain will be in the blue corner. He’s the challenger and in Rafferty’s neighborhood.
“I’m expecting it to be loud,” he said, enthusiastically. “Obviously, it’s in Jack’s hometown and I’m going into his back garden to take what he’s got, so I’m looking forward to it.
“[Boos and jeers] mean nothing to me. At the end of the day, it’s me and Jack and a ref in there on the night and I get punched in the head for a living, so someone in the crowd booing is nothing. It’s irrelevant. You don’t need none of that anyway, you know what I mean? You zone out from it all. I know what I was signing myself up for. If it was such an issue, I would have turned it down, so it’s all good.
“There’s no secret that me and Jack don’t hate each other and there’s no, ‘He said that’ and ‘he said this.’ It means nothing, right? We’re in there with the gloves on Saturday night and that’s it. Simple, it’s just business. We shake hands and that’s it. We’ve both been respectful to each other. There’s no need to hate each other. Like I said, it’s business at the end of the day and we’re both in there on Saturday night and there’s nothing personal. It’s just business. I want to get to world level. I want to fight for a world title and that’s it really. I want to get to the top.”
