By Terence Dooley
IBF super-bantamweight champion Steve Molitor and Saturday night's title challenger Jason Booth met the press for the final time today ahead of their fight at the Rainton Meadows Arena, Sunderland. Molitor has boxed over here three times, scoring wins over Nicky Booth, Jason's brother, John MacKay and Michael Hunter, the Canadian boxer believes that he will make it a quadruple come Saturday night.
"We were treated well over here, given a fair shake as it proved when I fought Nicky Booth here," said Molitor when speaking to Sky Sports. "We decided it was time after 10 fights at home to take it on the road and change it up a little bit. I still expect it to be very intense. One of the reasons I came back over here was to box front of a crowd of diehard boxing fans.
"The Canadian fans are great, but here there is so much more passion and energy (here) and they really crank of the levels of intensity once the bell rings. We do our homework every time we fight. We make a gameplan A through Z and on fight night we'll be ready."
Indeed, Molitor won his first major title here in the UK courtesy of that 2002 Commonwealth title points win over Booth and also helped himself to his first world crown on these shores by stopping Michael Hunter in five rounds back in 2006 for the IBF belt. The 'Canadian Kid' later lost his title by fourth round TKO to Celestino Caballero but believes that he has come back strong from that setback.
"I'm a more knowledgeable fighter since then. You live and learn in life just like every fighter. That was a bad time for me. I'd just switched trainers, I was living in Montreal, it was a big life change for me and my wife was eight months pregnant at the time. There were a lot of distractions out of the ring at the time. The biggest factor was that I didn't have Chris (trainer, Johnson) with me and that was the biggest change. When you train with someone every day, twice a day and they're back in your life it makes a big change. But now he's back,” stressed the 32-1 (12) southpaw.
Booth has netted eight wins since losing on points to Ian Napa for the vacant British bantamweight title in 2007, the 32-year-old believes that Molitor is in for an almighty shock come Saturday, '2 Smooth' feels that his latent talent will rise to the fore when the first bell rings.
“I'm very talented, I can adapt to fighters and give them problems and that's what I intend to do,” declared the 35-5 (15) fighter. “I'm just enjoying boxing. I'm enjoying the challenge, it's my biggest challenge and probably the best I've ever fought, but I'm looking forward to giving it the best I've got. I've been written off a little bit, but I'm the underdog so I expect that."
Frank Maloney faces a crucial two-month period, with both Booth and Rendall Munroe fighting for versions of the 122lb world crown, Munroe travels to Tokyo to fight Toshiaki Nishioka for the WBC title on October 24th. The promoter, however, feels that his two fighters can prevail and that this is the first of many world title nights for Sunderland.
"We'll have a good crowd but if we get a North East fighter going for a world title we could be looking at a sell-out somewhere at one of the big stadiums here," revealed Maloney. “I remember when Glenn McCrory and Billy Hardy were boxing, and the sort of nights we had up here were fantastic, and we want to want to achieve again up here in the North East. I'm sure Jason and Steve won't let us down. Jason's going to come from Nottingham like Robin Hood and rob the title back."
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