It’s the British super-bantamweight title on the line tonight as Jason Booth is challenged by Matthew Marsh.
“2 Smooth Booth” is in outstanding form at the moment. He has revitalised his career since losing to Ian Napa in 2007 and last year he scored an impressive hat-trick over Matt Moran, Rocky Dean and Michael Hunter. The Nottingham-born fighter is in front of his home crowd tonight and is going to want to put on a performance of class in front of his adoring faithful.
Marsh is in equally good form. He had been out of action for almost a year until he won back-to-back match-up’s against Josh Wale and Marc Callaghan. With a record of 13-1 with one KO Marsh has pedigree but the level of opposition he has faced is questionable and it will be interesting to see how he gets on against a fighter of Booth’s calibre.
Booth is fighting to retain the Lonsdale belt outright and at 32 years of age he is enjoying an Indian-summer to his career. He is going to be looking for a world title fight if he secures victory tonight and his promoter Frank Maloney has promised him one in the future. It’s a remarkable turnaround for Booth who at one stage had to take two years away from boxing to recover from alcohol addiction. His brother Nicky suffered from crack cocaine addiction, which ultimately ended his career and Jason did well not to let alcohol take his career down the same path.
Marsh on the other hand, has had a long-running battle with his weight. He originally won the British super-bantamweight belt in September of last year but was stripped of it after weighing in 6oz too heavy. Marsh’s love of pies cost him the opportunity to pick up the strap and Booth claimed the vacant belt by beating Moran for it later on in the year. It was the second time in his career Marsh had been denied by his weight and the salad-dodging fighter can’t let that happen again.
On paper Booth is the more seasoned campaigner and an all-round better pro. Marsh has age, size and reach on his side and their contrasting styles make for an interesting clash. Marsh will float about, using his bigger frame to hunt down Booth and he’ll work the jab hard. In comparison Booth is more of a thinking-man’s boxer. He picks his shot, packs a harder punch than Marsh and his hand speed will surely cause the West Ham-born fighter all sorts of problems.
It should be a good old dust-up between the two, if Marsh wants to get anything from this fight he needs to inflict maximum damage in the early rounds. Both fighters tend to go the distance but as the fight wears on, 2 Smooth will inflict his presence on proceedings and start taking the fight to Marsh.
It could come down to a tight decision but ultimately you get the feeling that Booth has too much in his arsenal and his superior experience should see him snatch victory. Marsh is a good fighter but he hasn’t fought many at Booth’s level, the fact is he has only fought 14 fights in six years altogether and a lack of nous could see him come undone against a more experienced pugilist.
Either way it should be a great match-up between two fighters on very good form trying to step-up to the next level. Booth needs to get the win tonight to prove that he is good enough to get a world title shot, while Marsh needs the win tonight - and then he needs to prove that he hasn’t been spending too much time in the pie shop.
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