ANDY BUTLIN returns to the boxing ring tomorrow with a big point to prove.
It’s an 11th professional fight for the Huddersfield light-middleweight, and most punters will be backing highly-rated opponent Billy Joe Saunders to take the honours at West Ham’s Upton Park football ground in East London.
But 28-year-old battler Butlin will go into his meeting with the Olympian quietly confident of chalking up a third successive win on the undercard of the eagerly-awaited Kevin Mitchell versus Michael Katsidis WBO lightweight title contest.
That’s despite accepting the fight against Frank Warren ace Saunders at short notice.
"Andy’s had a stop-start career and he sees this as an opportunity to step up and gain the recognition he feels he deserves," said a source inside the Butlin camp.
"He’s been training like a demon for six week’s solid, and he knows a good performance could act as a springboard to bigger things."
Former Rawthorpe amateur Butlin, who first fought professionally in 2004, took his win record to six by beating Leicester’s Simon Fleck in Bolton, but that was a year ago.
Southpaw Saunders, great-grandson of one of Britain’s most famous Romany bareknuckle champions, Absolom Beeney, has five wins from five since joining the paid ranks 15 months ago having competed in the Beijing Olympics of 2008.
Saunders’ fellow Olympian James DeGale, the double goal medalist who challenges for the WBA international super-middleweight title, also feature in the East end.
