THE OLD ME IS STILL THERE

Fighter Diary by Tyrone Nurse

In just over a few weeks time, Tyrone Nurse finally gets to pit his fighting wits against one of the top young super lightweights in the country when Jack Catterall makes his mandatory challenge for the British title in Leeds. In his second exclusive diary entry, Tyrone explains why having a promoter is now paying dividends for him…

THE YOUNG SUPER lightweights in this country have all been making a bit of noise over the last year or two, but until now none of them have been prepared to step up and fight me.

As British champion I’ve had to endure the frustration of seeing some of these highly-touted young fighters with big reputations withdraw from mandatory challenges, or give the traditional title route a swerve altogether in favour of international belts.

Maybe I simply wasn’t viewed as an attractive enough proposition because we have never had a promoter backing us before this year

I boxed regularly on Matchroom shows, but it was always with the hopes that the Matchroom fighter was gonna beat me, I was under no illusions about that.

We knew they wanted them all to beat me, they wanted (Chris) Jenkins to win and they wanted Tommy Coyle to beat me. I’m not daft, I knew that was their plan.

You can’t fault a fighter for going down the international route and in the case of Jack, he is more or less mandatory for the WBO title because of his Intercontinental belt.

Until he was beaten by Josh Taylor, Ohara Davies got himself right up there with the WBC – he was another one who didn’t fancy a fight against me – and now you’ve got Josh Leather with his IBF belt.

I look at what those belts do for a fighter’s career and they’ve all had promoters who have pushed them and put them in that position, whereas I’ve never had that up to now.

We always pushed along and struggled by ourselves and never had anything handed to us or given to us. For the last near enough a year we have been with Frank and he has been good to us.

Unfortunately, in my last two fights I was sh*te! I could sit here and make up all the excuses, but against Joe Hughes, anyone who has seen me fight knows that was not me in the ring and I don’t think the ten months out did me any good.

I had a lot of weight to shift and my dad said in the week of the fight to come in overweight and be heavy. Me being me, I thought that was not professional and not how you do it.

I thought I would do it right and I’d be able to get by Joe. I didn’t expect to be 100 per cent in there and I knew I wasn’t, I could feel it at the weigh-in and after.

In the changing room I remember saying to Anthony Yarde that I got on my feet for five seconds and then they were gone. I could see what I wanted to do and saw the gaps, but it just wasn’t working and it wasn’t clicking for me.

You put it all behind you, I kept the belt and watching it back I still thought I won it down the stretch by three or four rounds.

I just about got by, moved on and boxed three weeks later, which was a bit too soon really after a tough 12 rounder with Joe. I did an eight rounder up at the weight above against Andy Keates – purely because I didn’t want to take more weight off to get down.

You live and you learn and I don’t think we’ll be having ten months out of the ring again.

This time I have not put the weight on the way I have before and I feel really good this time.

Now I have got the big fight I wanted against Jack and I think stylistically, people talk about Jack as a pressure fighter, but he is more of a counter puncher than anything else.

This fight could turn out to be not the fight all the Twitter users are expecting! It might be a boring fight, but I think we will gel well and we’ll both have a lot of fire for this one.

I can’t imagine it will be a boring fight. There will be a lot going on.

People wonder if I will revert to the old me of being hard to hit against Jack and it is still there, but I knew boxing Tommy Coyle that I could stand there and fight. I knew I could beat him at his own game, even though I spent the whole training camp jabbing and moving.

I don’t know what it was, but there was something about having a fight with Tommy Coyle that appealed to be. I was excited just to have a proper scrap.

We are on our feet moving like the old Tyrone in the gym, so it is just about taking that into the ring on fight night now.

You would assume winning this fight would represent a breakthrough for me. Jack is No.2 in the WBO and they haven’t got a No.1 ranked fighter. Essentially, if you beat him then that is you.

As long as we beat Jack, we are up there and I’ve got no intention of not beating Jack. It is a tough fight, don’t get me wrong, a good fight I would imagine and one I can’t wait for.