JAMIE MOORE LIKENS the chances of Ohara Davies landing a jackpot punch on his charge Jack Catterall to him buying a lottery ticket and hoping for the best.
Two of the best super lightweights in the country will take to the ring in Leicester next Saturday (October 6) with the winner expected to be in pole position for a shot at a world title in 2019.
The unbeaten Catterall is putting his perfect ledger at risk against the thunder-punching Davies, but trainer Moore believes his man is too smart an operator to leave openings for the Londoner to exploit.
“Obviously I don’t expect him not to get hit, but Ohara Davies is going to really struggle in pinning Jack down,” reasoned Moore, also the trainer of Catterall’s promotional stablemates Carl Frampton and Martin Murray.
“He might catch him or clip him a couple of times, but after that, one the best things about Jack’s game is he rarely gets hit with the same shot again.
“We understand the dangers of the fight, don’t get me wrong, we know that there is the possibility of getting clipped, especially with that dangerous right hand, but to me that is like Ohara Davies trying to buy a lottery ticket.
“Every other ticked box is on our side of the court. The better boxing brain, the better engine, the better body puncher, better jab – all those boxes are ticked in our favour.
“The one thing Ohara can win the fight with is by landing that power shot and it is up to Jack not to let that happen.
“That is Ohara’s jackpot and it is a big one, don’t get me wrong, and he has landed it many, many times in his career so far. But he has always struggled landing it against good defensive fighters and the only loss on his record is against a southpaw who took the fight to him, worked his body and had a good jab.
“Those three things are all in Jack’s favour.”
Moore does acknowledge, however, that the fairly unique dimensions of Davies have had to be taken into account during preparations for Catterall’s defence of his WBO Intercontinental title.
“Urm, a little bit. It is not just about styles and stances, sometimes you’ve got to take into consideration the unusual aspects of opponents and one of the things that is unusual about Ohara Davies is the length of his arms.
“We’ve done a bit of sparring with taller fighters, which isn’t ideal range-wise because you are sort of aiming at a different height, but you do get a better perception for distance when you are thinking that people are out of range.
“To be fair, Tommy Coyle, who is one of our fighters and in the same gym, he’s got quite long arms for his weight and it has worked out perfectly really so we have done a lot of it in-house and Tommy has got a fight coming up against a southpaw so they have worked a lot with each other during this camp.
“It will be about judgement of distance and that is one of the things Jack is really good at. He’s got good anticipation, along with a really good defence and excellent timing.”
‘The Time Is Now’ is headlined by Jack Catterall v Ohara Davies. Leicester’s own, Lyon Woodstock defends his WBO European Super-Featherweight title against Archie Sharp. Heavyweight prospect Daniel Dubois takes on former world title challenger Kevin Johnson. Olympian and double gold medallist Nicola Adams will be fighting Isabel Millan for the Interim WBO World Female Flyweight Title and Leicester’s British Super-Featherweight champion Sam Bowen also feature on a major night of boxing televised live on BT Sport.