Hare Seeks British Belt to Complete Comeback.

James Hare has his back against the wall and needs to pull off a convincing win against young hotshot and British welterweight champion David Barnes tonight in order to get some much needed breathing room if he is to completely resuscitate his once high flying career. The former Commonwealth and WBF supremo plans on doing just that at the Northbridge Leisure Centre where he is only hours away from meeting the southpaw Barnes in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. While it may not literally be do or die situation for Hare, a loss will return him to the dark corner of professional despair that he was put in by opponent Cosme Rivera some eleven months ago. A win, however, will reopen the curtains on the Yorkshireman’s bright plans to tread on even bigger stages and that’s all the motivation the subject of this article needs to bring his “A’ game and school his willful opponent.

James Hare has racked up thirty victories in thirty-two contests and was once the hands down star of Matchroom Sports’ promotional stables. Since his lone setback (Hare also drew with former British light welterweight champion Mark Winters in 1999) to Cosme Rivera by way of tenth round stoppage late last year, the twenty-eight year old rattled off two quick victories over limited opposition during the month of this past May. However, now comes the real test. David Barnes is certainly a cut above the fighters Hare faced earlier this year and he will have to out on the type of performances that carried him to victory against such rugged opposition as Jan Bergman, Julian Holland, Roman Dzuman and Jozsef Matolcsi.

While Hare is the betting favorite at the bookies he is well aware of the work cut out for him. “This is a big opportunity for David to step up to the plate and obviously I’m a corner he needs to get around,” he said. “There’s two things that can happen in the fight; I can win it or I can lose it. Some people are saying that I’m at the peak of my career and they expect me to beat what they see as a novice kid who’s only had fifteen fights. Those people are also saying basically that if I don’t win, I’ll have nowhere to go, so to speak. It’s a little bit of a crossroads fight but I’ve approached it like I have all my other contests and I feel exactly like I’ve felt for all my other fights. People say I’ve been looking well in the gym so I’ll just go in, do the job on the night and see what we’ve come away with.”

Hare doesn’t see the British champion as a “novice kid” at all, regardless of Barnes’ professional resume up to this point. The former Commonwealth and WBF kingpin knows that he must tread carefully as a misstep would make an additional comeback very difficult indeed. “Unless I have a screw loose I’m not going out there with all guns blazing,” he said. “The kid’s sharp and he can move a little bit so I’m going to be applying clever pressure. He’s the champion and I’ve got to go and try to take the title away from him. Ultimately, I’ve got to let my boxing do the talking for me.”

Should Hare prevail and become Britain’s newest ten-stone-seven champion, his options at that point will be myriad and ever shifting with each successive fight of potential opponents. “A goal of mine has always been to win the Lonsdale belt but that possibility is a long way off yet!” Hare exclaimed. “I am undefeated in regards to European competition and am highly rated in the European rankings, so it would be nice to think that I could be boxing for the European title at some stage. The IBO possibility is always there as long as I’m still with my manager Tommy Gilmour and I’m rated among the top thirty-five welters in the IBO rankings. Conceivably I could fight whoever succeeds Jawaid Khaliq as the IBO champion.”

“That’s a lot of opportunities right there but we’ll see what happens on Friday night. I might end up with the British belt and run with that or I might step up into something else, I don’t know. There’s a lot of excitement about this fight with David but I just play it down until afterwards. It was the same way when I fought and beat Julian Holland for the Commonwealth title two years ago. It was a similar type occasion, except that I was the underdog that day, but the atmosphere was all the same. Afterwards, it was unbelievable but before the fight I just played everything down. Mainly, I’ve just tried to prepare as best I can for this one and all I can do is give one hundred percent and hope for the best.”

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Curtis McCormick can be reached at thomaspointrd@aol.com