Macklin on mission to fill void left by Dunne

It’s very nearly five years since Poonsawat Kratingdaenggm floored Bernard Dunne and thousands of onlookers at the O2, but Matthew Macklin has promised that he is the man to finally bring big-time boxing back to this country.

Macklin has come close to the top before. Three times he has fought for world middleweight titles and, though each one threw up different plot lines, the endings were identical with the now 32-year old coming off second best.

The last of those, a third-round KO to the Kazahk beast that is Gennady Golovkin last June, was the most comprehensive of all, but Macklin started on the long road back by beating the USA’s Lamar Russ eight months ago.