Macklin’s rocky road ends

Jorge Sebastian Heiland made a mockery of the bookies’ odds which ranked Matthew Macklin as a 1/20 favourite ahead of their WBC world middleweight title eliminator on Saturday night, but, in hindsight, Father Time was the most difficult opponent for the home fighter.

Macklin arrived into a buzzing atmosphere at 3Arena, in front of a reduced capacity crowd of 5,000 with his ‘Mack the Knife’ signature entrance tune leading into a raucous version of ‘The Rocky Road to Dublin’.

The Birmingham-born Tipperary fighter’s career has been rocky throughout; from a knockout loss to Jamie Moore to two European titles; he had three world-title shots; he was robbed of the WBA world championship by the judges in Cologne when he fought Felix Sturm; and he travelled to the US to become a headliner on HBO TV against top pound-for-pound fighters in Sergio Martinez and Gennady Golovkin.