Sheffield boxing: Bronx battler is in Barry's sights on ITV bill

Now the Sheffield boxer has been granted his wish with a 12 rounder against former world champion Joseph Agbeko at London’s Olympia as part of the Chris Eubank Jnr show on ITV Box Office.

Kid (Abdul Barry Awad) moves up to the featherweight division to face the Bronx-based Ghanaian who went the distance with Cuban great Guillermo Rigondeaux in 2013.

Awad described Agbeko, 36, as “a two-time world champion who has boxed the best” - opponents like pound for pound best Rigondeaux, Yonnhy Pere, Abner Mares and Vic Darchinyan.

“I wanted a tough test and this will be the biggest test I have had so far” said Awad. “He has been there, done that. Every fight he has been in has always been really competitive. He’s never been stopped but if I hurt him and have a chance to take him out I will.”

Awad used to command audiences of around 1.7 million on Channel 5 and said the ITV4 package should steer him towards bigger things.

“The whole bill is good, everybody on it can punch, so they could knock their opponent out or be knocked out themselves. So many fights these days are not really meaningful but you can’t keep fooling the public. People want 50-50 fights.

“There wasn’t a lot of publicity ahead of the first ITV4 show and I heard they got 600-700,000 viewers.”

The 26-year old Sheffielder, who has been getting some good sparring with Lee Selby, expects “fireworks across the whole bill.”

“There’ll be a lot of drama, I can promise you that.”

Awad has been also pleased to see Sheffield world champion Kell Brook back ín the Ingle gym. “He’s back in training, dropping weight. He needs to forget about (the prospect of fighting) Amir Khan and move on, Khan doesn’t want to fight him.”

Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn expects a Brook v Errol Spencer Jr fight to go to purse bids next week. Hearn says the mandatory challenger’s manager Al Haymon rejected his offer he made to him for a Brook-Spence fight.