FORMER WBO super-featherweight boxing champ Alex Arthur reckons Paul Appleby's body punching will make the difference when he defends his British featherweight title against Esham Pickering on Friday.
South Queensferry star Appleby will be making the first defence of his nine-stone crown against Newark's Pickering and Arthur has first-hand experience of both fighters.
He said: "I've sparred loads of rounds with Paul Appleby and I know Pickerin
g's style well too as I shared a Young England v Young Scotland bill with him back in our amateur days.
"I've also watched Pickering in all his major fights and, while he is deceptively strong, Appleby's left hook to the body is really powerful. "But Paul has got ensure that he is not too impetuous in the early rounds. He has to use his swarming aggression intelligently, take a couple of rounds to suss out Pickering's style then go to work with his cracking body punches.
"I agree with what Pickering said last week – that he has nowhere to go career-wise if he loses to Appleby.
"That's what makes Pickering so dangerous in the early rounds but I think, if Appleby combines early caution with his proven punching power, especially to the body, then he can stop Pickering in the later rounds."
• EDINBURGH University boxing club will stage its annual "Town v Gown" show at the Teviot Row Student's Union tomorrow.
It will be a big night for the newly-formed Stewart's Melville school boxing club as two of their fighters will fight wearing school colours in an amateur boxing competition for the first time.
Stew-Mel history teacher and former Varsity boxer Colin Currie said: "Although one of our two welterweights, Steven Brewster, has previously boxed for Leith Victoria, the other, Cameron Hunter, will be the first amateur boxer to represent the school club competitively against Edinburgh University's Ian Mack."
Brewster is due to fight the University's captain Mark Shotten.
