When is a big puncher ready for boxing world titles? Pat Brown stepping up amid Moses Itauma warning

CO-OP LIVE, MANCHESTER — Boxing matchmakers will tell you it takes an uncommonly deft combination of skill and judgment to build the career of an elite prospect.

You must navigate numerous potential pitfalls between novice pro and world champion, picking the right opponents at the right time. Fights must build the right amount of confidence and experience step by step, gradually upping the level of risk while protecting your prized asset just enough so that a skeptical public doesn't call them protected.

All the while, punches with rising bad intentions are being slung from the other corner, and the challenges of public and private life outside the ring ramp up for young athletes working out how to be adults. It can sometimes feel like taking the training wheels off a bicycle while on a high wire, only no one will praise your daring. They absolutely will tell you where you went wrong if you splatter on the ground face first.

It's never an exact science, and the calculations are even more delicate when they concern the sport's most indelicate combatants. Building a fighter wth pretentions to be the heavyweight world champion can be a hiding to nothing.

Take Moses Itauma, the new prince of British boxing whose presumed coronation against Filip Hrgovic went horribly awry last month. Having flattened everyone in his path up until that point, moving through the levels from veterans such as Mike Balogun and Dillian Whyte, to outer-fringe contenders Demsey McKean and Jermaine Franklin, the 21-year-old Itauma completely dominated Hrgovic through the first half of the scheduled 12 rounds. There's an argument he won every completed session before he fell to pieces, exhausted, bedraggled and barely able to stand as the partisan crowd at London's O2 Arena gasped in horror.

The fact that Itauma had put away opponents previously presumed to be durable, like Franklin, and dropped Hrgovic as he surged clear on the cards makes it hard to claim he wasn't ready. But the manner in which he unravelled ultimately showed that he wasn't.

It's hard to know with the big men. Hard to get serious punchers the rounds they need while controlling the level of risk before that sink-or-swim night. Itauma is not alone. American heavyweight hopes Richard Torrez Jr. and Jared Anderson have also imploded on the cusp of the big time in the recent past.

MORE: Can Moses Itauma still be world champion? What's next for British heavyweight after humbling Hrgovic loss

How good is Pat Brown in boxing?

These thoughts were surely zipping through the minds of Pat Brown's handlers when another would-be British boxing hero walked out before a hometown crowd in Manchester on Saturday night. The latest test for a 26-year-old widely seen as one of the best prospects in the world.

Brown represented Great Britain at the Paris Olympic Games but always seemed more suited to the professional code. He punches with brutally bad intention. His lead left hook is a fearsome weapon. He has six fights, six wins, six KOs at cruiserweight. Former Dmitri Bivol foe Felix Valera was supposed to bring rounds on Brown's US debut earlier this year but was iced inside two. The seven completed rounds against Vasil Ducar last time out more than doubled Brown's career tally of three-minute sessions before a one-sided affair ended in the closing seconds of round eight.

There are further complications when it comes to timing Brown's ascent. The clock is ticking on how long he will be able to make the 200-pound cruiserweight limit. His trainer, the former British and European super welterweight champion Jamie Moore, believes Brown will need to step up into a wide-open heavyweight division during the second half of next year. 

Also, much like his hero Ricky Hatton – who started out at the same Sale West amateur gym as Brown – 'The Bomber' doesn't mind taking a punch to land one of his own. It's box-office stuff and one of the reasons he is such a solid ticket seller at this early stage of his career, but it's a perilous approach when you consider the power being slung around at the top end of the cruiserweight and heavyweight divisions.

This factored into Matchroom plumping for John Hedges as Brown's weekend test, keeping things inside their promotional stable. Hedges cut a confident figure during fight week, bringing his Commonwealth cruiserweight title into this battle for the vacant and coveted British crown. The 24-year-old is a rangy, skilful southpaw standing at 6ft 6ins, presenting puzzles Brown had yet to encounter. But his 12-0 record showed only three knockouts. In an ideal world for Team Brown, their man would win and look good in doing so, while the consequences of him occasionally hanging his chin out to dry would not be too dire. He'd stay upright on the high wire.

Who won John Hedges vs. Pat Brown fight?

It paints a particular picture of a fighter when they crack themselves in their own face on the way to the ring. Pat Brown is one of those fighters. He cut a menacing figure, somewhat at odds with his soulful ringwalk soundtrack of Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight and the Pips, followed by the Luther Vandross smash Never Too Much. If the boxing thing doesn't work out, you'd let Brown DJ your party.

Hedges played the villain role perfectly, emerging from the dressing room to the brooding strains of Jimmy Dean's Big Bad John. The soundtrack switched to Oasis' Live Forever, which meant all the Mancunians booing himn were suddenly duty-bound to sing along.

In the initial battle of southpaw vs. orthodox jaws, it was Hedges right-hand lead that found a more frequent home to head and body. The Commonwealth champion also caught Brown with a short left hand coming in a couple of times. The home favourite got off a meaty right with a minute to go in the first, but it was a Hedges round.

Brown found himself on the end of some long shots in round two, before responding with a clattering, winging left. The referee warned Brown for a bit of rough stuff as he burrowed in with his head.

By the third, Hedges had slowed just slightly and was loitering by the ropes a little too long. Brown moves with an assassin's detachment, a hallmark of a scary puncher, and began to measure his prey. Round five was his best of the contest at that point; the right uppercut Moore asked for ripping through Hedges' guard. Brown was happy to stand in the pocket, hit Hedges hard and dare him to respond.

In the sixth, Brown's patience was rewarded. Hedges was looking increasingly bedraggled as he tried to slip and absorb head shots, but this was a two-card trick. As his man covered up on the ropes, Brown ripped a left hook to the solar plexus. Hedges went down to his knees, gasping for air. He beat the count, but in the follow-up assault, Brown thundered in the same shot to the liver. The left hook to the body. The Manchester punch. Ricky's punch. In his celebrations, Brown pointed to the heavens. 

"Ricky would have been here," the victor said afterwards. "It's nice I finished it with a body shot for him."

It was a fitting tribute to a man who went all the way and then some, making a mockery of reasonable doubts. Brown was briefly ponderous in the face of new questions but answered them emphatically. The training wheels are off and he wants to gather speed.

Matchroom Boxing