Boxing: From Reading removals man to heavyweight champion

Michael Sprott. Does the name ring a bell? Perhaps not unless you are an anorak or aficionado, and subscribe to Boxing News. He is, in fact, the British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion, but not many people know that.

Hardly surprising, as he was, until a couple of months ago, a furniture-removals man from Reading, for so long something of a shadow boxer whose fistic excursions had been largely to emporiums such as Ponds Forge, Sheffield; the Equinox Night Club, Leicester Square; Acton Town Hall; and the Elephant and Castle Leisure Centre. Plus visits to that journeyman's theatre of dreams, York Hall, Bethnal Green.

When, eventually, he did get to Wembley it was not the historic Arena, where heavyweights such as Henry Cooper, Frank Bruno and Lennox Lewis had famously trodden the boards in pursuit of titles, but the adjoining Conference Centre. There, last January, he controversially deprived Danny Williams of his dual crowns by a single point, and life changed for Michael Sprott. Suddenly he became a somebody, opening shops and showrooms. Well, in Reading, anyway.

Saturday night sees him back on familiar territory in his home town, at the Rivermead Leisure Centre, defend-ing his titles for the first time against the also newly crowned English champion, ex-kickboxer Matt Skelton.

So who is Michael Sprott? Well, for one thing he is an awfully nice bloke, like the majority of gloved gladiators who trade in legalised violence. He is 28, a family man who dotes on his two-year-old son, Darnell, and trains in a gymnasium pitched in a friend's back garden in Maidenhead - more Parky than punch-up territory.

From there, apart from taking care of business in British boxing's nether regions, he has been on trade missions to Holland, Germany and South Africa, where three years ago he was stopped in a round by Corrie Sanders. On Saturday, five hours after Sprott fights, five thousand miles and about five million dollars away in Los Angeles, Sanders will be contesting the WBC title vacated by Lewis with the Ukrainian Vitali Klitschko.

Of his 31 bouts, Sprott has lost six, two of them to Williams before their last meeting, when the result seemed to surprise him, since his corner had told him he was four rounds behind at the start of the 10th. But that, he says, was just a "gee up".

Trainer John Bloomfield, who spent six years with Bruno and was brought in by Sprott just over two years ago, says: "Michael has really come on a bundle recently. He's a different person since he became champion. When you win a title it gives you that lift, extra confidence, and it shows in everything he does. He's much more relaxed than he used to be. He's had it all there but he's never had that confidence until now." Sprott agrees: "I feel a different fighter, even in the gym. There's a sort of spring in my step that wasn't there before."

Before becoming champion, Sprott had been mooted as a future opponent for Audley Harrison, but that seems to have gone overboard, now that the Olympic champion has decided that domestic titles no longer feature in his ambitions.

This would have brought a tidy payday for Sprott, but instead he will go in search of a European title shot as a stepping stone to one of the various world titles in the alphabetical melting pot, which this weekend features a quartet of humdrum heavyweights (Chris Byrd v Andrew Golota for the IBF title and John Ruiz v Fres Oquendo for the WBA belt) before the 38-year-old Sanders, who shocked Wladimir Klitschko, faces vengeful brother Vitali, who was so close to becoming Lewis's nemesis. This encounter, likely to be brief and brutal, is on Sky Box Office, with the British championship being shown live earlier.

Skelton presents an interesting and imposing test for the more experienced Sprott. The Bedford man, almost a decade older, is unbeaten in a dozen fights, yet remains a novice who can bang. "But I've been in with men who hit as hard as him and I can punch, too," says Sprott, who has added sports scientist Karl Halabi to his team and has been employing similar conditioning techniques to those of the enduring Evander Holyfield. He will happily discourse at length on the benefits of plyometrics, the explosive push-up routine which he claims "has increased my strength and power".

Skelton, like Sprott, is a gent out of the ring. Nice guys they may be, but neither wants to finish second. If Sprott is still standing at the end, he should be the winner, and further along the way to making a name for himself. "But whatever happens," he says, "it won't change me. At the end of the day I'll still be Michael Sprott."