If Kerry Hope’s European middleweight title win on the weekend was like something out of a Hollywood movie that’s because the Merthyr Tydfil man rewrote the script himself.

The last people to come out of South London with the ‘Solid’ moniker were a 30-man strong urban music collective that faded into obscurity as quickly as they shot to fame. Just as well Leon ‘Solid’ Williams is made of different stuff.

Hailing from the streets of Streatham, Williams has already picked himself up from three defeats to win the British cruiserweight title in his short 12-fight career – the last thing he intends to do is fade into obscurity. 

There’s an old saying about opportunity that when it knocks a man still has to get up off his seat to open the door. When opportunity came knocking for British and Commonwealth middleweight champion Martin Murray, he was already waiting on the front porch.

When your resume reads: senior amateur champion, British champion, current European titleholder, 22 fights and 22 wins; then there’s only really one office that should be reviewing it.

If you thought boxing fanatics were sitting around twiddling their thumbs in Manchester since the Pacquiao-enforced ring sabbatical of hometown hero Ricky Hatton, then you would be wrong.

One man keeping them busy is European lightweight champion John Murray. And if the old adage of history repeating itself rings true then the 30-0, hard-hitting pressure fighter will be keeping them away from home as well in the coming years.

As far as crossroads go, Timothy Bradley couldn’t be at a bigger fork in his career, even if Blazing Squad penned another chart topping hit for the metaphorical junction.

Born and raised in Palm Springs, California, his story is one of hard work, toil and little fanfare: An amateur record comprising of 140 bouts and no Olympic appearances, an unbeaten record with minimal padding, and two world titles with no features on the big lights in Vegas.

When you talk about red-hot prospects in the game, you’ll be hard pressed to find Nick Blackwell’s name bandied about. But the Wiltshire man is going out of his way to change that, one record-breaking title at a time.

Having recently lost his WBC super middleweight title in a disputable decision in Denmark against Mikkel Kessler, Carl ‘The Cobra’ Froch is a man who has to do it all the hard way again. Fighting out of Nottingham, Froch was unfortunate enough to be a young knockout kid in a division were the best fighters were hitting their twilight years.

With the heavyweight division being controlled by the not so entertaining Klitschko brothers and its most exciting asset, David Haye, unable to make a fight with the Brothers Grimm, the glamour sector of boxing once again threatens to tilt off the world map.