‘WE DON’T avoid anybody,’ is the message coming from the Michael Matthewsian camp in the ongoing row over his cancelled bout against local star Matt Jennings 12 days ago. Stuart Gill, Matthewsian’s coach, has reacted strongly to ‘dirty-trick’ claims from Jennings’s coach Graham Guilbert and is adamant that the mysterious loss of the Southampton boxer’s medical card is genuine and the book was not being conveniently hidden by him.

Suggestions that Matthewsian ducked the Jennings bout at St Pierre Park Hotel on Friday 26 January are a joke, said Gill.

‘My lad is so strong, I’d put him in with any cruiserweight in the country.

‘We will have it [a rematch] anywhere. He [Matthewsian] has won his last 14 on the trot.

‘If it happens, it will be a cracker, an absolute war.’

Gill insists his fighter, 23 and an electrician at Southampton Docks, had every intention of fighting in Guernsey. ‘He had taken two days off work and he was as gutted as anyone.’

Matthewsian is still unable to fight as his card has yet to show up, having gone missing at St Pierre Park.

‘What happened? My personal opinion is that in looking for Jennings’s card somebody has accidentally picked up Matthewsian’s. I reckon it’s in somebody’s dinner jacket pocket.’

But what grates with Gill, an experienced coach at the Golden Ring Club in Southampton, is Guilbert’s accusations of under-hand tricks and trying to avoid the bout.

‘I’ve known Graham for a long time, but I’m not happy he called me a ﾓwhingerﾔ.

‘I wasn’t whingeing about anything.

‘My lad is an England champion.’

Gill also refuted the suggestion that a row over how many rounds and the length of them had anything to do with the cancellation.

‘Yes, we wanted four two-minute rounds, but I don’t think that really came into it.’

Gill said the trip threatened to be a disaster from the off.

He claims that he and his boxer originally understood the bout was on the Saturday night and it was not until they arrived at Gatwick Airport to fly here that they learned it was 24 hours earlier. The Englishman still had weight to lose.

Matthewsian originally weighed in at 89.6 kilos and it was expected Jennings would come in at 83.

‘Our lad needed to be down to 86.

‘In a sweat suit he skipped down to 86.1 in about an hour-and-a-half, but he said he still felt good.’

Jennings, as it happened, came in at 86.

Then the fun and games started.

Jennings’s medical card – not for the first time – had not been stamped. At that stage he could not box, as was the case last season at a Dinner Boxing Club promotion.

But Gill, a boxing registrar as well as a coach – said not to worry as he would go back to his room, get a stamp [similar to a postage one] and apply it to the Guernseyman’s card.

‘When I found out I didn’t have one, I phoned up the guy [in England] and said ﾓI haven’t got the stampﾔ.’

The message from the UK was clear. Without a stamp, Jennings was not insured and therefore could not fight.

Gill says he was alarmed and suspicious when sometime later ‘they [the Guernsey camp] came up with a stamp’.

He suspects it was not a valid one but did not look at Jennings’s card again and was happy the bout should continue.

Only then did Matthewsian’s card go missing and the word among the members was that Gill had deliberately hidden it to avoid the bout.

Guilbert was convinced that was the case last week.

‘Someone put it away and it had to be him: that’s what happened. It’s his own show this weekend and it takes 10 days to get a new card.

‘How’s he going to get one by then? It’s totally out of order.

‘I’ll never bring him [Gill] over here again.’

But Matthewsian still has not boxed since the ill-fated Guernsey trip.

‘My lad couldn’t box this [past] weekend because he still hasn’t got his book,’ Gill said.