By Peter Wells: Tonight would have been big night for British fighting fans, as Darren Barker was to take on former British Middleweight champion Wayne Elcock for his own Commonwealth title and the British title which was vacated by Wayne’s last conqueror Matthew Macklin. But unfortunately Wayne Elcock was in bad shape as he had to rapidly lose weight, so he was pulled out. Luckily for Barker he is to take on Danny Butler, who has only fought two weeks ago where he has beaten by Darren McDermott.

Once again British boxing is on the rise, we all felt we could be in for a dull year, with Joe Calzaghe retiring, Ricky Hatton being dramatically knocked out by Manny Pacquiao and David Haye’s attempted fights with the Klitschko’s falling apart. Luckily we’ve came alive again, Carl Froch hit the big time, knocking out for Middleweight superstar Jermain Taylor, before entering the Super Six tournament as equal favourite and starting off by beating American hopeful. Then David Haye took on 7ft 2in giant Nikolay Valuev, and beat him for his first Heavyweight title, and Amir Khan winning the WBA Light Welterweight title off Andreas Kotelnik. Now we have the rise of Matthew Macklin, John Murray, Rendall Munroe who is on the verge of a WBC title shot and now Darren Barker. Our biggest hopefuls are defiantly Rendall Munroe and Matthew Macklin.

This is a big loss for Barker; he won’t get as much recognition beating Danny Butler as he would have beating Elcock. Still he has plenty left to offer and maybe European level is waiting around the corner. Even against Wayne Elcock I would have gone for Barker, I would have said he’d stop in about 9 rounds, but against Butler it won’t even go half way, I say Butler will be stopped on his feet after a knockdown or two in round 5.