By Ronny Jordan: In recent years the UK has produced some great fighters. Throughout the 80s there was Barry Mcguigan, Lloyd Honeyghan. The 90s Naseem Hamed, Lennox Lewis, and more recently Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe plus more. All great champions of there time and will be remembered and loved by the UK public.

Apart from these few however most have fallen short at the very top level. Not always, but generally the UK has dominated the European scene but never the world. This might be changing however.

The current crop of young talent in the UK look more promising. Along with the three already holding belts, there seems to be fighter after fighter making the tricky transition from promising amateur to top professional. There’s a real serge of good UK talent at the moment of which I haven’t seen in the last 20 years.

The fighters soon to be challenging for world honors are, Nathan Cleverly, Mitchell, Kell Brook, Rendall Munroe and Matthew Macklin. There all capable or competing and winning at world level. Mitchell especially has improved so much this past year. His trainer Jimmy Tibbs has added another dimension to his impressive speed and power. In his own words he’s become a thinking fighter, and to me he now looks complete. With the up and coming Olympians all improving by the day, and also others staking there claim like Barker, Groves, O’Donnell and Murray. Can we start calling this a golden generation of UK boxers?

In addition to this, American boxing is heading towards somewhat of a slump by there own very high standards. The last 10 years has seen some of the greatest fighters in history like Jones, Mayweather, Hopkins and Winky Wright but there all heading towards the final years of there career and if truth be told Roy Jones Jr. (who I consider one of the greatest of all time) should of retired in 2008 after the Felix Trinidad fight.

Although they still have great fighters like Paul Williams, Andre Ward, Timothy Bradley and more. None of them are unbeatable. With out even mentioning America’s heavyweight scene (if you can call it that), looking through each weight division, they just haven’t got the superstars anymore. When these talented UK fighters hit there prime, they will not only be world title contenders, but also wining belts.