Garcia v Benn: Barry Jones on the Vegas welterweight showdown

Barry Jones opens with the sheer oddity of the match up. "It is a crazy fight, one I have never really seen happening," he says. Conor Benn spent his last two big nights at middleweight against Chris Eubank Jr, outdoors in packed football stadiums, and earned plenty of money doing it. Now he gets the chance to tick the last box and pick up a world title. As Barry puts it, "it is a big ask."

The first concern is the weight. "History will tell you that fighters who have moved up and come back down do not usually bode very well for them," Barry says. Benn looked good in the first Eubank fight and better in the second, but the drop back down for Regis Prograis told a different story. "He did not look as good," Barry says of that night, "not the same explosiveness, not the same movement and certainly not the same power." That was at super welterweight, a division above the one he now fights in for a world title.

Against a man with arguably the fastest hands in the sport, that matters. Barry keeps coming back to the same set of questions. "Can Conor take the shots, can he see the shots coming, can he hold the shots?" Bravery is not in doubt. "We know how tough and brave Conor can be, but let us be truthful, we still do not know how good he is because we have nothing to really gauge him on." The skill set, in Barry's view, does not look fantastic, and that makes for a hard night.

Ryan Garcia arrives with the better resume. He has beaten some genuinely good fighters, and Barry rates the world title win over Barrios as a real win. The losses to Gervonta Davis and Rolando Romero came against quality. Garcia can be hurt and he can be hit, and he can be lazy, as we have seen in the past. "But you have got to be brave to try and walk through those shots," Barry says, "and I just think his speed, his power and his confidence is enough."