A week before Brian Norman defends his WBO welterweight title against Devin Haney in Riyadh, Ekow Essuman will bid to secure his spot as the next man to challenge for the belt.

Not quite six months on from his memorable May victory over Josh Taylor in Glasgow, Essuman (22-1, 8 KOs) takes on Jack Catterall as part of The Ring’s "Unfinished Business" show headlined by Conor Benn’s rematch with Chris Eubank Jr on November 15 back at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

His upset win over home favourite Taylor moved ‘The Engine’ up to No. 3 in the WBO rankings with Alexis Rocha (25-2-1, 16 KOs), who is yet to box this year, in No. 2 just below Haney and champion Norman.

But 36-year-old Essuman believes a victory over Catterall in north London will be enough for him to secure a shot at whoever wins at ANB Arena seven nights later.

“For me, it’s win this fight and then I’m challenging for world titles in the next one,” Essuman told The Ring.

“When we were going through the terms it had to make sense in terms of my world title path and those things are being put in there.

“So I’m excited about this fight and the event as a whole. Jack Catterall is just another brick in the road that I need to kick to the side and I will kick to the side. It’s going to be a good year following on from the win in May.”

Victory over Catterall and the world title shot that could follow would represent a remarkable turnaround for Essuman, who appeared to have missed his chance to reach the pinnacle of the division. It is just under two years since he was beaten on points by Harry Scarff in Manchester and, as a 34-year-old, fully paid-up member of the 'Who Needs Him?' Club, world title opportunities in one of the sport’s glamour divisions seemed a long way off.

But a pair of 2024 victories over undefeated duo Owen Cooper and Ben Vaughan, who were both 10-0 before they ran into Essuman, set up his aforementioned shot at Taylor. Now a victory over Catterall looks likely to land him the big one.

“I remember a few years ago I was speaking to Carl Froch,” said Essuman of his fellow Nottingham native.

“He told me that people won’t ever really give you your flowers until you get put into a fight with someone who everyone, hands down, thinks is going to beat you - but then you beat them.

“So for me it was all about getting myself into one of those matches and everything will change.”

It has been a long and often arduous road for Essuman, who arrived in England from Botswana aged 11. His father, an agricultural professor, believed his children would receive a better secondary education in Britain so the family upped sticks and moved to Nottingham.

Essuman, who swapped basketball for boxing in his teens, went on to complete a degree in marketing design at Nottingham polytechnic and later became a web developer in charge of more than 40 websites.

These days, alongside his pursuit of the world welterweight championship, he runs a business called KO Interventions which uses boxing to help young people on the verge of expulsion from school get back on track. “We’ve been proven to turn around 80 per cent of the participants,” he says. “It’s about getting their energy flowing in the right areas.”

For now, the majority of Essuman’s energy is focused on Catterall, who once challenged for the undisputed junior welterweight title, and who represents arguably the toughest test of his career to date. The spoils of victory for Essuman would reflect the size of the task.

“I don’t pick who I want to fight for a world title,” he adds. “I don’t think one is more beatable than the other because your path to the world title is never clear.

“Maybe the world title will change hands while you’re on your path to it and you have to fight someone different to who you’ve expected. Then straight away you’ve lost the fight in your head.

“I leave that place blank and whoever is in that space is going to get taken out as far as I’m concerned.”