BRIGHTON, England - Look past the two protagonists in Saturday night’s main event and you will find a third man on the card who has also battled hard to emerge from beneath his fighting father’s shadow.

In his own words, Tommy Welch was ‘basically born in the gym’ given the identity of his famous dad, Scott ‘The Brighton Rock’ Welch, a world heavyweight title challenger and former British and Commonwealth champion.

But instead of his surname opening doors for him in the boxing world, heavyweight contender Welch (16-0, 9 KOs) believes he has had to battle harder for his opportunities over the course of his professional career, which started in December 2020.

“I’ve probably had the hardest career imaginable so far,” Welch tells The Ring. “Having my dad there, with the respect he has in the game, has not helped me one bit.

“I’ve begged promoters to get me out there, to give me opportunities but they haven’t ever really come. I’ve had a stop-start career but I have had to believe my time will come.

“We have done it completely off our own backs. And it's been tough. I've had a harder run and I believe that's going to give me the drive to get to that next level. I’ve had to fight and build myself more than the normal bods, I swear to God. I have had no handouts in this at all, it has cost me money and it has cost me time.”

Now 30 years old, it means Welch has now spent three decades as part of the furniture at his dad’s Brighton gym, first as a baby in the corner, then an amateur and now a pro.

“My dad says he took me there first when I was six months old and I’ve never left," he says. "He told me ‘this is your house’.

“It was tough for me. I was there with hardened kids who came from nothing. It was always like they wanted to beat me up because I was this rich kid so I had to stand up to that. When I was eight years old I was nine or 10 stone. I remember sparring a 17-year-old Albanian boy when I was 10. I used to get lickings when I was a kid.

“I had it hard and I used to leave the gym in pain. There’d be days when I’d come home and cry myself to sleep because it was tough. You grow from that.”

It was not long before Welch’s path crossed with the eldest son of Brighton’s other notable boxing family: the Eubanks. Chris Sr. cut a legendary figure in the seaside city throughout the 90s with his jodhpurs, monocle and huge truck. And, although he was initially reluctant to let his son box it was not long before Christopher Jr. would find himself in the boxing gym too.

“I’ve known Junior since I was probably 12,” Welch says. “We went to school together for a couple of years but he’s five years up from me.

“I still remember him and his name rocking around the school. I was one boxing side and he was the other. I was actually closer to his younger brother Seb and we sparred thousands of rounds together.

“But I grew up sparring Chris as well, when I was 14 and he was 19 or 20.”

Their connection, which is now nearly 20 years old, does not mean Welch will be a fully signed-up member of Team Eubank on Saturday night, however.

“Me and Conor [Benn] are good pals, too you know,” Welch says. “I’ve had Conor and Chris in my gym. Conor came down to see me long before they were even talking about fighting each other.

“They were completely different weights on completely different paths at one point and I couldn’t really imagine them ever fighting. Now they’re on their second fight and are the biggest arch-enemies in boxing.

“It can be hard for me as someone in the middle of them as I’ve got a lot of love for both of them.”

But the truth is, Welch has been unable to give Saturday night’s grudge rematch at the top of the bill too much thought as his mind is fully focused on the job at hand a few hours earlier in the same ring.

After years of calling for a major opportunity, he finally secured one in the form of this fight against Richard Riakporhe on the undercard of The Ring’s "Unfinished Business" event, which will be broadcast live on DAZN PPV.

For the first time in his career, Welch, a 10/1 underdog, has had reasonable notice of his opponent and therefore a focused ‘camp’ ahead of a fight which could ultimately change his life.

“I’ve never trained for a particular opponent,” he adds. “I’ve just trained and then got a call saying ‘right you’re fighting in two weeks’.

“So having seven or eight weeks of preparation for a particular opponent has been something I’ve been looking forward to and it has taken five years to do that. I’ve just been locked in on one face instead of training to fight an opponent which might change a week later.

“I’ve had so many ups and downs like that where you don’t know what to expect, sometimes you don’t even know if they’re southpaw or orthodox until you get in the ring. So this has been nice, I know what Riakporhe is and I’ve trained for that.

“I’ve done the work now. I’m not a gambling man but I would gamble on myself. This for me is my rocket ship to elite status. November 15, everyone will know who I am.”