LOCAL boxer Liam Pope is bouncing back from a broken right hand and returns to the ring in Beerwah on September 9.
The super bantam weight needed tendon surgery on his elbow to repair his broken hand, caused during his loss in April this year against Erik Sokolov.
He battled bravely in the points loss to Sokolov despite breaking his hand in the third of 10 rounds.
He will now fight Mocham Sholim before another planned bout in October against the current WBC Oceania Title holder.
Pope said he could not wait to fight his Indonesian opponent in front of local fans at the Beerwah Hotel, in what will be his first home-based professional fight. “I’m super excited,” he said.
“It’s going to be a good night, there’s going to be a lot of familiar faces and hopefully I’m able to get a lot of people to come.”
“I will have a home advantage fighting at Beerwah, it’s going to be really good because I’ve never really been able to fight local professionally.
“The atmosphere and the crowd, it’s going to be crazy, and I think it’ll lift me even further so I can get the job done.”
Even though Pope is more than ready to fight the Indonesian featherweight, he was acutely aware of the uncertainty surrounding his name within the sport.
“I think more or less there’s a lot of question marks on my name at the moment in the boxing community of what happened in my recent fight,” he said.
“I want to get this fight done in a good fashion, so I can kind of put my name back out there and then finish off the year massively with the fight in October.”
Liam has had to adjust his preparation to deal with Sholim’s unique fighting style.
“Overall the preparation for this fight has been no different to any other preparation, we always put in the hard yards and do everything and anything we need to do to come in the best shape,” he said.
“I will just have to adapt and adjust; we’ve got a good game plan so I’ve just got to put it all together.”