Co-founder of Hayemaker Boxing, Adam Booth, recently took time to speak to NathanCleverly.co.uk and the world title winning trainer believes that for WBO light-heavyweight champion Cleverly to defeat Tony Bellew, the Welshman must be 100% focused.

The highly anticipated battle of Britain is just around the corner in Liverpool’s Echo Arena and Booth has seen Cleverly closer than most in the build up to the fight with Cleverly sparring British and Commonwealth super-middleweight champion George Groves who’s trained by Booth.

“I think it’ll be a lot closer than people think, I’ve said to Nathan that it’s a hard fight, there has to be 100% focus. It is one thing have a world title belt and calling yourself a world champion. It’s another thing actually being a world champion, having that resolve deep inside, the determination, the discipline and the drive when the challenger is trying to break it out of you”, dissected Booth.

Despite the warning, Booth is confident Cleverly has the characteristics to be a successful champion. He said, “You have to think like a champion and not just walk around like a champion because you’ve got a belt. Nathan certainly has the determination of a champion.”

Despite being a relatively young trainer, Booth has been involved in some boxing’s most high profile events on a British and world scale and in that time he’s seen numerous bad blooded bouts. The atmosphere surrounding many of those bouts has been similar to the one around Cleverly-Bellew, but Booth believes a dislike to an opponent can be a benefit.

Booth explain his thoughts, “When there is genuine needle in a fight it helps to train a guy because there’s a natural motivation for the focus of the work. It’s like sometimes you’re boxing in a few weeks and you don’t know the person but where there’s dislike you can call upon that to motivate training. When they don’t like an opponent it’s easier for them to be motivated.”

Unpleasant pre-fight build ups that Booth has involved in, such as George Groves v James DeGale in May, have been in danger of spilling over but the Londoner has been successful in harnessing the hostility of his fighters to avoid the potential negatives.

He described the dangers, “The flip side of that is that you may let the feelings towards the person get in the way on fight night. On fight night the opponent has to be anonymous, you can use your dislike for them in training to motivate because training is hard and you get tired and you don’t want to train, come fight night you’ve got to ignore that and you’ve got to stick to your game plan.”

So far in Booth’s short career his most impressive achievements are taking David Haye from his amateur days to an English title, European title and four world titles in two different weight classes. There are similarities in what father Vince Cleverly and Alan Davies have done and plan to continue to do with son Nathan.

“I’ve always been an advocate of the fact that to get the best out of somebody you have to know the person as much as possible, you have to know what makes them tick. That’s why some long standing relationships have been successful like Vince and Nathan, me and David, Billy Graham and Ricky Hatton although Ricky left very late into his career, Ezo and Joe Calzaghe, there’s the Mayweather’s too. There’s a lot of evidence that knowing a person inside out means you can get the best out of them”

It was recently announced that the first defence of George Groves’s British and Commonwealth titles will be against Liverpool’s former champion, Paul Smith and Booth thinks Cleverly was the ideal man to get Groves back in to the swing of training.

He elaborated, “George has just come back to the gym and the first sparring he’s had is with Nathan Cleverly so it’s been a rude awakening for him. He’s been getting a bit soft over the last couple of months since he beat DeGale and it’s the perfect wake up call to have Nathan round after round.”

Although Cleverly is further ahead in his training camp than Groves, he’s still been exercising his full skill set in sparring. Booth stated, “Of course I’m happy with how sparring has gone. Nathan’s put a lot of pressure on George so George has had to develop other aspects of his game. Nathan’s got a great engine and he’s obviously got a big will to win, a drive to win and he pressures very well. He makes you work when you necessarily don’t want to work and he goes very well to the body.”