Liam Dillon has expressed his delight at obtaining the BBBofC Southern Area super-featherweight title at the first attempt, and the first title of his promising career.

The 23-year-old was victorious over David Birmingham earlier in the month at Bethnal Green’s York Hall, and the Chingford fighter has spoken of his ‘relief’ following the win.

Dillon said: “As soon as the ref jumped in I remember just looking at my coach; he came into the ring and we gave each other a big hug.

“A lot of it was relief as it was over but it was also just the ‘I’ve done it!’ kind of feeling.”

Dillon has been extremely grateful towards his experienced coaching duo of Steve and Bob Kipps throughout his career, and that was no different after this fight, which was his ninth successive win.

He said: “I couldn’t have done it without them at all. I don’t think any other coaches could have got me to that level. They’ve been very supportive and even in the build-up, when nerves really started to kick in a week or so before, they kept me straight and kept me motivated. They’ve been brilliant.

“Nerves really kicked in about a week before and I was thinking ‘am I even good enough to do this kind of thing?’. My coaches just motivated me fully, saying things like ‘you can do this’ and ‘I wouldn’t put you in here if I didn’t think there was a chance you could win this’ so I think they were brilliant. It was as massive a deal to them as it was to me.”

Dillon won the fight against 37-year-old Birmingham by TKO in the seventh round of the 10-round bout, and he says the fight went almost exactly how his team had pictured it.

He said: “It went mostly how my coach said it would go. I was thinking more when I got in there whether I would struggle with my work rate or my strength, but everything that happened, my coach told me in the build-up would happen.

“He said ‘he’s going to come at you’, ‘he isn’t going to deal with your strength’ and ‘your work rate is going to be too much for him, I can see you stopping him in the later rounds’ – that’s exactly what he said to me so it definitely went as he expected.

Dillon had previously spoken about the atmosphere he expected at the fight, with both he and Birmingham selling record numbers of tickets for any of their bouts.

He said: “He [Birmingham] went all out with his selling so I knew he’d brought a lot of people. I sold over 150 tickets by the end and that’s the most I’ve done by quite a long shot.

“I walked out there and it really did kick in. The atmosphere was brilliant; the best I’ve fought in, so when I got the stoppage winner it was brilliant.

“The stoppage was in the seventh round and up until then it had been a very good, toe-to-toe fight. I was told I was ahead on the scorecards going into the seventh round but I saw the opportunity to get him out of there and I felt fit, I felt strong. I was struggling or feeling tired.”

While there is nothing firmly in the pipeline yet, Dillon says there have been talks about when the next fight could potentially be, but for now he is just focussed on resting up before slowly getting back into it.

He said: “I normally have about a week off after a fight to rest up because you do ache a lot after, but I can’t really stay away from it long or I’ll miss it too much!

“There are talks about when the next fight is going to be but nothing is official yet. We are looking at a defence, hopefully in the summer, but nothing is set yet.”