Jermain Mackey (File Photo) - Fights for Commonwealth title Saturday night

NASSAU, Bahamas, CMC – Bahamian boxer Jermain Mackey has the biggest assignment of his career to date when he tackles Michael Gbenga for the Commonwealth super-middleweight title on Saturday night.
 
The bout is a rescheduled contest that ran into trouble over a month ago when the Ghana-based Gbenga experienced visa trouble and was unable to travel for the 12-round showdown.
 
It headlines a card at the Kendal GL Isaacs National Gym and Mackey is finally getting his chance at the Commonwealth belt, an opportunity his handlers first pursued when Ghana’s Charles Adamu was champion last year.
 
"I'm ready to go. It has been a year, the hunger is still there and I'm ready and excited to get this over with,” Mackey told reporters this week.
 
Gbenga, originally from Nigeria, is relatively inexperienced as a professional, carrying a ring record of five wins (5 knockouts) against three defeats.
 
Mackey boasts a ring log of 16 wins (13 knockouts) against three losses in a career that has already earned him prestigious regional titles – the World Boxing Council’s Caribbean Boxing Federation (CABOFE) and World Boxing Association’s FedeCaribe super-middleweight belts.
 
Mackey won the CABOFE and FedeCaribe super-middleweight (168-pound) titles last year June when he stopped Trinidad and Tobago’s Kirt Sinette in two rounds of a unification contest, but lost two subsequent bouts.
 
He dropped a points decision to Karo Murat last August in Germany and was out-pointed again three months later by Reginald Taylor in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
 
Mackey, 28, rebounded to win his last bout, stopping American Jeremy Yelton in late May.
 
He suffered a slight scare in that bout -- knocked down in the first round -- before rallying from a slow start for a win by technical knockout.
 
Mackey believes he has learnt from that experience and will start more positively now with a title at stake
 
"I'm not going to start slow like my last fight, I'm going to keep the pressure on, be aggressive from the start and give it my best," he said.

CMC lw/08