DARREN Tetley is adamant that he will not be deterred by his underdog status in his second bout of 2023 this evening.

On short notice having only discovered his opponent last Monday, the Holme Wood star has travelled south to take on unbeaten Irish fighter Stephen McKenna at York Hall, London, with the fight commencing at 6pm on the undercard of Caroline Dubois v Magali Rodriguez on Sky Sports' BOXXER's 'Breakthrough' card.

Hennessy Promotions’ McKenna, who has 155 amateur and 13 (13-0-0) unbeaten professional fights on his record (12 of those coming by way of knockout), comes into this bout as the clear favourite, with the Bookies placing odds of 1/20 on his name, while Tetley comes in at 10/1.

However, the Bradford star (22-4-0) feels that his opponent's favouritism ahead of tonight's bout is slightly unwarranted.

He said: "If you look at his (McKenna) record then I'm the best person he's ever boxed. Everyone is saying that I'm fighting him on short notice, but I find it a bit disrespectful because he's fighting me on short notice. He hasn't had time to train properly for me either.

"Obviously, my defeats go against me in making me the underdog for this fight because some people just look at the record and say that this kid I'm fighting is unbeaten and that I've lost a couple of times. However, I don't care about that because I just want to be in the big fights, which this definitely is.

"Coming into this fight as the underdog means there's no pressure; the pressure is on him because he's the one that everyone is raving about and he's the one that is calling out all these big names. I can arrive at York Hall tomorrow night and shock every everyone, and that's what I intend to do."

Both welterweight fighters, Tetley, 30, and McKenna, 26, attended the weigh in at York Hall yesterday and things got heated between the pair of them, with the Irishman eventually pushing Tetley after words were exchanged.

However, the Bradford man admitted that he won't allow any mind games to play a part in Saturday's fight.

He said: "Nothing shocked me from the face off really other than the fact he might be slightly bigger than six-foot; he's an angry little man. Putting hands on me at the weigh-in will do nothing because I won't allow him to get in my head. I'm from Holme Wood in Bradford, so we don't get intimidated. It's going to take way more than that for him to get in my head.

"He said to me that I'm going to learn a lesson, but I'm sure it's going to be him who learns a proper lesson. I've got experience on my side and he's never fought anyone who's thrown proper punches back at him, so let's see if he can handle it."

Although Tetley discovered tonight’s opponent on short notice, he feels that it won’t present him with too much of a problem.

He said: “We’re always doing bits of training anyway, even if we don’t have a fight scheduled because that’s what we do as fighters.

“This time around, I think that the short notice is actually a positive thing because people who know me, know that I’m not the biggest fan of training anyway. So, this fight preparation was short and sharp rather than weeks and weeks of hard sessions, which made a nice change for me and the team.

“It allowed us to focus more on a certain gameplan for him (McKenna), but obviously we combined that with a focus on how I should go about the fight.”