DENNIS MCCANN will box his first ever eight rounder next month when he steps up in class and faces Pedro Matos.
The brilliant bantamweight prospect will tackle his Portuguese rival on Frank Warren’s triple title bill at BT Sport studio on Saturday October 10.
Unbeaten McCann, made it seven wins out of seven as a professional last month when he became only the second man to stop 82-fight veteran Brett Fidoe.
And the Maidstone traveller is more than confident that his eighth professional win will follow in his second fight behind closed doors.
It will be the third consecutive fight in Britain for Matos who performed well against Sunny Edwards and Quaise Khademi in title contests.
McCann, 19, who was boosted by a recent Facetime call from Naseem Hamed, the man many compare him with, has stopped five of his professional opponents and is confident of adding Matos to the list.
‘Dennis The Menace’ said: “This year has been very big one for me and I will do the exact same thing against better opposition as what I’ve been doing to most opponents.
“I will be putting them to sleep, never mind just stopping them. I believe Matos will be going that way.
“You either have it or you don’t although you have to live the life and be dedicated. The best like Canelo Alvarez, Terence Crawford and Vasyl Lomachenko were born with that talent.
“The elite fighters are born with it and I was also 100 per-cent, for sure.”
Matos (7-3, 1 KO) was stopped on his feet in round eight when he challenged Edwards for the WBO European Super-Flyweight championship at Wembley Arena in April 2019.
The Lisbon man returned to London last December when he met Khademi for the same belt, but lost a close unanimous decision although he believed he did enough to win at the final bell.
Hall of Fame promoter Warren said: “The L plates are starting to be torn away from Dennis and he is moving on to the next stage of his career.
“Matos will fight with ambition and for a teenager to be taking a solid European opponent says a lot about the belief we have in Dennis.
“There are a lot of great young boxers around the world with the same aspirations as Dennis, but I can’t think of many prospects who have had less than ten fights as good as him.”
Heading the show is Welsh ace Liam Williams who defends his British Middleweight crown against mandatory challenger Andrew Robinson.
Belfast’s Anthony Cacace makes the first defence of his British Super-Featherweight championship against Leicester’s Leon Woodstock.
Nathan Gorman returns to action in a Commonwealth Title Eliminator against Ghana’s Richard Lartey.
Liverpool’s James Metcalf is back in action and risks his Commonwealth Super-Welterweight title against Bolton’s Jack Flatley.
Elsewhere, Mark Chamberlain looks to keep his unbeaten record and Bexley Welterweight Micky Burke bids for his fourth win since turning professional last year.