Barnes' weigh-in blunder

Champion needs two attempts after bathroom scales blunder

Last updated: 4th July 2008

david barnes scales

Barnes: missed the weight

It was just one of those things. Twelve ounces is not going to charge the way I fight is it? That's just how it goes.

David Barnes
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DAVID BARNES v
BARRY MORRISON
British Light-Welterweight title
Live on Friday Fight Night
10pm, Friday, Sky Sports 1

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David Barnes needed two attempts to make the weight for his British light-welterweight defence with Barry Morrison.

The champion tipped the scales 14oz over the 140lb limit ahead of their Friday Fight Night showdown at Everton Park Sports Centre.

He disappeared for an hour and came back inside the limit, with trainer Bob Shannon blaming the slip-up on Barnes' insistence on using his own bathroom scales.

Shannon says he warned the fighter not to trust his own set but could not dissaude him and admitted that the 27-year-old Mancunian would 'have to learn the hard way' - which he did.

Skipping

But Barnes, who has largely campaigned and won a Lonsdale belt at welterweight, shrugged off the problem.

"Twelve ounces is not a lot," he told Sky Sports. "It was just a warm bath, that's all, and a little bit of skipping for 10 minutes.

"It was just one of those things. Twelve ounces is not going to charge the way I fight is it? That's just how it goes."

Morrison was comfortably inside the limit at the first time of asking.

His camp tried to suggest that Barnes' blunder would give their challenger the edge, but the man from Mothewell was quick to play it down.

"When you look at him, he looks a big guy and there doesn't look too much to lose there, so it's going to be hard," he said.

"But you can recover that in the time no problem, so I'm not looking too deep into it."