BOXING:WE ASKED Frank Maloney why, of all the fighters in Beijing last summer, he pinned his dreams on Darren Sutherland. We then looked across the table in DCU's Helix Theatre to the physical grace, the diamond ear stud and shaved eye brow. And thought that's why.

The bronze medal-winning middleweight, eagerly sat forward in his chair, hoping that someone would ask him a question so that he could bewitch them with his patter. A talent and a ready-made poster boy, Sutherland is Ireland's latest gift to the professional ranks.

He is the fighter who left the ring to go back to school at 20. At 22 he passed his Leaving Cert and at 26 stood on the podium in China.

Three months later he's marrying himself to pro-fighting just two years into a degree course at DCU with the one and only, the inimitable, the Peckham boy out of Irish parents and 2004 London Mayor wannabe, Maloney.

Sutherland is not afraid of change or challenge and in the middleweight division there will be plenty. Even close to home, the name Andy Lee strikes a chord.

"I'm fulfilling a lifelong dream," said the fighter casting his spell. "I'm like a sponge and I know that will help me. I'm a fast learner. I soak up information. To be the best you want to be a world champion.

"By the time the next Olympics come around. I want to be challenging for the world title. That's the sort of time frame I'm thinking."

Sutherland will start with six round fights rather than the traditional four on his own request. Already that risk-reward strategy allows him leap the formative steps of the professional game.

But there is little doubt Maloney knows what he is doing and has installed trainer Brian Lawrence to supervise the transition from top amateur to professional contender.

Maloney has produced four world champions including the top weight slugger Lennox Lewis. "Yeh, four world champions," says the impresario. "That's if you take out all the Mickey Mouse belts in which case it would be about 30."

Maloney is as unwavering about Sutherland as he is about reducing emigration, abolishing the Greater London Authority, opposition to the European Union and the legalisation of brothels.

His early years striving to be a jockey and a professional footballer as well as spending time in a catholic seminary has given him an imposing breadth of opinion about most worldly things and it's with certainty that, even at 26, he declares Sutherland can make the cross over from four rounds of point scoring to 12 round wars, which the fighter will inevitably have to endure if he is to even soar close to his firmly held ambition.

"Good fighters can make the transition. I don't think it's a problem," says the promoter.

"That the transition is done the right way is the main thing. The sparring we provide for Darren is very important. We will go where the best facilities are, where the best sparring partners are available."

For now London is that place as Sutherland prepares for his December 10th debut fight in DCU's Sports Complex, a 1,400-seater capacity venue. He faces the unknown and as yet unseen Bulgarian, Merdjitin Luseinov, in a Super middleweight contest on the under card of EBU Super Bantamweight title fight between Rendall Munroe and Farbrizio Trotta.

As an aside, Munroe is the fighter Bernard Dunne's camp are claiming is running scared and disparagingly ask why Munroe is in Dublin to fight an Italian taxi driver instead of the local boy - a moot point after the weekend, in which Dunne paid heavily for his win with a cut that will keep him out of combat until next March.

"We haven't got the tapes yet, so we haven't seen Luseinov," said Maloney.

"We'll get them this week. We don't want nobody to come in and lie down."

Sutherland has always been the amateur that the lights have caught, the attention has followed. There is an irresistible charm about his energetic chatter and there will be considerable good will pushing him forward. But from today, when he steps into the ring in his training base in London, he will know just how shallow sentiment can be.

"The four rounds in amateurs were like a sprint to me. In the gym I'd spar for an hour. They had to tell me to get out of the ring," he explains.

"Now," he says, eyes widening, "it's time to show my full repertoire of skills."