BOXING: This wasn't Las Vegas, Detroit, Atlantic City or Nagoya, but a step along the way. Wayne McCullough's fourth-round stoppage of Nikolai Eremeev, a brave, hitherto durable Russian, was as much as anything to do with the Irishman's reassertion of his boxing rights in the featherweight division.

It was a contest that encouraged the Belfast public to believe again, and sent a clear message of promise to promoter Frank Warren.

It was also a second rite of passage in McCullough's career, a challenge to the question of whether, at 32, he had the bite for world title challenges, if he retained the ability to pick off inferior opposition and could take one more step up in class.

Warren, prowling ringside all night like he owned the arena, felt McCullough had done enough to warrant a title fight next February, probably against a boxer from his own stable, World Boxing Organisation (WBO) featherweight champion Scott Harrison, who defeated Julio Pablo Harrison two weeks ago in his home town of Glasgow.

The other option spoken about in what has been a meteoric ascent by McCullough to world title status is WBO super-bantamweight champion Joan Guzman, from the Dominican Republic.

"There's only two directions he can go now," said the promoter. "It's either Harrison in Scotland or Guzman. That Russian was a tough, tough fighter. Now it's an open door. Over the next week or two we will talk, Wayne, Cheryl and myself. My idea would be to fight for the world title sometime in February."

For McCullough, it was a personal journey completed. The former World Boxing Association bantamweight champion had not fought in his native city since he defeated Denmark's Johnny Bredahl in December 1995. His last title fight in any location was against World Boxing Council champion Erik Morales, which went 12 rounds in 1999 before the Irishman lost on a decision. Since then there has been little.

A cyst found near McCullough's brain in a routine scan launched a two-year dispute with the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC), which refused him a licence until June of this year. The BBBC relented only when McCullough confronted them with results from stringent medical tests carried out in the University of California in Los Angeles, which indicated that the boxer's health would not be put in greater jeopardy (of suffering an intracranial haemorrhage) than normal by stepping into the ring.

Last January he KO'd Alvin Brown in Las Vegas, before beating Johannes Maisa in four rounds in London seven weeks ago. While that confirmed that his boxing faculties have not atrophied, it gives him only 10 rounds of boxing since October 1999. It raises the question whether a world title challenge in February might not come a little too soon.

"I felt a little bit rusty at the start of the fight tonight," he said, "but my timing was getting better round by round and I was getting stronger, and I knew every time I was hitting him I was hurting him. But I knew it was going to take me time to track him down.

"I'm going back to Vegas on Wednesday and think about my next move. I would love a title fight against Harrison or Guzman in the Odyssey Arena in Belfast. I'll talk to my trainer about this fight, look at it again and we'll see where we go from there."

More patient than before, McCullough nevertheless set to work at a high tempo. The Irishman threw 245 punches in one round against Luis Rosario in June 1993, but he was not about to repeat that record figure, keeping the deliveries to just over 100 a round, rising to 150 in the third.

Eremeev's body was the main target, although before the first round was out McCullough had caught him with a right uppercut to the jaw, one that - significantly - failed to rattle him. But as ever, it was McCullough's continual work that drained Eremeev.

Hunched over as he marauded about the ring, the Irishman contained himself admirably. Exhortations from ringside of "keep that chin on that chest baby" from his trainer, Kenny Croom, ensured McCullough avoided the heaviest fire coming back, all the while mercilessly working the Russian's torso, especially with his left hook.

In the third round, McCullough was rocking Eremeev with greater ferocity, and while his opponent spread his arms in a hopeless gesture of defiance following a barrage that took him across the ring and onto the ropes, the real story lay in the fighter's expression.

His face was a patchwork of smarting welts and abrasions and his back was rope-marked from retreating in the face of McCullough's toe-to-toe offensive.

Eremeev's corner could see the punishment their man was taking, and after a well-directed right uppercut connected with force they decided not to subject him to a sustained beating when they could, with dignity, end the bout there and then. The towel came in and referee Marcus McDonnell waved the fight to a close on two minutes 51 seconds in the fourth.

McCullough left the ring on the shoulders of his camp, and the logo stitched into his shorts - 2 Timothy 4 Vs 7 - indicated the train of his thoughts:

I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Marco Antonio Barrera re-asserted his standing as the world's top featherweight with a convincing points win over Johnny Tapia in Las Vegas on Saturday.