Tipton’s Ricky Summers will be looking to make it third time lucky on two counts when he gets another chance at the ABA title in the semi-finals.

The 22-year-old, who competes for the Lions Amateur Boxing Club in Dudley, has twice been eliminated from this year’s tournament but, after both of the fighters who beat him pulled out injured, has been called into the last four.

And the man who stands in between Summers and the final, Michael Watson, already holds two victories over him.

Summers lost to Watson on a cut to his eye on his home show, then was outpointed by the South Durham ABC fighter away from the Black Country.

Now the two will square off for a third time at the Everton Park Sports Centre in Merseyside tomorrow and the winner will be one fight away from the light heavyweight title.

But Summers will not be able to call upon his usual trainer, Bob Dillon, who is away working as the high performance coach with the Great Britain squad in the Ukraine.

So the Lions fighter will instead take advice from John Shakespeare, who himself reached the 1987 ABA final at super heavyweight.

The club have never had a senior ABA champion and Shakespeare is hoping their semi-finalist can go one better than he did 24 years ago.

He said: “Ricky realises the chance he has been given and has put the extra work in, he’s trained really hard and has done loads of sparring.

“We have been working on his feet, because he has been pushing into distance, hitting the guy and never pulling back out, that’s when he has been getting caught and giving silly points away.

“Let’s just hope, fingers crossed, it pays off for him and he can do it this time, then go all the way and win it.

“We work as a team here, we have all put our pound of flesh in and we all share the glory.”

Dudley’s Shakespeare admits the heartbreak of missing out on an ABA title still rankles with him to his day.

The 48-year-old did lose to a future British heavyweight champion, the late James Oyebola, who claimed his second ABA title that night.

But tragedy befell Oyebola in 2007, when he was shot dead outside a nightclub in London.

Shakespeare still remembers vividly with a good fighter Oyebola was and he had beaten some formidable opponents to get to the Londoner, including knocking out Derby’s former European title challenger and now promoter Clifton Mitchell in the Midlands final.

The Lions coach said: “The chap who I lost to was 6ft 9ins and, obviously, there was no sparring partners around that tall, so it was pretty awkward to do on the day.

“But, in the third round, I was coming out on top and, to this day, I still say if the fight had gone one more round I could have won it.

“Fair play to the lad, though, he actually congratulated me on going the distance with him after the fight.

“No one had done that with him before.”