Denzel Bentley began 2024 as a man on a mission.

Rather than allowing the previous November’s shock 12-round decision defeat by Nathan Heaney derail his career, the Londoner instead decided that it would mark a turning point.

He took a must-win fight with former world title challenger Danny Dignum, by the scruff of the neck, dropping him three times in the two rounds the fight lasted. Three months later he walked Derrick Osaze onto a picture-perfect uppercut, scoring another dramatic second-round finish.

He ended the year by turning back the challenge of a determined Brad Pauls, winning the European middleweight title and becoming a three-time British champion in the process.

Most importantly, the win secured his position as the WBO’s number one challenger to unified WBO/IBF 160lb champion Janibek Alimkhanuly. Mission accomplished.

Bentley (21-3-1, 17 KOs) has longed for a chance to even the score with the Kazakh since dropping a decision to him in a short-notice opportunity for WBO world honours in November 2022.

Since that night, Alimkhanuly has reeled off three straightforward wins. He breezed past Steven Butler, dominated IBF champion Vincenzo Gualtieri to unify the division and most recently then took apart Australia’s Andrei Mikhailovich.

Bentley has had a harder road to the rematch but feels like the different styles he has employed this year show just how much better prepared he is for a potential return.

“I'm probably going to need all three of those styles that I used to beat Janibek,” Bentley told The Ring.

“Look at the journeys we’ve had. I think he's had three fights since me and him boxed. I've had five. My five have been very different.

“It's been ups and downs, getting back on top and grinding through and having to deal with a bit of pressure and he's just had two fights that were kind of given to him so he's probably in a lackadaisical mindset like, ‘Oh, this is easy.’

“I've had to really grind to get back in this position. I'm more hungry than ever because I know how easily it can get taken away from me. Whereas he hasn’t had any challenge.

“He hasn't really had to dig deep since he boxed me over two years ago. Is he willing to do it again? Is he willing to go through them trenches? Do you know what I mean?”

Fighters regularly say that hardship teaches them a lot about themselves and just how much they want success. Bentley has certainly had to show plenty of character over the past two years but the five fights logged since the Janibek matchup have also taught him plenty about the sport itself.

Bentley is still learning the game. He had a short amateur career and found his way into the gym after he and his brother bought some boxing gloves from a market stall and began sparring with residents from the Battersea estate they lived on.

His insistence on always taking on the toughest possible challenge meant that opportunity knocked during the bizarre, behind closed doors COVID-affected era of boxing. Since then, every single fight has had genuine repercussions for his career.

It hasn’t been plain sailing but for a fighter from Bentley’s background to have achieved as much as he has within 25 professional fights is remarkable.

Still, he believes he's only recently begun to understand the sport's intricacies and figure out being able to maximise effectiveness across all phases of a fight. He feels he's a much improved operator since the first Janibek bout, attributing that self-belief to a side of the game often overlooked from the outside looking in.

“100% and more so mentally,” he said.

“I feel like that was probably the deciding factor for myself. Physically I feel like I can do quite a bit but it was mentally being switched on. Being able to listen, implement the game plan, not fold under pressure. Being able to not fight out of my rhythm.

“I used to feel like folding under pressure meant that if someone's pressing me, I’m going to go back. But, no. If someone's pressing me I don't have to fight. I just need to find a way to get back to what was successful for me.

“I'm not going to fight to your pace, I’m going to fight to mine and feel like I know how to control that in the ring now.”