Early on Friday evening, Pat Brown sat anonymously in the crowd at a sparsely populated and chilly Planet Ice in Altrincham and surveyed the scene.

A couple of hours later Brown left his dressing room, the strains of Never Too Much by Luther Vandross filled the converted ice rink and he walked purposefully into an entirely different atmosphere.

Brown’s hotly anticipated six round professional debut was the headline attraction of the Matchroom show which was streamed globally by DAZN.

The 2024 Olympian is an unassuming character but the popular Mancunian has spent months talking about boxing rather than doing what he knows best and actually fighting. Last week the 25 year-old cruiserweight told The Ring that he was pleased to finally have the chance to justify the hype.

Argentina’s Federico Grandone, 7-5-2 (3 KOs), was the man selected to welcome Brown, 1-0 (1 KO), to professional boxing.

Much has been made of Brown’s love of a fight and his willingness to get involved but despite the partisan atmosphere and the attention, he answered the opening bell of his career and remained calm and concentrated on the basics. Brown kept his tactics simple and his punches straight and chose his moments to attack with hard hooks to head and body.

And then things changed.

The tough Grandone didn’t fold. instead, he tried to fire back and began to catch the taller Brown cleanly more and more often as the home favourite neglected his defence and looked for a finish. Time and time again, Brown would land a hard uppercut or body shot but stay upright in the pocket and eat hard counters.

The body shots were taking their toll on the Argentine, however, and early in the fourth he sagged into the ropes. Referee, Darren Sarginson, ruled that the ropes had in fact held him up and gave Grandone a count. Brown wasn’t going to let him off the hook and his follow up attack forced Sarginson to step in and stop the action 55 seconds into round four.

It was a wild debut and Brown undoubtedly got carried away by the atmosphere and occasion but after a long, drawn out build up he will be relieved to finally be active.

Last November, much was made of Brown’s popularity when he attracted around 300 fans into Manchester city centre when Matchroom held a hastily arranged event to officially announce his signing but persuading a couple of thousand people to navigate the notoriously slow M60 motorway on a Friday evening may be an even better example example of his potential drawing power.

The Brown roadshow is up and running and, with Eddie Hearn promising to keep him busy, expect it to roll into a town near you soon.

"He was in shape, he come to win, fair play," Brown said following his win.

"I wanted to start off slow and steady, but he came straight to me, he was a forward fighter, I've said before if you want to come forward with me you're in for a ding dong.

"I had me hands down a little bit, this is the first time I've fought in 10oz gloves, I train in 16oz. I felt every little inch of his head on my knuckle, I loved it.

"Every fighter has nerves, if they say they don't they're lying to you. The day I don't have nerves is the day I need to quit boxing. I want to be back in the ring as soon as possible, the next fight everyone knows what I'm going to bring to the table."