The 31-year-old beat Endry Saavedra to claim the interim belt in April before was then upgraded to his position as full champion three months later.

But, as is often the case for boxers who do not win their first world title in the ring, Bentley says the achievement was not as fulfilling as he expected.

“I’ll be honest with you, I was driving back from a meeting with Frank Warren when my manager phoned me asking if I’d checked my emails,” Bentley tells The Ring.

“I hadn’t so he told me to pull over and have a look. I quickly parked up, loaded up my emails and just like that I was world champion. Fair enough.”

That particular email meant that Londoner Bentley (22-3-1, 18 KOs) had realized the dream which was first ignited when he stepped in the gym as a teenager. The only problem was, it didn’t quite feel like it.

“Of course it’s a great achievement and it’s the very pinnacle of the sport,” he added. “But when you get to that stage it’s underwhelming. I’m thinking ‘is that it?'

“I’ve worked my whole career to get to this point and I always felt like once you achieve it, the world is yours. But you get there and realize, I’ve got the world title but there is still more work to do.

“I don’t know, maybe once I have a defense and start moving forward again I’ll appreciate it more but as of now, I’m just living my life as I did before I was champion.

“Maybe it’s because I didn’t have that moment in the ring that it feels different. I saw it that the day I beat Saavedra I won the world title, but in reality that’s not what happened.”

Instead, Bentley had to make do with an interim title as the WBO decided what to do with their champion at the time, Janibek Alimkhanuly, who was serving a year-long suspension for testing positive for banned performance-enhancing drug meldonium.

The Kazakh had already been stripped of his IBF title but the WBO inexplicably decided to keep him as champion despite the suspension. Then, in July, it was confirmed that Alimkhanyly had relinquished the title which meant elevation for Bentley.

The new champion hoped to arrange an immediate unification with Ireland’s Aaron McKenna, who won that vacant IBF title via a decision victory over Etinosa Oliha on August 8. However, the WBO have since ordered Bentley to defend his title against mandatory challenger Yoenli Hernandez (11-0, 9 KOs), The Ring’s No. 2-rated middleweight.

“We’re still working on certain things,” Bentley said of his next outing. “I’m hoping to be out in November time but the latest would be December. I’m hoping that all works out.”

On a potential unification with McKenna, he added: “Whether that happens next or not, I don’t think so now, but I think at some point, especially next year, it can definitely happen. If he wants to clean up the division like he says he does then I have to be a fight for him.

“But now, being world champion, I need it to open more doors for me to just build my profile and take me onto bigger and better things, get those unifications and become a household name.”