David Avanesyan's trainer warns Sunderland's Josh Kelly off fighting Russian for European title

Nottinghamshire-based Greaves gave his thoughts to IFL TV on Kelly and a potential fight between the two in the future.

Avanesyan won the European welterweight title in March, upsetting the odds to hand unbeaten Spaniard Kerman Lejarraga a TKO loss in Bilbao, Spain.

This came after Kelly was forced to pull out of a fight with Avanesyan with illness. The pair had slated on the Kell Brook undercard in Sheffield back in December.

Kelly moved to nine wins out of nine at the weekend beating Polish boxer Przemysław Runowski via a points decision, however his performance drew criticism.

Giving his thoughts on Kelly, Greaves said: “David is a risky fight for Josh style wise as well, I mean Josh is good , he’s got the ability, skills, flash, got the combination’s but fights in bursts and you can’t be doing that with the likes of David.

“His defence isn’t the best either Josh’s and David can punch, he’s solid, he’s strong, so i think they knew that deep down and it’s a bit too early for Josh Kelly, the likes of David.

Kelly was this week named mandatory for Avanesyan’ belt by the EBU and Greaves gave his thoughts on the potential clash: “It’s a fight that can happen, I'm not ruling it out, he’s obviously been made mandatory for the European title.

“We’ve got to get round this rematch (with Lejarraga), but as far as i’m aware he’s been made mandatory, so we are going to have to look at that situation and I don’t know how it’s going to pan out.”

He added: “We were very very disappointed that night in Sheffield just before Christmas, I’d had David over for six weeks from Russia, spent a lot of money on the camp, he took very little money back with him.

“To do it on the day of the fight when Adam Booth came to the rules meeting it just stinks really, but listen they’ve got their reasons and we wasn’t happy about it and if it happens again so be it but were not going to chase that fight after what he did to us last time.”