The featherweight won the bout but broke his nose and admitted continuing to fight while struggling to breathe taught him a lot about his resilience in the ring.

He told Boxing News magazine: “Breaking my nose like that, and fighting on through it from the third round when I could hardly breathe – now I know I can do that.

“I will fight better fighters but I don’t believe I’ll ever be in a harder fight.”

Ten days after the fight, Nathaniel was hospitalised with abdominal pain and required life-saving surgery to remove gastric adhesions, which led to a frustrating recovery.

He said: “The doctors knew what I did for a living.

“They told me that I couldn’t train at all at first. No weights, nothing.

“Then, as time went on, I was allowed to run, then eventually to start training… but it took ages.”

And as his recovery progressed, the boxer’s deviated septum from the break began to hamper his performance, so he underwent an operation in October, which proved an even tougher fight back.

He said: “It was painful for so long. Weeks.

“Then, when I started back at the gym, it was sore after every session.

“Then it slowly started to get better.

“Now, it’s back to how it was before the break.”