CWMBRAN’S Gary Lockett fell at the final hurdle in his quest to be a world champion as a fighter but he’s aiming to go one better as a trainer and manager.

In a superb 12-year career, Lockett won the WBU version of the middleweight world title but fell short when challenging Kelly Pavlik for the more widely recognised WBC and WBO belts in Atlantic City back in 2008.

Now, three years on, the man known as ‘the Rocket’ will be in the corner at Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena tonight as Gavin ‘the Rock’ Rees goes for the EBU European lightweight title against Andy Murray.

And the 34-year-old is convinced that Rees, his former Team Calzaghe stablemate, will soon be back challenging for world titles after a frustrating few years.

Lockett believes Rees is in better shape than when he won the WBA light-welterweight belt in 2008.

“Gavin makes the weight better, he looks after himself better and he’s a better fighter than when he won the world title,” he said.

“Gavin needs to be taken places in training that he’s going to be taken in a hard fight.

“Having been there myself I think it’s advisable to put them through it in training.

“I planted the seed in Gavin that he needed to do things a certain way.

“He’s slowed down a bit because he was like a machine gun at times and tiring himself out but it wasn’t a case of me saying ‘you’re doing this wrong’ because there isn’t a lot he was doing wrong,” he added.

“He just needed to brush up on a few technical areas and we’ll probably see on Saturday night that he’s improved in certain areas.

“Murray is well-schooled, likes to pressure, but he’s not fought anyone in Gavin’s league and I think we’ll see the guy’s character on Saturday.”

Lockett is enjoying the change of role by training his former gym-mates Rees and Bradley Pryce, as well as Lewis Rees and Pontypool’s Jeff Evans, who takes on Sheffield’s Dean Walker tonight.

“I’m only three years older than Gavin and he could have turned round and said ‘what do you know? You used to be my gym-mate’ but he didn’t,” he explained.

“It must have been awkward to have your gym-mate training you but slowly but surely I think Gavin and Bradley see that I know what I’m talking about.

“The main thing is knowing how to handle the fighter because they’re all different.

“With Gavin sometimes you need to shout a bit but if you shout at Bradley he does the opposite. “Bradley got beaten by Sergey Rabchenko and that wasn’t a very nice experience but I’m enjoying my fledgling training/management career.

“Three years ago I think Bradley would have boxed the ears off the guy,” he added.

“He showed a lot of guts and it was a relatively close fight just with a disappointing outcome.

“But I’m confident that Gavin will beat Murray and then we’ll be targeting a world title sooner rather than later.”