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Champ is set to put his Magners Cheltenham Gold Cup claims on the line in the Betfair Denman Chase at Newbury on Saturday.

The nine-year-old is among 10 entries for the Grade Two contest over three miles.

Trained by Nicky Henderson, Champ has not raced since winning the RSA Chase at Cheltenham in March due to several minor issues, but is ready to return to action.

“Nicky’s very happy with him and the plan is to run there,” said Frank Berry, racing manager to owner JP McManus.

“He’s had a few niggly problems, but he seems to be back now. Lets hope the racing is on and we get there on Saturday.

“We’ll be looking to be forward to it and hope everything goes well.

“It would be most important to get a run into him before the Gold Cup.”

Champ’s potential rivals are headed by Paul Nicholls’ dual King George VI Chase winner Clan Des Obeaux and the Colin Tizzard-trained Lostintranslation, who was third in last year’s Gold Cup.

Nicholls can also call on Secret Investor while the list is completed by Aso, Ballyoptic, Cepage, Definitly Red, Kalashnikov and The Conditional.

Altior has just five possible rivals as he bids to win the Betfair Cheltenham Free Bet Pot Builder Chase for a fourth time.

The dual Queen Mother Champion Chase hero will attempt to get back on track after being beaten by Nube Negra on his reappearance at Kempton in December.

The Alan King-trained Sceau Royal, runner-up to Altior in this race 12 months ago, is in the mix with Fanion D’Estruval, Greanateen, Magic Saint and Sky Pirate completing the sextet.

DAVE the Plasterer hurt Roberto the Fighting God in round four when the pair somehow met at a casino in South Africa. This happened, by the way. At the end of eight rounds, Roberto Duran got the decision and Yorkshire’s Dave Radford got the memories from one of the sport’s oddest nights and fights. And friendships. Duran went to the opening of Radford’s gym in Hemsworth back in 2010, 13 years after their fight.

“David can take a punch better than a horse,” Duran said. “He arrived very late for the fight and I knew nothing about him – I knew one thing: David was not scared.”

Radford looked up and smiled: “Too right, I was not bloody scared.”

Well, that was the translation at a meal one night at Bar Sport in Cannock, a night when Roberto spent 20 minutes detailing his early career knockout of a horse. It is, by the way, a complicated story of love and knockout precision, and not just a tale of a big left hook sparking a pony.

It was a pleasure to be stuck in the middle of them that night.

The story of Radford vs Duran is simple, I guess. Roberto Duran was fighting at the Carousel Casino in Gauteng, South Africa, in November 1997 on a Saturday. On the Monday, Duran needed a new opponent when PJ Goossen, his opponent, broke his ankle. Meanwhile, in Yorkshire a plasterer called Dave Radford was out at 6am on the Tuesday of that week plastering a kitchen in Pontefract.

Six weeks earlier Radford had drawn over six rounds with Danny Ryan in Belfast. That had also been short notice, a lot of Radford’s fights were short notice by that time in his career.

“I had to stop work and get home, get me gear and get over to Manchester in a hurry to start the journey – I just left the kitchen,” said Radford. “I never really had a chance to think about what I was doing or who I was fighting – I just got on my way.”

Duran was looking for his 100th win that night. He had beaten Jorge Castro in his previous fight, lost on points to Hector Camacho over 12 the previous year and just a few months later would lose a world title fight in Las Vegas to William Joppy. Radford would box just twice more.

“I got there and they treated me like a king – I had never had that,” said Radford. “It was an honour to share the ring with him and going the full distance was about all I could hope for.” At the end of the night a bottle of champagne was delivered to his suite, but Radford was in too much pain to drink it. That was a first.

It took Radford nearly 15 years to finally get a copy of the fight, a copy that he could carry on his phone to prove to people that he fought Duran. “I was getting sick and tired of telling people that I fought Duran and nobody believing me – I just show ‘em the fight now,” Radford told me at Bar Sport that night. I imagine doubting Radford’s word, basically calling him a liar, was not a smart thing to do.

“Roberto was a dirty fighter and a good dirty fighter,” added Radford, his words bringing a genuine smile to Duran’s face. “He was clever with it, but I knew that there was no chance of the referee throwing him out – I gave him back a bit of it, don’t worry about that.”

After the fight Radford needed a hernia operation, a painful reminder of Duran’s loose fists. “He hit me so hard, so hard – I never knew a man could hit like that,” added Radford with pride and looking down at Duran, whose son was whispering the translation in his ear. “I was a plasterer from Yorkshire and he was Roberto Duran, one of the greatest fighters of all time. You know what? It was a bloody good scrap.” Duran stood at that point and the pair punched their chests. I was six feet from Duran and I swear there was a tear in his eye.

Radford last fought in 1998. It was a simple and painless loss on points, his 12th loss in 28 fights.

“You have to remember that I was working and working hard full-time to put food on the table for my family,” Radford told me. “I got inside the British top 10 once and I could have stopped working and trained full-time and who knows what would have happened? But that was not me – my training? Yeah, I kept off beer for a week.”

In his retirement from the sport he had bare-knuckle fights, unlicensed fights and some under MMA rules. He fought and lost to Michael Bisping in the cage, claiming that he only went as a spectator on the night he fought him. The tale might be exaggerated slightly – so what? “He needed an opponent and I had done a bit of floor training – I was just sitting there; I took it, I would take any fight, against any man, at any time. I lost, but that don’t matter.”

He also fought Nigel Benn on the unlicensed boxing circuit in 2012; it was a real scrap, not an exhibition. Up close, Radford’s face has the history of his life in fights, puffy, raw in parts and scarred. His fists were equally formidable the night I sat with him at the Duran meal. Dave Radford was a hard, hard man.

Radford is part of a lost breed of men that just love to fight, have no fear of damage and consider it a privilege to entertain. That night in Cannock he met another lifelong bruiser. “I’m a fighter, he’s a fighter and we never wanted to stop,” he said.

Sadly, that also translates as ‘never knew when to stop.’

Patrick Mahomes had lost just one of his past 26 games as the Chiefs’ starting quarterback going into Super Bowl 55. In his three seasons at the helm, he had never experienced more than a one-possession loss, operated a touchdown-less offense or seen his team score fewer than double-digit points.

That all came to a screeching halt when Kansas City was routed by Tampa Bay 31-9 on Sunday. The Chiefs were denied a chance to repeat as Super Bowl champions and Mahomes failed to get his second consecutive ring at age 25. He was shell-shocked in his worst game as a professional and in what will go down as one of the most legendary team defensive performances in NFL history, right up there with the 1985 Bears, 2000 Ravens and 2002 Buccaneers.

What the 2020 Buccaneers did to rattle Mahomes in Super Bowl 55 would make Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks and brand-new Hall of Famer John Lynch proud. The Chiefs were kept out of the end zone while Mahomes was sacked three times and pressured a Super Bowl-record 29 times on an uncomfortable and inefficient night (26-of-49 passing, 270 yards, zero TDs, two INTs). His 5.2 yards per attempt set a personal NFL low and his 69.3 passer rating was his second-lowest single-game mark.

DeCOURCY: Mahomes’ run of sheer genius ends abruptly

“They were the better team today. They beat us pretty good. It’s the worst I’ve been beaten in a long time,” Mahomes said.

The Chiefs’ 350 yards of total offense were empty, and they were diminished further by the offense going 3 of 13 on third down and 0 for 3 in the red zone. The Chiefs did rush for 107 yards on just 17 attempts against the Bucs’ No. 1 run defense, but a good chunk of that yardage came on Mahomes’ desperate scrambles and two bursts on a single drive by rookie Clyde Edwards-Helaire. 

This wasn’t just slowing down Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense. This was an uttter beatdown, on every level. The Bucs’ defense had been building to this with strong performances against Drew Brees’ Saints in the divisional playoffs and Aaron Rodgers’ Packers in the NFC championship game. They saved their best for last against the greatest challenge of Mahomes’ Chiefs.

So how did the Buccaneers pull off what every team has failed to do against Mahomes in all of his NFL games? They simply won their battles against everyone around Mahomes and kept their foot on the gas with speed, quickness and power, doing what the Chiefs’ offense tends to do to its opponents.

BENDER: Chiefs face challenging road back to Super Bowl in loaded AFC

The Buccaneers went in with one major personnel advantage: red-hot edge pass rushers Shaquil Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul working on Chiefs backup offensive tackles Andrew Wylie and Mike Remmers. They exploited that mismatch, with Barrett getting another sack and Pierre-Paul disrupting other plays, including a batted ball.

After seeing his team drop Rodgers four times, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, one of the most frequent blitz-callers in the NFL (39 percent in the regular season), changed tendencies for a second straight game. He sent more than four rushers after Mahomes only five times. Barrett and JPP did win as expected, but as a literal massive bonus, defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh helped by turning back the clock, going Sapp-like with inside pressure to account for half of Mahomes’ sacks.

Blazing-fast second-year linebacker Devin White had another massive game flying around in coverage and getting sideline-to-sideline to make tackles. The older Lavonte David was right there with him. With the Bucs settling into zone coverage like they did against Rodgers, both looked like Brooks making big plays in the old “Tampa 2.”

Mahomes couldn’t hold the ball long with the constant heat, and when he got it out quickly on short to intermediate routes, the Bucs swarmed to the ball with sound tackling to limit the damage from wide receiver Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce after the catch. When it wasn’t White or David owning the middle of the field, it was rookie safety Antoine Winfield Jr., who channeled Lynch and joined White in the interception fun.

With all the work the front seven was doing and all the help Winfield was giving, the Buccaneers’ talented, but sometimes undisciplined, cornerbacks, Carlton Davis, Sean Murphy-Bunting and Jamel Dean, didn’t need to last long in coverage or face any real trouble downfield knowing they weren’t the last — or only — line of defense. Mahomes’ best throws came when he was on the run, scrambling to buy time, but the Buccaneers’ secondary stayed disciplined Sunday and never gave up fighting on such plays.

MORE: Winfield’s taunt of Hill was long-awaited revenge

Another factor: The Chiefs’ lack of a consistent third receiving option behind Hill and Kelce finally caught up to them. Hill saw double-teams and triple-teams, a natural correction after he destroyed mostly Davis one-on-one in Week 12 for 13 catches, 269 yards and three touchdowns. Hill couldn’t make enough contested catches Sunday and was held to seven receptions for 73 yards in the rematch. He even was followed around on shorter routes that started in the backfield. Other than Kelce, who also had key drops, catching 10 passes for 133 yards, there was no reliable outlet for Mahomes.

“They took away our deep stuff, they took away our sidelines. They did a good job of rallying to the football and making tackles,” Mahomes said of how the Bucs left the Chiefs’ offense discombobulated. “They executed at.a higher level defensively. They had a good game plan. We weren’t able to make adjustments and find our way into the end zone.”

There was no elaborate scheme or rocket science by Bowles. His best defensive players whipped the Chiefs’ makeshift offensive line, and the rest of the defense worked in unison to contain the Chiefs’ best offensive skill players. The numbers game was in the Buccaneers’ favor; they were able to drop seven in coverage and concentrate on just two threats.

Had the Buccaneers not tried to blitz so much — and gotten burned so badly — against the Chiefs in the first game, perhaps their mastery of Mahomes doesn’t happen. Had the plan to blitz less and play more zone coverage not worked so well against Rodgers, then it might have not been deployed as much against Mahomes. Had sturdy tackles Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz been protecting the edges for Mahomes without help rather than Remmers and Wylie, it might have been a different story.

MORE: Super Bowl 55 winners & losers

But everything lined up for Tampa Bay’s strengths stacking up well against the Chiefs’ weaknesses. The Buccaneers’ offense provided a big assist by building a big first-half lead and putting Mahomes and the Chiefs in predictable passing situations that took the deep ball out of the arsenal and further compressed the short passing game. The deficit also forced Reid and coordinator Eric Bieniemy to be more predictable and less creative with their play-calling.

When laying out the Buccaneers’ blueprint for an upset before Super Bowl 55, winning on third down and pressuring Mahomes into turnovers were two crucial elements. What wasn’t expected was how they would win most every matchup everywhere on the field.

When they watch the game film, Mahomes and the Chiefs won’t be frustrated most by what they weren’t able to do, but rather that, physically and mentally, the Bucs just outplayed them, led by frontline talent and fundamental coaching.

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