STEVE COLLINS adopted an arrogant persona when he arrived in Cork yesterday to take part in the preliminaries for his third defence of the World Boxing Organisation super middleweight title in Millstreet on Saturday night.

Collins, normally modest didn't even wait for the preliminary introductions to the head to head press conference in the Beamish and Crawford brewery "before his "I am by far the greatest" routine was under way.

Holding up his rather gaudy world championship belt he announced that "nobody, but nobody" was going to take it from him, thereby setting up an immediate fan club for the gently smiling Neville Brown who was sitting beside his trainer and mentor Brendan Ingle from Ringsend via Sheffield. Later in a right old verbal Donnybrook Ingle gave Collins from Cabra as good as he got.

Glowering and grim, Collins continued to insist on his superiority, sparing few thoughts for the fact that Brown was at the very least, providing him with a lucrative pay day. Admitting that the defeat of Nigel Benn last Saturday in Newcastle might have dented his hopes of an even bigger pay day, Collins dismissed Benn as being unworthy of sharing a ring with him.

"I have taken them all on and I'll take the rest whether it is Benn or Malinga or Johnson or Eubank. I beat Eubank twice and he was the best. I worked for 10 years for this belt and nobody is going to take it away from me," he loudly proclaimed.

It wasn't the prettiest of sights but the tension on Collins's face and elsewhere was lessened by the affable Brown and more especially by his trainer Ingle.

Ingle insisted that there would be "fun and games" in the ring in Millstreet on Saturday night "We have the height of respect for Steve. He, is, the champion and deserves to be, but nothing is certain in the fight game. Look what happened to Nigel Benn on Saturday night last. Neville (Brown) doesn't boast about what he can do. He just does it, said Ingle Brown confirmed this with a slow smile. "I'm just an ordinary guy. I am easy going outside the ring. I don't have to brag about myself. I am British champion and I know what I have to do. I am confident that I can beat Steve," he said. "Anything can happen, but it only happens inside the ring."

This was a view confirmed by Ingle who admitted that the great advantage of being a trainer coach was "When the bell goes for the start of the fight I run down the steps."

With the ready smiles from Ingle and Brown, the supposed local hero, Collins, was losing support by the second. Not that such considerations are likely to worry him. His demeanour was not one which was likely to win him admiration but few could doubt his determination even when the hard man veneer was shed.

As he might say himself, nobody but nobody could doubt the self discipline and the single a minded application which has, brought him this far.

Inevitably the question of his, hypnotic guru, Tony Quinn, who was used to `spook' Eubank in, their previous fight in Millstreet was touched upon. Collins was surprisingly monosyllabic on this. ,Quinn would not be in his corner but their relationship had not as suggested in some quarters, been, terminated.

The word here in Cork is that after a very slow start, interest in tickets has built up gradually over, the past few days and though the excitement engendered by the first Eubank Collins fight is unlikely to be matched, the Green Glens complex will have a goodly crowd for Saturday night when nine Irish boxers will be in action.

These will include Olympic welterweight champion Michael Carruth and the European bantamweight champion Paul Griffin, both from Dublin.