'Nothing can describe the isolation you feel when the first bell rings'.

Byline: PAUL 'ROCKY' MARTIN

THE boxing ring is the loneliest place in the world. That may seem an odd thing to say since I've just fought in front of 400 screaming spectators with half a dozen TV cameras following my every move.

But nothing can describe the isolation you feel when the first bell rings and you see your bulging-eyed opponent tearing towards you determined to unleash hell.

No amount of training or psyching-up can ever prepare you for that.

All the screaming, cheering, booing from the blood thirsty crowd is a blur.

You only hear two things - the roar of the crowd when you hit and get hit and the voice of your trainer in the corner manically shouting out instructions: "Keep your guard up...jab, jab hook. Take him down now, take him down now!" Tonight viewers will watch me and nine other contestants enter RTE1's Lords Of The Ring - a reality TV show that puts celebrities against each other in the toughest sport of them all.

The experience has genuinely been the most gruelling, heartbreaking, exhilarating and fulfilling challenge I have ever endured.

And tonight's show will follow our first dramatic week in boot camp - climaxing in my epic battle with RTE presenter Rob Ross.

But while the cameras have been rolling on us 24/7 over the past two weeks to capture every tear and it won't reveal the whole story into the dramatic journey we have been through.

It won't show how I lay in bed unable to sleep for hours on the eve of my fight with sickly nerves swirling around my stomach and my heart racing at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour.

RAGE

It won't show my normally placid, church-going wife summoning me to my room an hour before the fight and launching into an impassioned fourlettered rage about my opponent and how, if I was a real man, I would go out there and knock seven bells out of him.

It won't show comedian Alan Short bursting into tears in his bedroom hours before taking to the ring as he realised the magnitude of potentially getting battered in front of his loved ones.

And it won't show the past two months of 6am wake-up calls, solitary five-mile runs and late nights in sweaty boxing gyms getting black eyes and bruised ribs as I attempted to get in shape for the show.

That's why boxing is probably the most misunderstood discipline on the planet.

By the time you reach the ring it's just glitz, glamour, dramatic entrances, stylish knock-outs and, in my case, a serious surplus of bravado that people see.

That's all very well but if you're not in good shape your ego will come crashing down as quickly as you hit the canvas under a crushing right hook in front of all your friends, family and 600,000 others.

My trainer Pete Taylor - dad of Ireland's female boxing sensation Katie - pulled me aside this week and told me something which summed up the mammoth challenge of entering the boxing ring.

He said: "I see it time and time again.

Everyone thinks they can fight. But when they actually have to start getting hit and do the hard work they don't want to know."

So tune in to tonight's show. It's slick, dramatic and innovative reality TV.

But when you see me pulling up in a flashy Rolls Royce don't forget the bravado and the glamour are all for show.

Because when the bell rings the only thing that can save you is two fists and one big heart.

Lords Of The Ring is on RTE1 tonight at 8.30pm.

WE'RE KNOCKOUT WHEN IT COMES TO

CAPTION(S):

PACKING A PUNCH Paul Martin lands a powerful right hook on Rob Ross RING With Tim Witherspoon, left, and above, on break