A professional boxer faces jail after being convicted of assaulting a teenager outside a high street fast food restaurant.


Former marine Jimmy Mizon, punched Cameron Bowness to the ground outside Dallas Chicken and Ribs, in Sutton High Street, in the small hours of December 3 last year following an earlier fracas at nearby Revolution.


Mizon and one of Mr Bowness’s friends had been thrown out of the nightclub after tempers flared when the former middleweight boxing champion accused the reveller of pinching his girlfriend’s bum.


The 24-year-old, of Pitwood Green, Tadworth, who fights in the Queensbury Boxing League, hit Mr Bowness in the side of his face a few minutes later as he and friends made their way up the High Street to get a taxi.


Mr Bowness told Croydon Magistrates Court on Monday that an unprovoked Mizon, who had come out of the chicken shop, struck him as he turned after he became aware of  the boxer striking his friend Jonathon Wylde.


The 19-year-old, who visited accident and emergency and suffered from neck pain fro a week following the blow, stumbled back before hitting the floor.


The fighter told Croydon Magistrates Court he had acted in self defence as he felt threatened by the group of friends who he claimed had been winding him up from outside the fast food joint.


But prosecutor Michael Phillips said: "There was no violence up until you came out of the chicken shop.
"This was completely unwarranted violence."


He said: "As a disciplined boxer, you are very well aware a punch from you could result in serious injuries."


Mr Mizon told the court: " I felt my life was threatened. I reacted to a threat, I didn't know if they had tools on them.  I had a couple of digs. If I had wanted to hurt them I would have done."


His arresting officer, PC Simon Curzon, said Mr Mizon had asked him "What would you have done if they started pinching your girlfriend’s backside."


The officer said in the police van he had threatened to knock the officer out, and called him a "battyboy".


Finding Mizon guilty of assault, chairman of the bench Mrs Downs said: "The pre-emptive punch you gave was not acting in self-defence."


He will be sentenced on August 6 after pre-sentence reports are prepared.


He was cleared of assaulting Mr Wylde after he did not attend court and the crown offered no evidence.