LONDON, ENGLAND - A British pensioner and former boxing champion beat up a knife-wielding burglar who broke into his home, leaving him battered and bruised, newspapers said Wednesday.

Frank Corti, 72, said he felt compelled to defend himself after the drunken man threatened him and his wife at their home in the village of Botley near Oxford in southern England.

"As I saw it, it was a matter of do or die. Fortunately the element of surprise was with me, so I adjusted my position and hit him with my right hand," Corti told The Times newspaper.

Gregory McCalium, who had been at an all-night party, forced his way into the pensioner's home in August last year armed with a knife after a row between the neighbours about noise levels.

McCalium, who was left with a black eye and bloodied lip, was sentenced to four and a half years in jail on Monday after the Oxford Crown Court found him guilty of aggravated burglary following a trial.

Corti, a former soldier and schoolboy feather-weight champion who was photographed in British newspapers with his collection of boxing trophies, said most people would have reacted the same way.

"I was scared when he first threw the knife, but most people would have acted in the same way," he told the Oxford Mail.

"If you can't defend what's yours, where are we at?" --AFP