A BODYBUILDER who hit a man so hard that another thought he was dead, has been jailed for two and a half years.

Robert Metcalfe had just been spurned by the victim’s fiancée when he tried to chat her up in an Old Town bar before he launched the attack.

Sentencing the 25-year-old a judge suggested the attack may have motivated by jealousy as he thought the victim not worthy of having a girlfriend as attractive as Miss Sim.

He accused him of provoking the confrontation with Nick Draycott, who was physically much smaller than him, after he had been rebuffed by Bianca Sim.

Metcalfe stood in front of Mr Draycott, blocking his way, during the incident in the Baker Street on Wood Street on Saturday, June 25 last year.

Then, when the smaller man remonstrated, he punched him repeatedly, even striking his prone body after he had fallen to the floor.

A trainee nurse who was at the scene saw the unconscious victim, who had suffered a double break to the jaw, and feared he had been killed.

The victim, whose physique the judge described as chalk and cheese compared with his attacker, was out cold for two minutes following the attack.

Metcalfe, of Paddock Close, Haydon Wick, had denied grievous bodily harm, saying he was acting in self-defence, but was convicted following a trial last month.

The court heard he had a string of previous convictions, including a racially aggravated public order offence and assaulting a police officer.

Chris Oswold, defending, said the incident took place on the spur of the moment and was not pre-planned.

He said Metcalfe is an intelligent man who had always been in work since he left school and had learned from the incident.

He said he currently has an offer of a job as a customer adviser at a bank which pays £18,500 a year but he will not be able to take it up if he is jailed.

Jailing him Recorder Michael Vere-Hodge QC said “For reasons I find difficult to understand, be it jealousy, you deliberately stood in the way in my view to try and provoke some incident with Mr Draycott.

“Whether you thought for some reason he was not worthy of having a girlfriend as attractive as Miss Sim, you blocked his way and when he remonstrated with you in a verbal sense you attacked him in a physical sense.

“Such retaliation which led to a minor injury to your face is by the by. You hit him so hard he was laid out and looked as though he was dead and you continued to punch him when he was on the floor.

“When you were seen by the police you lied about your whereabouts and how you got the injury to your face.”