Michael Patrick Brown, 25, left the man with numerous cuts and abrasions to his face, bruising and swelling above the right eye and abrasions to his chest after laying into him in a Warren street.

Brown was earlier convicted in his absence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, with fail to appear in accordance with a bail acknowledgement added to his charge sheet.

He was brought before Dubbo Local Court this month, appearing via audiovisual link from jail, where he was serving the balance of parole for another offence.

Magistrate Alexander Mijovich imposed a maximum sentence of two years of imprisonment with a non-parole period of 18 months, saying he could see no alternative than jail for the assault that was on the "extreme end of serious".

The defence accepted the threshold had been reached but submitted at the age of 25, Brown was relatively young and had reasonable prospects for rehabilitation.

He had been illiterate before he went into custody but could now read and write, the court heard.

He was engaging with therapeutic courses while serving his sentence, the defence said.

There was a plea of guilty entered for failing to appear at Warren court.

"Mr Brown has instructed me to apologise for, in his words, running away and not turning up to court," the solicitor said.

"He had been recently released on parole and the thought of going back into custody was overwhelming."

The magistrate said the facts of the assault were extremely serious.

The victim was $50 in debt to Brown's mother when Brown approached him in Lawson Street and asked for the sum of money back, documents tendered to the court by police said.

When the victim said he could not pay yet, Brown had grabbed him by the neck from behind and pushed the victim into the fence, the documents said.

Brown had grabbed the victim around the throat, the court heard.

"You punched him with a closed fist a number of times," Mr Mijovich said.

"He falls to the ground and you kick him in the head. When he rolls to the side you continue to assault him by jumping on the left side of his chest and face. Throughout the assault you were saying 'I don't care about jail, I've been in jail for murder, I'm not the type of guy to f*** with'. That's the extreme end of serious."

The sentence started on the day it was imposed with the magistrate saying there would be some overlap with Brown's other term and he would be eligible for release on August 17, 2016.