When Diego Pacheco’s parents left Mexico for America, they did so in pursuit of a better life for their family.

They struggled, sacrificed and worked tirelessly to give their son opportunities they never had. Now, at 25, Pacheco is on the brink of becoming a world champion, and he knows exactly who he wants to repay.

The unbeaten super-middleweight has come a long way from the streets of South Central LA. But he hasn’t forgotten where he came from, or what it took to get here.

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Now 26-0 (19 KOs), he is the headline act at the War Grounds in Carson on Saturday night. He tops the Matchroom bill while sitting in a strong position in the world rankings: No. 2 with the WBO, No. 3 with the WBC, No. 5 with the WBA and No. 13 with the IBF. But he’s achieved a lot to make it this far. Plenty of his friends from his old neighbourhood have not made it.

“I was born and raised in South Central LA, and my first six years in this world, I lived in some apartments where it was horrible, man,” Pacheco tells me. “Like, I remember we had close family friends who lived there as well. And they were gangbangers. I remember a few times looking out my window and seeing guys shot, coming running into the apartment complex, bleeding out because they just got shot around the corner… people getting killed, murder scenes, all types of things that I saw in those apartment buildings that really, really honestly, made me realise what I was around. And I remember as a kid, I always wanted to be outside playing with the neighbourhood kids. And my mom [Maria], she was like, ‘No, I don’t want you out there.’ But then my mom would go to work and I had to go out there on my own.”

Diego was a big kid. By 13, he was 6ft tall, which meant he wound up in altercations with older teenagers, but soon enough he started hanging out with them.

“I didn’t want to back down, no matter how much older they were than me or bigger, whatever, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to back down and I was going to fight,” Pacheco added.

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“And that’s where the fighter mentality came from for me, I would say. And transferring it to the boxing gym was something that was very easy for me. I remember as a young kid, everyone would tell my dad [Federico] that I was very gifted. You don’t see Mexican kids this tall who can move, who can fight, who have good rhythm, who have good athleticism.”

With that, Pacheco’s father tried to explain to his boy that he was different, while teaching him to remain humble and work hard to get the best out of his physical attributes. Now Diego tries to give back, but knows all too well the risks posed by the streets.

“I have friends that to this day, they call me from prison, and it’s just things that are unfortunate,” Pacheco said. “And there’s some friends that I wish were still here, and it’s just, it’s life, man. And we can’t sit there and just feel bad, we have to keep going.

“I lost my brother two years ago [Manuel was born with a rare genetic condition that ultimately claimed his life] and that’s something that hurt me a lot. And it’s something that’s crazy because it helped me get even closer with my wife [Jo]. When I went through that, she was there for me. And then a couple of months later, her grandma passed away and I was there for her. There’s just things that happen in life that just bring us closer together to the people we love.”

**

As far up the ladder as Diego has climbed, he contends the altitude is no different. Fighting is in his blood, so regardless of the platform, the venue, the opponent or the stakes, he feels the same way.

“This is boxing. People ask me all the time, like, ‘How do you feel going into this fight?’ Things like that. And I just say, ‘Man, I’ve been doing this my whole life. I remember as a kid, being 12 years old, getting ready to go to national tournaments and knowing I was going to face the best, knowing I was going to go up against the toughest guys in the whole country.

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“And I think my confidence always came from my dad. I remember as a kid, me being so tall at a young age, a lot of people in the gyms would think my dad would lie about my age.

“And I’ve always had a mature personality. All the kids my age, I wasn’t doing what they were doing. My dad always tried to keep me focused, tried to teach me the bigger picture of life. And I’ve always been the same way.”

It is Pacheco’s desire to make his father proud that has helped keep him on course.

“It all came from the way I was raised,” he said.

Despite coming from what he calls “a low-income home”, where his parents struggled to pay rent, seeing them discriminated against and fighting to give him a better life proved to be the inspiration for him to stay on the right path, and also to contribute to building a better life for the family.

When it came to boxing, his father gave him the self-belief and motivation he needed to fight older kids, bigger foes and more experienced opponents.

“I’ve been a winner since I was a kid. I remember the first national tournament, my dad had to raise funds for me to be able to get to the tournament,” Diego stated. “Because these things are expensive. And I remember him telling me like, ‘Okay, I’m about to go in debt for this. But you got to go over there and you got to win. Like, you never have to come back a loser.’

“I was like, ‘Oh shit, my dad didn’t just sacrifice all this money, he didn’t just go into debt for me to go over there and lose.’

“Our first day, I draw the guy who won the previous year, the national champion. So I’m like, ‘Oh shit, okay. I get through him, I’m good.’

“I went to work, I beat him. And then I became a national champion. That’s where it came from. My dad getting me to believe in myself.”

That belief comes through in Pacheco’s work today. He’s easy to talk to. As we converse over Zoom, there is no apparent time limit, nothing he won’t discuss, and he’s talkative. Too few make it this easy, but he has a story to tell and he wants people to know how much gratitude he feels he owes his parents.

As positive as his story might be, Pacheco has been something of a lightning rod for negativity online. There have been opportunities to fight Hamzah Sheeraz and Christian Mbilli, but Pacheco has walked a path that’s attracted derision in some quarters.

Asked how he thinks the fans feel about him, he pauses to consider a response.

“Ah, man, it’s hard, honestly,” he replied, half-smiling. “That’s a really hard question. I feel like a lot of boxing fans, a lot of boxing fans, I feel want to see me lose. I feel like they… I don’t know, man. I just feel like a lot of people think that I had it real sweet, that I had a great upbringing, that they’re like, ‘Yeah, you have two lovely parents. They raised you well.’ Some even say I went to private school, which is not true. But I don’t know why I come off as that. I guess because I just try to be a good guy to everyone. But growing up, I had to do a lot of things on my own. I had my parents who were there, but they had to work a lot.

“They lived cheque to cheque trying to make ends meet. Sometimes it was hard for them to be there for us… And I feel like boxing fans see me as a good fighter who was young, who hasn’t proved himself yet because I haven’t faced the top guys. But I’m on my way there. Come November 14th, at this level now, I feel every fight is dangerous, and Darius is a great fighter. That’s why he’s in there with me.”

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The goal, of course, extends far beyond 15-1-1 (13 KOs) Texan Darius Fulghum this weekend.

It is world titles, but Pacheco knows the sport intricately and there have been reasons behind his patience in reaching the top. There are reasons why he has not rushed things and why bouts against Mbilli and Sheeraz have not been the right ones at the right times.

“I feel like a couple of years ago, I did have some things that I wanted to prove to myself,” he said, referring to his desire to become a better fighter before reaching the top.

That included changing up the team, through both addition and subtraction.

“But now that’s all cleared up. I know what I can do. Just having a great trainer in your corner can change everything, and when you have someone who has been there before and he knows what he’s talking about, it’s just amazing. The things Buddy McGirt has been teaching me in the gym, and it goes beyond just the boxing stuff, the mental stuff, knowing how to handle certain situations and the way you react to certain things. I know I’m ready now. That’s all I’ll say.”

Diego Pacheco says Hall of Fame fighter and trainer Buddy McGirt was the missing link. After Fulghum, Pacheco wants the biggest fights possible. Those are his words. And he doesn’t mind admitting he needed “a lot” from Buddy, whether it was mentally, physically or tactically.

With Diego’s brother having passed away two years ago, there have been scars. Then, while living and training in Seattle – where he spent the best part of five years before moving back to LA – he was working with David Benavidez. But “The Monster” was often in Florida, and that meant former head coach Benavidez Snr was spending a lot of time in Miami, too.

Pacheco knew things would not work out like that. He grew frustrated, wasn’t happy, and felt he needed to return to Los Angeles to be closer to his parents, who were growing older.

“I had to build my team from scratch, because another thing being over there in Seattle, it’s like I was Team Benavidez, I wasn’t Team Pacheco,” he explained. “Every time people talked about me, every time I was brought up, it was Team Benavidez, Team Benavidez. So it was time for me to become my own man and really make my own team.”

But there was no rush, internally at least. The fans might not have known, but with Pacheco’s head all over the place, he wanted to know he was ready for an acid test, and that wouldn’t have been the case as long as he felt so unsettled.

He also knew there were things missing from his skill set, which is not a good thing to have in your mind going into world title fights.

“I’ve never had a trainer like Buddy McGirt, man,” he added. “I feel like in these six months that I’ve been with him, I’ve learned more with him than I’ve had my whole 15 years boxing with every boxing coach I’ve ever had. So in the back of my mind, like, and you hear the media, you see all these things, and I remember a couple of fights, I’d be confused and just like, I’d be dominating so good, winning every round. And then my coach would want me to go in there and knock him [the opponent] out. And it’s like, ‘I don’t know.’

“It was just something that was confusing me. It was a lot of things that I know I needed to change. And now I did. I have a new management team. I have a new training team. And now we’re here. I feel like sky’s the limit here.”

Fans are quick to use hard and heavy words in the fight game. Duck, quitter et al are part of a keyboard warrior’s go-to word sets. While Pacheco might be better served talking all things Fulghum, I ask him to explain why he did not fight Sheeraz or Mbilli. He says people will refuse to understand why they were not the right steps for him.

“I know that people just don’t understand that, people aren’t in the boxing business,” Pacheco said. “They’re looking from the outside, looking in, like they don’t know what’s really going on behind closed doors, man. And I’ll be honest, I’ve had to go through a lot of things where I’ve learned, when it comes to contracts, when it comes to negotiating, when it comes to building fights, there’s a lot of things that I’ve learned that I didn’t even know a couple of years ago and it’s all about having a good management team. I feel like that’s everything. The team that I have now, they want the best for me. They’re getting me everything that they possibly could. And I feel like my management before that was like the complete opposite, bro. Like they didn’t want me to get more money. They wanted me to actually take less and keep building to stay hungry, which was like, to me, ‘Bro, I got a family to feed. I got people that depend on me. Like you want me to take these harder fights and take less money. It doesn’t make any sense.’”

Pacheco said he was being smart and looking out for himself.

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When it came to Mbilli, Pacheco would have been the B-side and gone to Canada, aged 23 and with the odds against him. His wife was pregnant with their daughter.

“I don’t mind going to Canada. Let’s do it. I don’t mind being a B-side, but just make sure I’m taken care of,” he said. “I’m not here to just say yes to everything.”

Mbilli went on to win the WBC title but lost it last month to Canelo in Saudi Arabia.

Pacheco hopes a win over Fulghum will lead to a Hamzah Sheeraz- or Lester Martinez-type fight in May, with Canelo or Jaime Munguia in September.

“That would do me. I think those two guys are the biggest names in boxing and will make the biggest fight,” he said. “So yeah, those are the guys I would want to fight.”

“I would love to get in there with Canelo. He’s a great fighter. I actually got to spar with him when I was 18 years old and it was great work. I know I gave him great work. And now that I’m 25, I know it’ll be a lot different. So, God willing, one day he gives me the opportunity, then we go to work and come for the win for sure.”

Now, Pacheco says he is the captain of his own ship and making the final calls on every move. He didn’t feel that was always the case.

And he’s in a position to reap the rewards of his parents’ choices, and to pay it back to them so they can see his future glory and benefit from it. He has also made his own tough choices, as his parents had to when they left Mexico all those years ago.

“This is honestly the dream, man. Like, and to just fuck it up because I have to say yes to someone?” Pacheco asked.

“Like, no. Who’s going to take care of my daughter? Who’s going to make sure my parents are good now that they’re older? Nobody. So it’s all up to me. And I have to make sure I play my cards right. I have to make sure I’m smart about every decision I make, even outside of boxing. This is something I deal with every day… I just try to be smart every day. Everything I do, I try to calculate it perfectly and make sure that everything falls into place.”

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There is a chance that the former fighter-turned-promoter Dmitry Salita doesn’t like what he hears during his next show tonight.

Because a familiar voice will be providing the soundtrack, and it won’t matter if Salita’s prospects win or lose, what Teddy Atlas thinks about them – returning to the live mic for the first time since parting company with ESPN – is what he will say about them.

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Teddy Atlas: The last witness

Saying it like it is has been Atlas’s modus operandi as both a coach and an analyst.

It’s got him in hot water at times, but he’s always been able to take the heat.

He does, of course, have his own podcast and YouTube channel, The Fight with Teddy Atlas, where he breaks down present-day contests in boxing and MMA.

And when we spoke recently, he and his son were looking for premises in Brooklyn to open a boxing gym.

“We think we saw one that is right off the Tijuana Highway, the BQE [Brooklyn-Queens Expressway]. And it’s got a lot of cars that see it every day. And there’s a lot of good stores in the building,” Teddy said.

But he makes his return to the broadcast booth on Saturday, ready to do what he always does.

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The truth has two sides, but Atlas only likes one

“See, the way I looked at it was the truth,” Atlas says of his job calling the action. “The truth has two sides to it. But I like the one side to it.

“It’s the truth. And at the end of the day, you can play with it all you want. But at the end of the day, people aren’t stupid. And the thing that kept Friday Night Fights [on ESPN] going for 18 years straight – and I was the only original one that was still there at the end – was that I’d go on the air and if it was a crappy show, I said, ‘This is gonna be a crappy show.’ And the people would come back because they said, ‘Well, yeah, I don’t like a crappy show, but at least Teddy told me it’s a crappy show. You know what? I’m gonna stay with him. And if he tells me it’s a good show, I’m gonna call my friends and say, hey, this is gonna be a good show. Because Teddy actually validated it.’

“So there’s worth. I remember the executives at that time, I had so much power at ESPN it was ridiculous. And I never used it, but I had it. Well, I did use it. I saved a few people’s jobs, but I used it in that way which I thought was a blessing.”

What wasn’t a blessing was Atlas’s exit, even though many an executive had told him that he gave “validation to our brand”.

They didn’t see his criticism as biting the hand that fed him. They felt it came from a place of honesty and experience. They paid for the authenticity. And now, of course, boxing is all Teddy has ever really known.

“I’m a lifer. I painted one house. That’s all I ever did other than boxing my whole life,” he added.

“I painted it really well. There’s a lot of shit to it [boxing]. But the special thing is two men getting in the ring. That’s honest. That’s honest. And I always felt like I had an obligation to that, to just tell it the way it was. I had an obligation to the guys that bleed in the ring and to guys that were really dedicated to the sport and for what it’s supposed to be, that I had an obligation to always shoot it the right way, you know? And not be compromised.”

A voice for those who couldn't speak for themselves

“I always felt like when I signed a contract, a new contract, whatever, I said, what comes with this that’s not in the contract that to me is worth more than the money is that it gives me a platform, an opportunity to try to make the sport a little better. I’m no angel. I’m far from it. But if you can do that, if you can be blessed where you could also, besides making a living, you can make the sport a little better, you could protect the guys that really need protection, the fighters. If you could do that, then that’s a gift. That’s really, truly icing on the cake, and even more so. So I always looked at it that way. And most people I work with, I’ll be honest, when I would see something that was controversial, they would hide under the table. I mean, almost literally.

“People used to laugh. They said, ‘Your partner was like moving himself away from you.’

“I said, ‘Yeah, I know.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with that guy.’

“And they laughed.

“They say, ‘Oh no, you wouldn’t.’

“’But we’d like to be in a foxhole with you.’

“I said, ‘I don’t want to be in a foxhole. But if I am, I know how to behave. I know what I’m not going to do.’

“And they would distance themselves safely.”

There would appear to be only a slender place in the market for Teddy’s kind of truth in 2026, but thankfully Salita has opened the door. For Atlas, though, there are other battles that have shaped him, and some of them have little to do with what happens inside a boxing ring.

“The fighters would come up to me years later and say, thank you. Thank you, you were the only one who said I got robbed. You were the only one who went into a freaking rant that probably got you in trouble,” Atlas continued.

“And some of them did get me in trouble. But it was temporary. It was worth it.”

Even the professionals came to Teddy for advice

It is Atlas’s ability not just to analyse what is going on in the ring, but also what is going on in the minds of the fighters, that has so often set him apart. And while it was well documented that Mike Tyson was not the finished article when Cus D’Amato died, one wonders whether Atlas was the finished product when he was banished from Catskill all those years ago.

Has Teddy had counselling since?

“Say that again?” he says, when I ask the question.

“Have you ever had counselling?”

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“Nah, Tris, the way you’re asking, you know the answer is no,” Joshua Buatsi smiles.

It has been 10 long years since he won bronze at the Rio Olympics. When he turned professional, Buatsi was – according to many – nailed on for a world title.

There was little doubt. In a GB squad that boasted the likes of Joe Joyce, Josh Kelly and Joe Cordina, Buatsi was the one who was perhaps best suited to the pros and from whom most was expected.

A decade on, Kelly is a world champion, Cordina has twice won world belts, and Buatsi gets his first world title opportunity when he faces former foe Willy Hutchinson for the vacant WBC light-heavyweight title on Saturday in Manchester.

There has been just one loss in those 10 years, but only 20 wins. Activity has been an issue, and he’s fought under the promotional banners of Matchroom, Boxxer and now Queensberry.

As he sits beside me on the ring apron of one of the two boxing rings at the New Era Boxing Gym in Merstham, Surrey, Buatsi has a thick head of hair and a thick beard, both of which will likely be streamlined by fight day. He’s wearing a charcoal Nike Jordan T-shirt and sits easily for up to 15 minutes at a time as he makes his media rounds a week or so out from the bout.

FREE TO READ: WILLY HUTCHINSON INTERVIEW

He’s not looking at the time and he’s not endlessly scrolling on his phone during or between interviews. His answers are deliberate but not forced.

The question we started off with was whether he knew the professional game would take him on such a winding track to the top.

“I didn’t,” he admits. “I thought it was straightforward. I thought it was a bit like the amateurs, you understand, going to certain tournaments, what it would lead to, what it would do. But with this one, nah, it’s been very windy, but we’re here, Tris, 10 years.”

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Willy Hutchinson has no interest in being the next great Scottish boxer. He wants to be one of the best fighters in the world, and beating Joshua Buatsi on Saturday night would be a significant step …

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Jack Rafferty and Mark Chamberlain shared 12 torrid rounds and, long after the final bell, Rafferty shared pictures of the aftermath, showing him curled up in a ball in a hospital bed.

He was wearing a gown, ghostly pale, and the rippling muscles of fight day had vanished, replaced by lean, trim but weak-looking limbs.

“It was a week after the Chamberlain fight,” Rafferty explained. “I fell ill, started off with a bad stomach and things got worse and worse. I rang my wife at the end of the week and said, ‘I can’t deal with this.’”

Within an hour, Rafferty was in hospital and had been diagnosed with an ischaemic bowel. The doctors told him: “It’s bad.”

“How bad?” Rafferty asked.

“We have to take you to surgery now,” they told him.

Rafferty had to undergo an emergency operation to have part of his bowel removed.

Pictures (top) courtesy of Queensberry Promotions and, above, Jack Rafferty via Instagram

Just a few short months later, he stopped the highly regarded Ekow Essuman and now – on Saturday in Manchester – fights for the IBO welterweight title.

It has been a torrid journey for the 31-year-old Manchester-born fighter, who now boasts a 27-0-1 (18 KOs) record.

He was in hospital for 10 days in all. Then he was released and got married two days later, in a wedding that had, of course, been on and off for several days.

“Listen, if I’m getting wheeled down in a wheelchair down the hall, I’m going,” he said.

“This day’s not changing.”

He had to get his suit tailored down a size or two because of his weight loss, but he made it. And in May, he made it back into the ring.

“That was well behind me,” he said of his ill health as he headed into the fight with Essuman. “I wouldn’t have been in there, my team or no one – especially my dad – wouldn’t have let me be in there. And I had plenty of training, breaking myself back into it, and then a good performance.”

Sadly for Jack, he was no stranger to hospitals. He has routinely paid tribute to his mum, Debs, who passed away from cancer in late 2020, and dedicated his biggest wins to her memory. And while he might not be the biggest fan of hospitals, he has nothing but respect for those who work there.

“Thank God for them as well, you know. You don’t realise how good the NHS is until one of your family members are in there, or even yourself,” he said.

“So, thank you to them. They’re massively overrun and they get a lot of stick, but once you’re using them, thank God they’re there.”

*

Rafferty has been on quite the run, claiming the scalps of the likes of Henry Turner, Reece MacMillan and Cory O’Regan.

Known as the “Demolition Man”, he has shown different sides to his game, including going to war with Chamberlain.

“I hope I’m entertaining,” he said. “That’s what we’re in, the entertainment business, and [promoter] Frank [Warren] said, ‘As long as you’re dancing, I’ll give you the platform to dance’, and I must be dancing not too bad.”

Many felt his bout with Essuman was hard to call, but Rafferty did his work early and bloodied and stopped “The Engine” in six rounds in a contest that was deemed all but 50-50.

“Unfortunately, that’s what everyone wanted, a bloodbath, which, apart from the fans watching it, it’s no good for your boxing career,” Rafferty admitted. “There’s a time and a place for a bloodbath and what people are expecting, but that’s what I can do, I can box, I can move and I could do a few more other things, and that [a war] is what he wanted. He wanted to be up close and personal and sometimes you can’t give your opponent something they want. He wasn’t expecting me to move and be rangy and I just don’t think he was ready for that.”

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If you’ve never been on the end of a long Lou DiBella rant, the only thing I can compare it to is being stuck in a lift with a man who knows everything that is wrong with boxing and who won’t press a button to one of the floors until he has run you through it.

All of it. A to Z.

The thing is with Lou, he talks about it in such a way, so forthrightly and with so much passion, that you can do little but pull up a chair and listen.

For someone who says he “is basically removed from the sport,” you can still tell the former network executive and promoter cares deeply. And you can tell he wishes he didn’t.

His love of the sport and the fighters, most of them, and the warmth of nostalgia for those he has loved and lost in the sport mean he will never be completely clear of it.

DiBella was recently inducted into the Atlantic City Boxing Hall of Fame, yet another award to add to his mantelpiece, having already been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in New York.

DiBella and I talk semi-regularly. He might say he talks and I listen, but I always enjoy it and I always learn. I know a bit about boxing, but Lou has forgotten more than I know. He has done the deals, signed the contracts, seen the contracts. He’s had the fights. He’s made the fights. He’s been to war. He’s won and lost. He’s been to court. He’s fought. And despite his resignation about the health of boxing, he’s never given up on it, even if it’s no good for his blood pressure.

“I am basically removed from the sport, I’m able to watch it with a critical eye, but also be amused by it to some degree,” he smiles.

“I think a lot of people are learning lessons by the day. And by the way, anyone who thought that Saudi Arabia was going to become a warm and fuzzy situation and that the Middle East was never going to be at war again and that the whole structure of Turki [Alalshikh] dominating the sport was an endless situation… You know, everything is fluid right now in boxing and nothing is established or settled. And it’s a time of great change. And unfortunately, it’s not bathing itself in glory, boxing, during these changes.”

Boxing has never been flawless. It has always been lawless. But there is no question that when DiBella was at HBO, he was involved in a period that will always be appreciated as a golden era, even if it wasn’t perfect.

“They were as good as we remember them,” he says of those halcyon days. “And I don’t view them with rose-tinted glasses because I want to make something very clear; the reasons I believe that in boxing – I am not only one of the better people and smarter people and people that have given more to the sport than they’ve taken, I don’t think I’m the only one – I think there are a number of people that fit that category, there are a number of people who are wrongly vilified, there are other people that are wrongly celebrated – but when I look at my history, I’m pretty proud of what I did in boxing, even though I’m not proud that I was part of an establishment that brought it to where it is right now. Like, I was part of a power structure that brought it to the point that it is right now, which is not a wonderful point. And we basically cannibalised ourselves, destroyed the old system. We continued to push the four-belt era. We continued to push the ratings organisations. We continued to accept bad decisions and bad refereeing that appeared too often to be biased and co-opted. I’m not using the word corrupt, but you could use corrupt, not illegal necessarily, but corrupt. The whole system was corrupt. We tolerated so much. We allowed our sport to weaken and weaken and weaken, even as it was having success. The things I testified before Congress about in the nineties, complaining about how boxing… the administration of boxing was inadequate, the health and safety measures of boxing were inadequate. The problems that existed in the nineties are worse now in 2026.

“But that’s sort of remarkable. And the fact that we didn’t make anything better from that moment in time until now is one of the reasons why the sport is every man for himself and completely uncertain and interesting. I don’t know where it’s headed, I don’t even know what it is anymore. What is boxing in 2026?”

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It’s been quite a week for Joe Cordina.

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O’Shaquie Foster was once looking at spending the best years of his life behind bars.

Now, he has set his sights on becoming a unified world champion.

The distance between those two possibilities is measured in more than miles, years and boxing victories. There have been shootings, prison sentences, abandoned friendships, second chances and a man named Keith Mills who refused to give up on him.

Foster has never stopped believing he could make it to the top. He just didn’t always believe he would live the kind of life that would allow him to get there.

“I always had a strong belief that I could make it to the top and be one of the top fighters,” Foster tells me.

But the road to the top has been arduous. Foster has been in prison multiple times. He’s lost fights and he’s fought in the away corner.

But now he finds himself the WBC’s 130lb champion, preparing to unify against quality Mexican Emanuel Navarrete, who holds the WBO and IBF belts.

They fight on Saturday night at the Frost Center in San Antonio, a couple of hundred miles away from where Foster lives in Houston.

“I just didn’t know the route [to the top],” Foster admits. “Especially after they robbed me the first time against [Robson] Conceicao. I knew something special was still in store for me. I just didn’t know which way it would come. And God made a way.”

*

Foster is 33. He’s won 25 times as a pro and suffered three defeats. Two came early in his career and then there was the Conceicao loss, which he immediately avenged.

He turned pro in 2012, disillusioned by his treatment on the scorecards in the Olympic Trials. He lost twice to Jojo Diaz, and he lost his ninth and 12^th fights, making him 10-2 at the time.

It was around then that his life took some catastrophic detours.

Foster lost the passion for boxing and it became only a business to him, using it to make money and take him to new places. But that was it.

You see, Foster had already fallen into street life. It was part of who he was, and after the second loss, he admits: “I didn’t see a path for me.”

He was all but done with the sport.

Then he was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and was looking at “a crazy amount of time” in jail.

“There was a shooting. I had a situation in my city where there was a lot of back and forths with me and other guys and some stuff ended up happening and a guy ended up getting shot,” Foster recalls. “He [the victim] lived and everything, but I ended up going down for it. It happened in broad daylight on some dumb stuff. That’s what happened. I had a lot going on at that time.

“Stuff got kind of crazy, just because I was kinda on the run, they were after me and that was high stress and everything else, but before that I was didn’t really have no path, no guidance. I was in the streets hard, just doing whatever, so I didn’t really care to think about the consequences of my actions until after the event.”

Foster was in “a bad head space.”

“I had been to jail a few times,” he adds. “So I kind of knew what to expect, but sitting in there that long, you get in altercations and stuff. I had a fight or two. A few fights and stuff, but that was kind of it. I only had to make an example of one person.

“Luckily, I met my boy Keith, and stuff just happened. Even when I met him, I wasn’t training like that, after I took that second loss I went back to the streets. There wasn’t anything for me after that.”

**

(Team Foster, with Mills pictured behind Shock’s left shoulder)

“The boy Keith” who Foster refers to is his advisor Keith Mills. Mills has been on the team for more than a decade.

“’Shock’ and I were training at the same gym and his then-promoter brought him out to the DC area to train in a gym in Virginia,” recalls Mills of their first meeting, back in around 2015 or 016. “I happened to join that gym, I was training in that gym and we got to talking.”

They were civil with one another, but their friendship did not extend beyond the gym, and Mills smiles when asked if he knew what Foster was doing away from boxing.

“No, oh God,” laughs Mills. “He was definitely not making great choices at all. He would show up to the gym but you’re only training so much time and I don’t know what he was doing at night. But it was not good at all.

“This is when we just started to build a relationship. We were training together and if he needed any advice on anything, he’d come to me and I’d provide any advice I could.”

Was Foster a gangster back then?

“I mean for sure,” he nods matter-of-factly. “That’s how I was living. Ever since I can remember being a kid or youngster I either used to look up to the gangsters or the boxers. There wasn’t no in between. So I had two things to look up to. If it wasn’t the streets, it was boxing. If it wasn’t boxing it was the streets, and boxing prevailed. Thank God.”

But before that, Foster served his time and while he was inside, it was left to Mills to try and get him out. Mills would put money on Foster’s books, was working with the attorneys and trying to see what would come next.

“When someone’s facing 10 to 20 years in prison, it’s really a difficult thing, to say the least,” Mills explains.

Foster was inside when Hurricane Harvey struck, killing more than 80 people in the Houston area and forcing the transfer of thousands of inmates between several prisons.

“It made things very difficult,” says Mills.

***

Foster didn’t end up with anything like 20 years in the end, although he was out of the ring between July 2016 and December 2017, by which time he had found a new focus and appreciation for the sport.

“It took me going to jail and coming out and that helped me fall back in love with boxing,” Foster admits.

“Sometimes I can’t believe how far we came and how different my circumstances are with everything. It’s just crazy.”

And having seen a life of criminality romanticised on TV and in the movies, he can now say the glamour of violence isn’t what it is made out to be.

“When you’re doing stuff and you’re young, it can be exciting and it can get your adrenaline rush but once the consequences of jail time and all that stuff starts coming, that’s when it really hits you. It ain’t what it was supposed to be,” he explains.

Friends stopped calling him. He was dealing with lawyers. He had no money. People were snitching.

“When you’re young, it seems so cool and you’re having fun doing stuff. But it definitely ain’t what it seems. Not even close. I was facing crazy numbers, and that was the worst, not knowing if you’re going to come out and not having nobody. Keith was there for me, but everybody you thought or people you love the most, when you get sent down, they ain’t going to show up.”

****

When Foster was finally released, he thought the slate had been wiped clean, but he was arrested again just days before a September 2018 clash with Jon Fernandez.

“He would tell me things,” Mills continues. “However, saying something and actually doing something is two completely different things. It was over time Shock started to change. It was definitely after he ended up getting out of prison but over time you really got to see that he’s really locking into boxing, finally. He’s locking in to doing all the right things. It was definitely after that prison stint where I felt he was really coming along.”

Then, however, the old charges came back to haunt Foster and he was back inside.

“It was fight week,” recalls Mills. “We were preparing for a fight, Shock had been on the straight and narrow. Hadn’t got in any type of trouble, and the police just pulled him over. I don’t even think the police wanted to take him to jail, but they have to follow protocol, and he had a lingering warrant and they enforced it. But I wasn’t worried because he hadn’t been in any trouble. This was something that happened years prior. Shock got out of jail on the Wednesday, he fought on Friday.”

But from that point on, there has been no looking back. Foster is 12-1 since, he avenged the Conceicao loss, and he knows there are plenty who condemned his prospects after his defeats.

“Oh, for sure,” he says now. “I feel like that’s been part of my career for the longest now, they wrote me off for my first two losses and thinking any fighter they threw in front of me could beat me because of those two losses, but I think I’m changing that wave in boxing of, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be undefeated’ or this and that. I’m showing that you can have a couple of setbacks early in your career, but if you dedicate yourself and put your mind to it you can turn it all around.”

And Mills has been with him every step of the way.

“I had no aspirations on being on the business side of boxing. I had no interest,” Mills grins. “I’m a businessman and this is not my business, so when Shock asked me to be his manager, I was caught off guard because I was just looking to help him. I didn’t even realise how great he would be, this wasn’t me trying to be a boxing manager. It was easy for me to stick with him because I never wanted to be this big manager in boxing. I would have helped him and never been his manager.”

*****

O’Shaquie Foster leans up against the ring in Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn and smiles.

The grin reveals two diamond-covered K9s and he won’t let on how much he paid for them (“ain’t no little boy stuff!”).

In part because of his dreadlocks, Foster is instantly recognisable. Later in the day, I saw him posing for pictures with fans elsewhere in New York.

Fame is an interesting concept to someone who was looking at two decades behind bars.

He hasn’t cut his hair in about 11 years and he’s embracing the idea of being a celebrity.

“I was one of those children that didn’t get as much attention as a baby, so I feel like this is life full circle,” he says thoughtfully. “I know it comes with the game. I don’t fight because it [fame] comes with boxing, but I know it comes with boxing and I know how it can bother people.”

Foster has seen those blessed with sporting talent, dedication and wealth stumble and fall. He knows he is a work in progress, but can also heed the warning of NBA and NFL stars who have burned brightly but been left destitute. The idea is to own businesses and real estate.

“The money that makes money while you sleep,” he adds.

“It’s all a learning game to me. That’s what I pray on, leaving the boxing game with my brains intact and a pile of money.”

******

There is another dream that is shared by both fighter and manager, and that is for Foster to land a fight not just with one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport, but specifically to fight Shakur Stevenson.

Foster contends that he, too, belongs among the pound-for-pound ranks having defeated Conceicao, Rey Vargas, Ray Ford and Rocky Hernandez.

Shakur had said that if Foster defeated Ford, he would fight him, but that remains a way off.

“We’re gonna see if he holds up to his word,” says Foster. “We’ve gotta fight. There’s no other way around it. The world wants to see it now. Me and him got animosity just like me and his little man [Ford] had for the last fight, so we might as well just let it carry over.”
They have, of course, sparred a few times previously.

“Every session I enjoyed, a few sessions went bad for him but it was great work,” Foster continues. “It was high-level work but I believe in myself. He disrespected me and now it’s time to show the world. We gotta fight.”

Foster would take the fight at 135 or 140lb. He wouldn’t need a rehydration clause, either.

“We can take it old school.”

“I hope we get that fight one day,” states Mills. “I really do. Because here’s what I realise about people in boxing. They won’t believe you until you show them. People have a connection with whoever their favourite fighter is, they think they’re unbeatable, so you’ve got to go in there and beat them. And Shock and Shakur have such a long history. All three of us were in the same gym in Virginia, so it’s a long deep history and I’d love the fight to happen but Shakur knows Shock way too well to fight him. Hopefully one day it happens.”

But one thing that is certain is the old life that nearly derailed Foster is long gone. Sure, he can still hear the streets calling, and he knows why those doing well are sometimes drawn back to them.

“Easy, easy. And it’s them temptations, especially in fields like boxing when if you’re not at the top and not making real money then the streets can try to call you back or you go and try to make some quick money, so it can definitely pull you right back in,” he explains.

But he knows his identity. He appreciates his journey. And he won’t forget where he has come from or what has made him the champion he is today.

“I wouldn’t say it took me to turn my back on the streets, I just had to change the people around me,” he says. “I still go back and give to my community, so I don’t feel like I turned my back on them because I always want to give back. But as far as hanging with the wrong crowd and certain things like that, I just changed it up. Nobody felt any kind of way, because no one helped me to get where I’m at. Nobody felt like I owed them nothing and I didn’t feel like I owed them anything.”

His debts of gratitude extend to Mills, though, and the sport that gave him a second chance.

“I’m super grateful for boxing. If it weren’t for boxing, I don’t know where I’d be in life,” he says knowingly. “I thank the sport and I’ll always show love to the sport and put my all into it because I know what position I’m in, how far it can take me and where I could be. I feel like I’m blessed.”

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(Pictures courtesy of Top Rank and Matchroom Boxing)

In the first of two parts, Teddy Atlas talks about the “suffocating” fear of failing a fighter, putting the pads on for his grandkids, Catskill, and why he said ‘No’ to appearing in the new Netflix series TYSON.

All his life, Teddy Atlas has tried to understand people and that could be considered both a marvellous strength and a terrible weakness.

He has taken vulnerable fighters and made them bulletproof, turning them into champions, although some turned against him.

Atlas has made decisions that have cost him millions, and others that have cost him friendships.

Now 70, the former trainer and television analyst has few regrets, but plenty of scars.

He is also as busy as ever.

Atlas has his own podcast and YouTube channel, and Dmitriy Salita has reached out to bring him back as an analyst for his shows on DAZN.

And through it all, Teddy has remained unfiltered.

Even 40 years ago, in Gleason’s Gym, that was the case.

“But it’s not what it used to be at all,” laments Atlas about the boxing landscape.

“It’s not, even 20 years ago. But I’ve known this [for] 45 years, where anyone could walk in the gym, throw a towel on their shoulders. There’s no screening. There’s no accountability.

“There’s no validation. There’s no checking their background of, ‘Oh, what did they do?’ They just get around the fighter. They come and next thing you know, they’re a trainer.”
Teddy has seen it on loop over the years and nothing surprises him any longer.

“If I told you some of the stories, you wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” he says.

“I saw people come through the doors at Gleason’s Gym, when we were in Manhattan, out of nowhere, and start training fighters. And they got away with it.

“I remember the Daily News did a big story with me because I said half the people in this business should be arrested for impersonating trainers.

“If they tried that in the medical business, patients would be dying everywhere. They wouldn’t be allowed on a football field to coach because they have no background. The players would be running in the wrong direction.

“But in this freaking business, they can all come in with no screening, no background. It’s absurd. No apprenticeship, nothing.”

Of course, not everyone gets to cut their teeth under one of the great coaches and mentors, having to train fighters with every move being scrutinised, assessed and judged, rightly or wrongly. But that grounding gave Atlas a rare wisdom and it meant there was nothing fraudulent about him when it came to coaching fighters.

Even in the 1980s, Atlas said all of the above to a reporter in the New York Daily News.

“I walked into the gym the next day and three old-time trainers were there.

“Freddie Brown, who trained Roberto Duran, he loved me. Ray Arcel had come by, and Lee Black. They were real boxing trainers who had seen the deterioration of their sport, of the teaching of their sport.

“They all had the Daily News and they came over to shake my hand.

“They said, ‘Thank you for saying what needed to be said.’

“I was still a kid. I said, ‘Well, there’s a few people in here who ain’t too happy.’

“They said, ‘We don’t give a crap about them. We’re happy. Of course they’re not happy.’”

*

Atlas had a second career as a long-time TV analyst but, even then, his expertise was sought by fighters who wanted his knowledge, his wisdom and, likely, his delivery.

He could motivate and he could counsel. He could preach and he could listen. He would fight for you and fight with you, but you always knew he was on your side.

Now he travels an hour each way once a week to hold the pads for his grandchildren.

“I don’t miss it. I joke with my grandsons that the good thing about training them is they don’t argue back,” he smiles. “But none of my fighters really argued back.

He also understood there were elements beyond his control. Teddy knew he had little influence over the other side, over judges, over anything else other than what he had control of.

To that extent, it gave him sleepless nights.

“Am I gonna fail him? Because every one of my fighters believes in me, maybe more than they believe anyone else. I can’t train them if they don’t.

“And I don’t train someone if they don’t have character. If I don’t think they’re a decent person, I’m not training them.

“The other reason I say yes is because they need to get better in a certain area and I feel I can make them better. Maybe someone else can’t, but I can.

“But throughout the camp, I would always be thinking, ‘Am I gonna fail them? Am I gonna let them down? Am I gonna betray that confidence?’

“They trusted me, and I couldn’t guarantee everything was going to be okay.

“Just the weight of that got suffocating after a while.”

**

That infamous Catskill apprenticeship was the making of Atlas. It was a detailed seven-year psychological crash course that culminated with a well-documented altercation with Mike Tyson, a handgun and Atlas being jettisoned from the camp by guru Cus D’Amato.

A lot of wounds remained unhealed from that period of time, but Atlas still holds stock in plenty of what D’Amato taught him.

Asked whether much of what Cus had told him came true, without hesitation, Atlas answers, “Yeah.”

And with very little pause, Atlas adds: “He told me people born round don’t die square. So true. So true.”

**

It is arguably the failure to lure Atlas onto the screen that is the major gripe with the new Netflix series, TYSON. Many feel that Catskill flashpoint set the tone for Tyson, enabling bad behaviour that followed, rather than trying to fix, address or punish it.

Read more

Don Charles has been hurt by boxing before. He knows the business, knows how it works and knows that when a fighter loses, the trainer is often the first casualty.

That doesn’t mean it gets any easier, and it’s no reason not t be a pro and to focus on the task at hand when he’s in the gym.

When Daniel Dubois walked away from Charles following his second defeat to Oleksandr Usyk, the trainer was devastated. He had invested far more than time and expertise in the heavyweight puncher. Their relationship, he insists, goes beyond boxing.

Now they are preparing to face Fabio Wardley for the second time, and Charles is determined to ensure that the mistakes of their first violent encounter – back in May – are not repeated.

“Well, yeah,” sighs Charles. “That’s the idea, to identify the mistakes we made in the first fight with Fabio and go back to the drawing board and try and eradicate.”

The rematch between his fighter, Daniel Dubois, and Fabio Wardley, is just a few days away and the night is heavy on Don’s mind.

Five months ago, they shared a violent and bloody battle.

(Here is the interview in full. If you visit the channel, please hit subscribe)

Dubois was down twice but ultimately bludgeoned Wardley into a brutal 11^th round stoppage.

“Could you get total eradication?” Charles adds. “Probably not. But I always say in any examination, you score high as you can. You get a start. So that’s what we intend to do, it’s to try and reduce a large amount of the mistakes we made and we should be the victor.”

Dubois was dropped in the first 20 seconds last time out, and Charles contended it was more due to Dubois’ pre-fight apprehension rather than being caught cold.

Sure, Dubois may have notched that impressive run against Jarrell Miller, Filip Hrgovic and Anthony Joshua, but Charles said there was an element of starting over against Wardley as he rebounded from his second stoppage loss to Oleksandr Usyk.

“Looking back at it, Daniel has, on many occasions, after the fight, he said he was feeling... Remember, he was coming off the back of a big loss to Oleksandr Usyk and it was a knockout loss. He said it himself, he said he had nerves, he was carrying a lot of nerves going into the first encounter. Only the fighter can tell you that. He revealed that afterwards. It’s not something we discussed prior. He said it after the fight, which explains it. He said he had a lot of nerves going. Imagine doing that ring walk for the Fabio fight and in the fighter’s mind, it’s almost like, ‘Last time I did this ring walk, I lost and I got knocked out.’

“Imagine carrying all that into that. Fabio, being the fighter he is, had a very, very fast start, which caught us off guard. Daniel went in there, he said it himself, a lot of nerves, and that caught him out.”

Sure, Dubois was down early. But he got up and fought back. Dubois was also down in round three. But he got up and fought back.

Then he took control and started to grind away, bashing and battering Wardley in an increasingly one-sided fight until the end came.

And while Dubois may have confronted his doubts going into the first fight, he should be buoyed ahead of this weekend’s rematch at London’s O2 Arena because he knows he can eat up Wardley’s best shots and his early bombs and come through it.

“Well, there’s a lot of questions he answered for himself and for the team and for the general public,” Charles continued. “Of him not having heart, of him quitting previously. So he answered a lot of questions, but I can assure you that that was not part of our game plan – for him to sustain two knockdowns, not one, two knockdowns, and get up and fight on and to produce such a performance. He showed a lot in that fight and I’m glad it happened, it panned out that way because he answered a lot of, never mind myself, the team or the general public, he answered himself that when the going gets tough, he can stick it out and still grind it out.”

(Pictures courtesy of Leigh Dawney/Queensberry Promotions)

“And Dubois has unwittingly become a star. His front-foot aggression and power have produced a succession of thrilling fights and knockouts, but his quiet nature, punctuated by the occasional memorable one-liner, has also endeared him to fans.”

“It appears that way,” Charles said with a smile. “Historically, you could look at, compare that to a lot of fighters that weren’t loved when they were active, then later on in their career, people start to warm up to the character. It’s like pantomime, isn’t it? You buy into the character. Once you start to know the character, then you start to understand some of the things they do, characteristically what they do, then you start to buy into that character.

“I think that’s what’s happening in Daniel’s career right now.”

And the always-paternal Don, working daily with Dubois, sees sides of the heavyweight puncher that others remain unfamiliar with.

“It’s well documented. With all my fighters, they’re like my children,” Charles explained.

“It’s beyond boxing, I would say, our relationship. It’s beyond boxing. It has to be beyond boxing. It really has to be. I’m not gonna go too much elaborate anymore into that. It’s beyond boxing.”

Of course, the appearance of Dubois’ father in the camp and making key decisions has given the appearance that Daniel’s dad runs the show. Asked for specifics, Charles provided an analogy.

“I get paid because I’m the captain of the ship, but the ship – somebody owns that ship,” Charles said.

“Okay. Yeah, in every walk of life, yeah. Even if you’re self-employed, which I am, even the general plumber, electrician in the trade, somebody commissions you and gives you that contract and you’re answerable to that person.

“So that’s my role. I am the captain of my ship, but somebody employs me and says, ‘Can you take this passenger to this destination?’ I’m instructed and I will do to the best of my ability to run my ship.”

Read more

Eye of the Tiger boss Camille Estephan boasts one of the most formidable stables in world boxing. Last night, feared 168-pounder Osleys Iglesias dominated Oliver Zaren and later this month, Christian Mbilli faces Canelo Alvarez. Here, Estephan talks about his life in and out of boxing and how he has shaped EOTT thus far.

Yeah, so obviously, Osleys Iglesias did well last night, you’ve raved about him for some time… He’s now 16-0 (15 KOs) following his stoppage of Oliver Zaren

You know, it’s funny because every punch he lands, you see that even like the jab before the fight and during the camp, Marc Ramsey told me, ‘Camille, at one point he’s going to knock out somebody with his jab,’ and yesterday that almost happened. The guy, every single punch he lands takes so much out of the opponent it’s a mercy when the fight finishes quickly because they just take a lot of damage. I don’t think the guys are ever the same and Zaren yesterday showed a lot of heart, he was actually very good. He’s a bit elusive, he’s got good defence, he’s strong, he took some real heavy punishment, but yeah, Marc said he’s coached fighters for 27 years and he’s never seen anything like it.

How do you get these guys, Camille, because you’ve got Khataev, Mbilli, Iglesias, Orobio, they’re all really just tough, very good fighters.

Yeah, yeah, we’re fortunate, I think we did some really good work scouting obviously, you know. We’re not the only people that knew how good they were, but a guy like Orobio, who may be one of the best, if not the best. We got him at 18, Wilkens Mathieu we got him, we already had the relationship when he was in the amateurs, we stayed close, so we did a good job scouting. Scouting is not just identifying talent, but it’s really like putting a plan together, making sure that they understand where you want to go with their careers, and we have a good reputation, touch wood, and hopefully we can continue to build on that.

How did you and Marc Ramsey come to team up?

David Lemieux. He needed a new coach and we hooked up with Marc, and then over time, basically my goal was to have him [Ramsey] work exclusively for us, and when the timing came together, we hired him exclusively. He still at the time had Beterbiev, but we knew that the opportunities would come for him to fight in Canada, so it all worked out.

How highly do you rate Marc, because when people talk about the top coaches, he goes under the radar quite often.

Well, I think people know, I think he’s developed a lot of champions, he’s not a guy that got given champions. He’s not one of those guys that are fed the champions, he’s building them, so I think he’s one of the best. It’s probably the best move I did, is hire this guy.

Who was your very first fighter, Camille?

My very first fighter was Bermane Stiverne, the heavyweight. At the time, nobody believed this guy could do anything other than me and him, and he became a WBC champion, he beat [Chris] Arreola, he got the WBC title, unfortunately, that was kind of the limit of what we could do, he lost to Wilder, in a 12-round fight and the truth is, Bermane just wanted to become a champion. He used to tell me, ‘If ever I become a heavyweight champion of the world, I could die the next day, I don’t give a shit,’ And when he won, he just didn’t have the motivation anymore to do what was necessary to stay on top.

When are people going to start calling Eye of the Tiger one of the big promoters? People, are quick to go to PBC, Top Rank, Golden Boy. What’s it going to take to make that next step, to be recognised alongside one of those as one of the major powerhouses?

I think people know, people in the industry know, when you’re fighting an Eye of the Tiger fighter, it’s not a picnic. We’re like a boutique shop. We’re never going to have 100 fighters, 75 fighters, that’s not what we want. That’s not the vision I have. We have 20, 25 fighters, we don’t want to exceed that by too much. Right now, I mean, when you think about it, we have 22 fighters, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, not many people are actually, but we have 22 fighters signed currently, and out of the 22, we have so many ranked in the top 15, I think we have 12 fighters ranked in the top 15 [by sanctioning bodies] or champions, so, you know, you look at the density of the top talent out of 22-fighter roster, and some of the guys, they’re very good prospects that are on their way. The BoxRec ratings are not influenced by a federation, they’re not influenced by a promoter, they’re just mathematical formulas, and currently we have, believe it or not, 12 fighters in the top 15 in BoxRec. Iglesias is number one BoxRec ranking, you look at Khataev, Beaudoin, Biyarslanov, Mbilli, Ramirez, Perez, Asanau, Orobio, Wilkens Mathieu. It’s just a very, very solid roster. So what’s it gonna take? I think if Mbilli wins against Canelo, the stamp will become much stronger. We have two fights [Biyarslanov challenges Lindolfo Delgado for the vacant IBF 140lbs title on the bill] on October 31st, and to win both, that’s what it’s gonna take.

Just go back with Mbilli to the fight with Lester Martinez, last year, that was a tough fight, you were obviously up against a ProBox TV guy, what do you think of ProBox TV, and what they’ve done through Garry Jonas?

I think they’re doing a good job. I honestly don’t look much at other businesses. I concentrate on what we’re doing, but I think what Eye of the Tiger has is different, right, there’s just a unique level of talent. I don’t think something’s comparable with me, if you look at the top 15 fighters at any of the… PBC, Matchroom, and Top Rank, and they’d say to you, ‘Which roster do you want?’ You’ll have to think about it, whereby I don’t think there’s anybody else out there that can be part of that conversation at this stage.

Do you do other work as well, Camille, or are you 100 per cent in boxing?

No, no, I’m in the wealth management business, in the stock market. I’m a stock broker, I own a stock brokerage firm, basically.

So you don’t need to do boxing, is it like a hobby for you? How do you compare it to the day job?

I’d say it’s a passion, it’s not a hobby, it’s a passion, it’s a business that has to make sense, it has to work, it has to be economically viable, and, you know, we’re doing this to win, we’re doing this to be representing Quebec and making them proud. We have a market here, we have developed a very strong market, when the big fights come, we can sell stadiums, we can easily sell for the right fight over 20,000 tickets. When I say sell tickets, it’s truly sold tickets. I’m known to be Dr. Scrooge when it comes to giving tickets away, I don’t give tickets away, otherwise I’m a generous person. So we have a good, healthy market here.

In terms of the fight at the end of the month, obviously there seems to be quite a lot of uncertainty online that anyone will be going to Riyadh at all, is that something that you are wary of and prepared for, if plans change?

No, no, no, I’m not at all. The card was announced yesterday, fully with the undercard, the paperwork is done, everybody signed, I mean, you know, God willing, there is no, massive bombing or something going on like that, but the card is going to happen, I think things are under control, if not, they would not want to go ahead with it. We expect that we’re going to have a Halloween night, it’s going to be trick or treat and we’re going to pull a trick on everybody and shock the world with Mbilli against Canelo.

People will always favour Canelo against anyone because he’s such a big name, but do you think he’s not the fighter that he was a couple of years ago?

You know what, I think, knowing Canelo, he’s a legend with what he’s done so far. He’s a very proud guy, so he’s going to come into this fight wanting to take the title back, he’s fighting for a legacy. He’s already built a great legacy, so I think he’s going to be as motivated as can be. We’ve seen that he’s been very disciplined in his camp, they postponed the fight because he wanted to be at the best that he could be. There were some situations that caused him to delay because he wanted to be serious about the camp, so he’s going to be the best he can be at this stage. Is he as good as when he was at 28? I don’t think anybody who’s 38 is as good as when they were at 28, but maybe… he has more experience. The thing is, truthfully, I’m not saying this because I want to sell the fight or boast or whatever… think of a wolf that’s climbing up the hill versus the wolf that’s on the hill. Who’s hungrier? And Mbilli has that in him, and what we’ve seen from him in camp right now is very encouraging. We’re going with a lot of confidence because what we want him to do in the camp, he’s doing and then some. So he’s really impressing us.

Besides, Mbilli… people say, we know what he’s going to do, you can adjust to that, we know he’s going to do what he always does, true, but knowing what he does and facing it is two different matters, so I think we will be coming out on top in this fight.

When are you scheduled to go over?

Tuesday of the week, but the guys are going, like, 11 days [before], so they’re leaving maybe very soon, 10 days less, actually.

This is against a backdrop where people are talking about maybe there being less money available in Saudi Arabia through politics and through maybe their change in direction, what do you think of the overall impact that they’ve had on the business, and with that, I mean I know a lot of money has come in, but now, obviously, it’s very difficult to make fights at the top level because so many people are familiar with massive Saudi purses?

Yes, you know, people like to talk and I think the boxing industry should be grateful for Saudi Arabia, Riyadh Season, Turki, and, you know, MBS. They’ve brought something to boxing. We have not seen the fights, the big fights happen for a while.

We were lacking. Look at just now with Fury and Joshua, it’s happening, right? Yes, there were a lot of negotiations, I mean, does that mean they have less money? No, maybe it’s a matter of just being responsible. That’s their business. I don’t know, but the big fights are still happening, so I don’t know, you know. Canelo-Mbilli is happening, Joshua against Fury is happening. I know they’re announcing another massive fight soon. I think it’s just talk. I heard this saying once, ‘Just like they have a couple of elbows, people have a couple of opinions.’ They like to be heard, so they talk shit.

In terms of Mbilli, do you feel like Canelo’s got big balls to take him on? Because it’s quite a high-risk and relatively low-reward fight for Canelo, right? At his stage of the game, a lot of people only look for the big, big names and the big money, don’t they?

Well, let’s look at the situation. First of all, yes, he does have a lot of guts and balls too, to say this is the fight I want. I mean, let’s face it, if Mbilli did not have the WBC title, he would not fight. It’s obvious. But when we talk about big names, I mean, Crawford retired, Munguia, they already fought. Pacheco is chicken, he won’t fight no one. Who else is out there? Sheeraz doesn’t even have a title anymore. And it’s for the WBC title, which is… he’s Mexican, this is the Mexican organisation, it’s the most prestigious title and it is with us. So, it’s that simple.

There’s not many other names. You know, Iglesias, would he fight Iglesias? Tell me something, I want to ask you this. You’re in the boxing industry, you’re very knowledgeable when it comes to the fighters. Have you ever seen a fighter with two world titles but nobody even brings his name up. Like, they’re scared to say his name, literally. And when I say scared, I do mean scared.

Sometimes it does not make financial sense. So, the fighters are like, ‘Oh, he’s scared of me, he won’t fight me.’ Yeah, sometimes that’s true.

It’s not scared, it just does not make business sense. In this guy’s case, Riyadh Season wants him on, every single time they talk to someone about Iglesias, ‘No, we won’t fight him.’

I’ve been told by managers and promoters, ‘I’ll never let my guy step in the ring with this guy.’ So, this to me now is the riddle we have to solve. You know, Iglesias has to unify.

It’s for the best interest of boxing, because seeing him fight, it leaves an impression on you. It’s very scary, truly. So, we are in a very good position, because we’re in building with the WBC title, IBF and IBO with Iglesias.

We’re going to corner the other guys at some point in time. And it’s fun times for the fan, because these fights are happening. So, I believe if Canelo would have said, ‘I would fight Iglesias, the fight would have happened.’

And we want to see the other guys step up to the plate and be real champions. It’s a frustration for me right now, to be honest.

I don’t mean the word frustration in a way. No, we move forward, we’re doing everything we have to do. And he’s becoming more and more popular.

He’s getting a chance and time to gel with Marc Ramsey. But the big fights are happening. And that’s really encouraging.

Okay, but I suppose one of your other jobs as a promoter is to try and turn these guys into household names? And it’s difficult with the guys you’ve got, where they’ve come from all corners of the globe. And whether it’s Eastern Europe or Cuba, how do you get them to become to that level of superstardom? Is it just a matter of letting the actions talk for them? Or is there something that you can do to get their characters out and to turn them into a Sugar Ray Leonard, a Floyd Mayweather? How do you make that conversion?

Well, I think it’s a question, it’s a right question. There’s three parts to the answer. First is you’ve got to give them a market. You’ve got to give them a fanbase where they can fight in front of and people call them, ‘Oh yes, this is my fighter.’

So we’re able to do this here in Quebec. Quebec recognises, Quebec wants winners, they love champions, they want winners. So we expose them here.

Our fighters are very active. You look at some of our fighters, for example, Leila Beaudoin fought at world title. She fought Baumgardner.

She fought twice for a world title. She fought four times in the last 10 months. Very rare to see that at high level boxing.

So our fighters are fighting often. So the more they fight, the more people see them able and doing what they can do in the ring, the more popular they become. So we are trying to build a market for them here and they get adopted in Quebec.

So that’s very, very fortunate for us. Just like [Lucian] Bute in the past and [Jean] Pascal and many others. The second thing is telling the story. We have a production company that makes the documentaries on these guys. We have millions of viewers that have seen them, that know their story. But when you think about it at the end of the day, in boxing today, how many superstars do we have? Really?

So any sport will have the superstars on top and everybody else willing and wanting to be there. And I believe now we are very close with Mbilli, with Iglesias, with Orobio, with Khataev.

Khataev, he beat [David] Morrell. Whether people like it or not, he won that fight. On paper he lost, but he won that fight and everybody knows that.

So we have the guys that have the talent because you can do all you want. They can fight all they want. We can tell the story all we want.

If they’re not champions, then you’ve got nothing at the end of the day. So I believe we have that combination.

Let me ask you about Zuffa Boxing and what your thoughts are on Zuffa because they came in very bullish saying that they wanted to take over everything, not work with the sanctioning bodies and they wanted to be boxing and to be the be-all and end-all. Do you see them as a threat?

No. At the end of the day, they brought a very solid contract to boxing from Paramount.

You look at the financials of that contract, it’s a lot of money, more for the boxing industry. So what their intentions are, what they want to do, that’s on them. Boxing is not like mixed martial arts where it was a very new sport… nothing is established.

Here there’s legacy, there’s a structure, there’s a network that’s not necessarily working together… They’re not necessarily one organisation, but they kind of have to work together. When I want to make a big fight, I gotta talk to one of the top promoters and say, ‘Hey, let’s make this fight, so we work together.’

So boxing is a very different animal than mixed martial arts and what the UFC has done. But they brought a contract to boxing, boxers, they are getting paid through it. I think it’s good. What their intentions are in becoming boxing? I don’t really care about that. I mean, it’s up to me to have the fighters. At the end of the day, Tris, if you have the right fighters that people want to see, you’re the one who holds the cards. That’s what it comes down to. So they don’t have the fighters right now.

Does the Ali Revival Act make any difference to you in Canada?

I think it’s going to affect boxing worldwide. I mean, the major thing that the promoters are really ticked about here is being the federation and being the promoter at the same time. And you think about it and you say, well, is there a conflict of interest there? That’s really what it’s about.

It’s like as if I was your lawyer, accountant and stockbroker at the same time. Your finances have to be checked with different entities. They have to be worked on with different entities.

So, you want to avoid conflict of interest in any situation. And people knock on the federations because they say, ‘Well, there’s too many champions.’ There’s two sides to that coin.

The first is like, ‘Yes, we’d love to identify as a fan with the champion, one champion.’ And it kind of happens naturally with time when the guy is that dominant. Canelo was for a while, right? Golovkin had that kind of aura. There was Floyd, there was Sugar Ray. We had many.

But in the same situation like Canelo, he’s not defending his titles and he’s moving to divisions. If you don’t have interim champions, if you don’t have other federations to fight for, it kills the game. It kills the fight.

It kills the whole industry. So there’s health in competition. Having competition is healthy.

Being in absolute control of the titles, the rankings and the promotion, you can end up with a conflict of interest. There’s ways for it to be done properly, but that’s where the danger is. That’s where the risk is.

When we spoke probably about a year ago, maybe more, you said that Iglesias was one to watch and to keep an eye out on him. And obviously I’ve done that since. If you were telling me the same thing now of another one you’ve got coming through, who’s the next one?

Jhon Orobio – and every bit as much. These two guys are both a massive problem for any division. Whoever is going to go in the ring with them must have a lot of guts, because it’s very, very, very hard.

You mentioned Lucian Bute. I’ve got my ballot here for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He’s on the ballot. Do you think he’s a Hall of Famer?

Yeah. I mean, if you look at it, the Hall of Fame is about what have you done for boxing. You know, it’s not necessarily only the top, top, top champions. Not everybody has to be Jackie Robinson. So he’s done a lot for boxing.

He’s the market here in Quebec. He’s done a lot for it to make people love boxing. It’s the athletes that we love the sport. So yeah, I think so.

All right, Camille. I really appreciate you making the time, particularly the day after a big show.

And I just want to put it out there. Imam Khataev wants all the British light heavyweights.

Okay, great. So your Buatsi, your Yardes, Ben Whittaker, all of them?

Ben Whittaker would not last for five rounds with Imam. Actually, maybe he lasts for five, maybe he does six, but he definitely doesn’t see the seventh.

Trainer Tony Sims says his charge Conor Benn will need a significant break ahead of any potential return to the ring.

Speaking to Total Boxing, Sims addressed at least three possible scenarios for Benn, including a third fight with Chris Eubank, a bout with UFC star Conor McGregor and retirement.

Read more

Florian, good to see you. I’ve seen you making moves and you’ve signed a pair of heavyweight brothers, the Ademi (Ismet and Endrit) brothers.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we are on our way to the top. We will bring German boxing back.

Have you been depressed with how German boxing has been the last 15 years or so?

To be honest, not so much because I know there are a lot of problems in the boxing scene, not just in Germany, but in the whole world. And in Germany, you know, we had the problem that we just built up names, not like the UFC and MMA in the States, we built up the names like Axel Schulz, Henry Maske, the Klitschko brothers.

And then the Klitschko brothers were gone and German boxing fell to sleep. So you see MMA works, combat sports works in Germany with Octagon MMA. So I think when we do the right steps at the right time, we can bring boxing back again in Germany because the target group is there.

How would you know the target group is still there?

Because you can see it when you watch it with the sport of MMA, you see Octagon, they make big moves, Octagon MMA. So the people like combat sports. And I think sports by itself, it’s so important for the audience.

And boxing is a great sport. Everybody feels close to it. And it’s something special. But we need to show it the right way.

We see the target group… when you look at the numbers of the boxing clubs, the numbers are growing. A lot of boxing stuff [equipment] is sold by the brands. Boxing works, fitness boxing and stuff like that, but the real boxing you see – Fame Fighting over in the UK, it’s the same like Misfits in the UK, we have Fame Fighting here in Germany. And it works. So the people like to see guys beating up each other.

But we need to build brands. We need the fighters to build their own brand, not just their record.

Are you the person that’s going to make it into big business again?

I hope so. I have a good team. We have a great vision. We have a good momentum. You said also the Ademi brothers, I think they are also a key because this is a new generation of German boxers. They know how social media works.

So they go to training, then they sit at home and stream. So for the audience, they know how the game works. So I’m pretty sure that we will come back and you see Agit Kabayel [against Nelson Hysa on November 28], he’s fighting now in front of 35,000 people.

And I think they sold in 24 hours, 25,000 tickets or something. So you see boxing works when you do it the right way. And we have a lot of innovative stuff, like our new format, Who’s Next? This is a digital, innovative boxing system. We let two teams fight against each other, four fighters on each team. We have team presidents, team leads. We have sensors in the gloves. We have a lot of data. We will show the audience the first event on Saturday.

So it’s a gamification of the sport of boxing. And I think this is the key to the younger generation. We make the sport faster.

Would you reach out to Frank Warren and Queensberry to get some fights on the Kabayel-Hysa bill?

Yeah, I think so. To be honest, we have at the same date, we have also a big event, a huge event where a lot of good fighters will be fighting like Labinot Xhoxhaj, which is the number 13 of the WBC rankings. He’s the EBU champion. Emanuel Odiase will fight there.

But, for sure, we will get in touch with them and show them our good fighters. I think our fighters will sell good tickets and we can push also the promotion.

Why is Kabayel so popular at the moment?

He showed that he’s a great boxer. He always went to the tournament [fight card] to lose and he won and it was impressive.

And you need to know that we have a huge Kurdish target group in Germany and Agit is their hero. I think a lot of the fans from Agit are from the Kurdish community, but now the media, the mainstream media also write about Kabayel. A lot of people from other businesses come to me and ask me about Agit Kabayel.

They reach a huge target group. I think we can do similar things with the Ademi Brothers and the Albanian community.

But my goal is not just to reach a single target group. I want to have the mainstream. I want to build up boxing like a mainstream media, like it was with the Klitschko brothers, where we reached I think 20 million people when they fought.

So I want to build up a huge target group for Ringside Zone.

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Ben Whittaker doesn’t enjoy doing media, which is annoying because he’s good at it.

I spoke to his trainer Andy Lee for Total Boxing today and Ben has a cameo in the video.

He was getting changed when Lee found him.

“Put your pants on. You’re on YouTube,” Lee laughed.

“Ben, how are you?”

“Yeah, not too bad. I think the last time we saw each other was Dubai, wasn’t it?” he said.

“It was.”

Back then, Ben had been an in-demand interview for many outlets, but he made time to humour me and we spoke for a while.

And although he might have a “Marmite” public persona, it’s hard to find someone to say a bad word about him.

This week on the Five Live Boxing Podcast, both Richie Woodhall and Steve Bunce posted glowing character references of Whittaker.

But make no mistake. Whittaker can fight, and while Lee had the opportunity to cut his teeth at the Kronk in Detroit under Emanuel Steward, Whittaker would have embraced that opportunity.

“Of course, it would have been a legendary time,” Whittaker said. “The only time I’ve experienced anything like that is when SugarHill used to turn the heating up in Miami. So hopefully that was kind of like that.”

The legendary Kronk spawned generations of world-class warriors. Whittaker learning against the likes of Michael Moorer and Thomas Hearns would have been a sight to see.

(Picture by Cris Esqueda/Matchroom Boxing)

**

Ben Whittaker boxes Connor Wallace on Saturday in Birmingham. While Whittaker is big business, it is fair to say he is not the biggest story of the week. That has been everything that has gone on around the heavyweight bout in December between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury.

Does that frustrate Whittaker, that he is not the name on everyone’s lips?

“No, no, not at all. At the end of the day, it’s a big fight for both of them.

“And at the end of the day, my fight’s Saturday. And I don’t really like to do too much media, so it took a bit of that heat off me. So it’s perfect. But at the end of the day, they’ve got their press conference today and our fight’s Saturday. So there’s nothing really combating the two.”

In June, in New York, Whittaker made his US debut against Richard Rivera, whom he dismissed in two one-sided and impressive rounds.

New York was enamoured by him.

“I made it look like it wasn’t a match for me. But on paper, really, he could have been a WBC cruiserweight world champion,” Whittaker explained. “He lost on a really, really close decision against a great fighter in Badou Jack. He was a good opponent, but he showed my levels really.”

Whittaker has often been described as “Marmite”, because of the like-or-loathe reactions he can generate.

Has he considered a Marmite sponsorship?

No, because he’s not keen on it.

“I’ve tried it on toast. I’m not a fan, to be fair,” he smiled. “I’ve tried the Aldi version as well. It’s probably a little bit better.”

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For 40 years, Thomas Hauser has been one of boxing’s great writers.

A winner of dozens of awards, author of many books and, not least, Muhammad Ali’s official biographer, Hauser has chronicled the fights, the fighters and the business of boxing with real vigour and without fear.

His recent pieces on the heinous BoxRaw/Riyadh Season sparring club shows, the Ali Revival Act and the ill-fated Times Square event in 2025 have highlighted the gap between Hauser and the rest of those covering the sport.

His contributions to boxing are likely unmatched, and that is not hyperbole. Of course, he is in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

There is a great quote about Thomas and – to paraphrase – the gist of it is, “Oh God, Thomas Hauser is writing about me,” said in a way that conveys honour and privilege. The other quote is, “Oh God, Thomas Hauser is writing about me,” said in a way that speaks of alarm and fear.

“Boxing is a great writer’s sport,” Hauser told me on a recent visit to London. “And you know that because you’ve made it the centerpiece of your professional life. But my interests go beyond boxing. The first book I wrote was Missing, which was then made into the feature film with Jack Lemon. I’ve written non-fiction about race relations. I wrote a philosophy on moral values book about Chernobyl. The Charles Dickens and Mark Twain books led me into that world. I wrote a book called The Beethoven Conspiracy, which is a thriller about the search for a lost Beethoven conspiracy.

“And really the reason I did that was I realised all the music I was listening to was from the 1960s and earlier, which was my time for growing up. And I missed the infusion of new music into my life. And I said, ‘Well, Beethoven’s been around for hundreds of years and if I understood him and his music, maybe I’d appreciate it. And what better way to learn about something than to write about it?’”

But boxing, with both its endearing qualities and malevolent politics, continues to entice Hauser.

(Hauser, far right, and the author, left, collect their plaques at this year’s BWAA awards ceremony in New York)

“Boxing is ever-changing,” he says. “There’s this ever-changing cast of characters.

“And it’s something I keep coming back to, partly socially, because a big part of my social life revolves around people I’ve met in boxing. It’s something I’m good at. And you like to keep your finger in something like that. I like boxing people, and I like being one of them. It’s an honour to be part of boxing. And again, as I’ve said many times, some of the best people I’ve met in my life were in boxing, many of the worst people I’ve met in my life were in boxing. But I enjoy the exchange. And I feel privileged to have spent as much time as I have in boxing.

“The most obvious example of that being the years I spent with Muhammad Ali. I will never have a professional project that brings me as much joy as the time I spent with Muhammad, working with him, writing about him, because that was a very special experience with a special man.”

Hauser is an attorney by trade, but he started writing in 1977.

In 1983, he peeked behind the curtain of the boxing business when he wrote The Black Lights, documenting the story of Billy Costello while exploring what life was like in boxing’s gyms, boardrooms and, of course, prize rings. Hauser saw it all, from the underbelly to the bright lights.

The sport was a different world then, and while boxing remains easy to infiltrate, back then the doors were open wider still.

By Hauser’s own admission, he couldn’t walk into a Yankees training session. He couldn’t get into the Knicks locker room. But he could go to Gleason’s and speak to world champions.

While you can still go to Brooklyn and get into Gleason’s without an eyebrow being raised, much has changed, not least how the sport is covered.

Back then, the major newspapers in the UK and the US had dedicated boxing scribes – and they were some of the finest sportswriters in the world.

The big fighters were big news in pop culture, not merely retained in social media silos, and boxing was a TV staple.

While boxing boasts incredibly impressive online analytics today, it is not the same, and Hauser has witnessed that and agrees with the statement.

“I do,” he continues. “You write complete articles, not just books. I read you regularly, and you write full, complete, in-depth articles. But there’s so much clickbait out there. I’ll have people tell me, ‘Oh, I wrote 600 articles last year.’

“No, you couldn’t write 600 articles. You might have posted on social media 600 times or put up two-paragraph regurgitations of press releases. But it’s not real, in-depth, thoughtful writing.

“And we need more people telling the stories the way they are, not posturing, not from the point of view of shilling, but talking about it honestly. Years and years ago, a fan sent me an email, and he said, ‘I’m in marketing and one of the things I’ve learned in marketing is I can sell perfume that smells bad. I can sell a shirt that’s ugly. I cannot sell bad sports because sports fans know whether or not they’re being entertained.’ And too often, boxing fans are not entertained.

“If there’s a fight, they turn on the TV, and they see one-sided A-side versus B-side undercard fights. They see a boring main event where they know in advance who’s going to win. Very often, it comes on at a ridiculous time. In the United States, when you have a major pay-per-view event, the main event goes on sometimes around midnight. Can you imagine the National Football League or NBA putting on a flagship event that starts at midnight? It’s quite possible that if you people in the UK want to see Fury-Joshua, if it happens, you’ll have to wait till four o’clock in the morning to watch it. I mean, this is not how you build a fan following.

“In the United States, I don’t even know half the time when the fight I want to watch starts because they’ll tell you that the telecast starts at 8pm Eastern time, but they don’t tell you when the main event fighters are going to walk to the ring. And if they do tell you, sometimes they’re off by 45 minutes. No sport holds its middle finger up to its fans as often as boxing does.

“It does not treat the fans well. If you go to a fight in the United States, you might watch a fight, it lasts a round, then you have 45 minutes of downtime and then there’s another fight, and then there’s more downtime. And boxing is a great sport. I feel, and I’ve said it, that boxing at its best is the greatest sport in the world. But I’d like to see the people who run the sport be a little more solicitous of the fans in a genuine way. You know, don’t say, ‘We’re doing this for the fans,’ and then screw the fans.

“Really give the fans what they want. Now, the National Football League in the United States does that in a very real way when they televise football. The [soccer] World Cup did that. The on-site fan experience was pretty exploitative. There were a lot of problems that I had with the World Cup. But for the most part, when people around the world wanted to watch the World Cup on whatever platform they were watching it on, they knew when the game was going to start. They had a satisfying experience watching it. They knew how to market it and present it. I’d like to see boxing do that more.”

Hauser lives in New York, but his interest in boxing’s machinations is not restricted to the USA. He follows big-time boxing and has a contacts book that would be the envy of many in the sport. And when he calls, people pick up.

But he is quick to identify the difference in the health of the sport when it comes to separating the United States from the United Kingdom.

“Certainly, you have people in the UK, Frank Warren, Eddie Hearn, they know how to promote it at the grassroots level. They know how to engage their constituencies,” Hauser states.

“But as things move up the ladder, the fans tend to be marginalised more and more and more, because that’s where the money is. And it’s a shame. I understand.

“I’m a traditionalist. But there are some things about tradition that are good, that stand the test of time, and we should go back to them. There’s a reason that the fans in the United States at least have turned away from boxing.”

In the US, he refers to boxing as “a niche sport.”

“There was a time when the heavyweight champion of the world was the most coveted title in sports,” he recalls.

“My mother could have told you who the heavyweight champion was, and it didn’t have to be Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali, she could have told you that it was Ingemar Johansson, that’s how famous the heavyweight champion was. And now, if you go out on the street and ask 50 people who’s the heavyweight champion of the world, I don’t think a whole lot of people are going to say, ‘Well, [Agit] Kabayel has the WBC title, and Murat Gassiev is the WBA champion, and Filip Hrgovic has this belt.’

“Sport has been destroyed by the lack of [credible] champions, by the high paywalls. Back when I started, the highest paywall in the United States certainly was HBO. In fact, it wasn’t even HBO.

“When I was writing The Black Lights, it was ABC, CBS, and NBC, the three broadcast networks that really were the centre of boxing. And then eventually HBO came in, but that was a fairly low-price paywall. The best fought the best, as you saw from Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler.

“You became a star by winning big fights. You didn’t have to wait to become a star and then fight the big fight. So the sport has really been shooting itself in the foot.

“It’s easy to look and say, ‘Well, that’s just a grumpy old man.’ And, you know, old people think the music was better when they were young, or the food was better when they were young, and everything else.

“But boxing, certainly in the United States, was better when you had recognisable heavyweight champions, not just heavyweight champions, but champions in all weight divisions. And the best fought the best, and people had access to the sport.

“And when Turki Al-Sheikh came into the sport, people were saying he will save boxing.

“But it now looks as though Riyadh Season is getting close to exiting boxing. Might not, but right now the only two fights on the drawing board, I believe, are Fury-Joshua, which may or may not happen, and Canelo-Mbilli. And we have to ask ourselves, ‘Is boxing better off now than it was when Turki Al-Sheikh came in?’ And yes, he gave us some very good fights, specifically, the heavyweight fights involving Joshua and Fury and Oleksandr Usyk. But right now, are we as a sport better off than we were when he came into it? I don’t think so. And Zuffa Boxing, certainly in the United States, doesn’t show any signs of making it better, just making it worse.

“So there’s a lot of work to still be done, but boxing is such a great sport that I hope it gets done.”

Hauser was in London on business this month. He spoke at the Houses of Parliament about his life in boxing, on a night during which it again became clear how important the sport is in communities. It was there where London mayor Sadiq Khan discussed his belief that Anthony Joshua-Tyson Fury had to take place in the UK.

But Hauser was also promoting a new book, and it’s not a boxing one.

Hauser scratched another literary itch of historical fiction by writing a Sherlock Holmes novel – Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Rutledge.

“I’ve written historical fiction about Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Beethoven,” he explains.

“I had written three previous detective stories. I enjoyed both genres enormously and I decided to blend the two together and write about Sherlock Holmes. And the genesis for it all was, I had this line in my head, ‘She is a beautiful woman, Watson.’

“And everything flowed from there, the plot, the characters. Now, I changed the opening line a bit from ‘she is a beautiful woman’ to ‘she is an unusual woman’ but I had a wonderful time writing this book. It’s great fun to have Holmes and [his sidekick] Watson and Mrs. Rutledge rattling around in your head.”

Obviously there have been many iterations of Holmes and his ensemble of characters, and Hauser has focused on traditional Holmes, with the first half of the book set in 1891 and the second in 1906.

It’s not Holmes vs. the Nazis. Holmes is not depicted as a James Bond-type action hero. He’s a sleuth who uses his cunning and guile to level any playing field.

And Hauser has created a powerful and formidable female lead in Mrs. Rutledge.

Often, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the original Holmes author, has female characters in more submissive roles, whether they’re cooks, maids or victims.

But Hauser is used to making women the stars. Two years ago, he wrote a book called My Mother and Me. His mother, Eleanor, died, aged 96, four years ago.

“My mother lived a long, very rewarding life,” Hauser says.

“And My Mother and Me reached out to a totally different audience. It was not just about relationships between parents and children, but what it’s like to get old and then very old, and finally reach a point where you really feel you’ve lived long enough and you’re ready to die.

“And one of the most rewarding things for me is when I get emails from a reader who will say, ‘I just read My Mother and Me and it resonated with me because of my mother or my father or my son.’ And there are a couple of new Muhammad Ali anecdotes in My Mother and Me, so I keep coming back to that. But I just love writing in all genres.”

His new book tells the story of Holmes and Mrs. Rutledge.

“And I enjoyed creating that character, having Mrs. Rutledge and Holmes interact with each other,” he adds. “And then, as the story evolves, see how they change each other. One of the things that makes good fiction work is that the characters change over time. And they do that together here in a sense. And I’ve got a murderer, I’ve got villains, I’ve got good characters, there’s betrayal, sexual obsession. I touch on a lot of themes. But at the end of the day, I hope that people simply read this and say, ‘Hey, I enjoyed this. This was a fun read. This was a good book.’

“One of the most satisfying things about writing for a living is the realisation that on occasion people actually read what I write. You’re a writer, you’re a creative artist, you have that feeling.

“So if people read Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Rutledge and they enjoy it, then I’ve done my thing on that.”

Hauser implores those who read the new book to reach out to him with their thoughts by contacting him directly at thomashauserwriter@gmail.com.

“I promise that I will respond,” he says. “I like hearing from readers. And if they have something negative to say, I’m open to listening to that too. If all somebody writes me is, ‘Oh, I loved it,’ that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything new. So, if somebody has something thoughtful to say on the other side of the coin, I’d love to hear that too.”

**

But Hauser is far from done with boxing. He has a couple more books in the pipeline, including a quotations book he’s worked on for years that stretches over 100,000 words and that dates back from the Iliad all the way up to the present day and would serve as the complete collection of boxing quotes. And there’s more to come on Ali.

“I also came upon, several months ago, a treasure trove of unpublished photographs from Ali-Frazier III in Manila,” Hauser reveals. “And those will be published in book form sometime next year by Pear Publishing along with the text that I will write based, in large part, on 75 hours’ worth of old tapes with Joe Frazier that have never seen the light of day before. I love writing about boxing and I’m hoping that both of these books, The Treasury of Boxing Quotations and the coffee table Ali-Frazier III book, will add to what’s out there to help people understand and appreciate boxing in general and Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in particular.”

Hauser’s literary contributions are already beyond significant in boxing. The more he can offer the sport, the better, even if we have to share him with Beethoven, Sherlock Holmes and Mark Twain and, of course, Mrs. Rutledge.

When you look at Conor Benn, as a contorted, aggressive, bombing force, it is clear that particular apple did not fall far from the tree.

Father Nigel was a brilliant warrior, courageous, all heart, known for being at his most dangerous when either hurt or with his back to the ropes.

As a significant underdog this weekend against Ryan Garcia in Las Vegas, Conor’s back is to the wall.

He is not expected to win. Many don’t think he will hear the final bell.

But he has inspiration in his corner in the shape of his father, who has no doubt his boy produces an upset.

Then, he will emerge fully from his Hall of Fame father’s vast shadow. No longer would he be Nigel Benn’s son, but Nigel would become Conor’s father.

Nigel, 62, chuckles at that.

“That’s what people have been saying, ‘You’re Conor Benn’s dad, isn’t you?’ Now I go, ‘Conor Benn’s my son.’ Just bring him down a bit, you know what I mean? Bring him down a bit. But yeah, he’s doing really well, I’m so happy for him, really happy for him.”

The Benns have been in camp in Los Angeles for several weeks before wrapping up preparations in Las Vegas ahead of the fight.

The Benn name is up in lights up and down The Strip, and Nigel could not be prouder. It was the revenge win over Chris Eubank that elevated Benn to the levels he now operates at.

“It’s after the second Eubank fight, he put himself back on the map,” his dad told me. “He won that fight convincingly, then he fought Regis Prograis and done really well. So I’m just happy to see where he’s gone. And you know what, he’s gone out there and he’s done it. He’s worked hard, he’s grafted for the last 10 years to put himself in this position. So I can’t fault him, you know?”

When his son turned over, despite debuting at the O2 Arena, there were not high hopes for where Conor could get to, and Nigel admits that.

“I never thought it’d be like where he is today,” he said. “And it just surpassed what I thought he was going to get. I do think he surpassed himself.”

Benn was a Hall of Famer who notched several huge wins and was a two-weight champion, at middleweight and super middleweight. Is he more satisfied that Conor has made a fortune, or that his son is now challenging for titles?

“Well, I think at the end of the day, one thing is I’m glad that he’s has got financial security, because at the end of the day you can have a guy that fights for titles, he doesn’t go nowhere,” Nigel said. “He then leaves boxing, he’s got to go back to work. So with me, I look at it, it’s like I wanted to win titles, because I know me personally, me winning titles, money’s going to follow automatically because I can put bums on the seats. Some fighters are good but just can’t sell a ticket. And Conor can do both. And he’s proved that he can do it. He can go there, he can go and do 12 hard rounds and he can get the crowd excited. So he’s got everything that he needs. And he’s doing well now. He’s doing really well.”

Back when Nigel was fighting, the internet was an optic-fibre pipedream, social media wasn’t an idea and there were only four TV channels in the UK on British televisions. Newspapers were big business, and if you were in them, frankly, you were famous. Nigel was very famous, but now Conor has a social following that stretches into millions.

How would he compare their different experiences of fame?

“Well, I think because even now it’s so funny, we had the young and the old [people tuning in to watch], when we were fighting Eubank and all that, we had the crowd, we had the British population watching these two guys fight. But now you’ve got social media, which is completely different.

“It’s another level. But would I prefer to be in this time or my time? I would always choose my time over everything because I really enjoyed my time. Because here now, it’s just something different. It’s something I don’t really understand.”

How does he feel his son is coping with the fame, and how did Nigel handle it?

“I don’t know, I didn’t really cope with it well really. I just… you just get caught up in that razzamatazz.

“And I don’t think Conor’s actually done that. I think at the beginning, he was a bit off the rails, but now he’s got his feet firmly on the ground, got a third children, and yeah, he’s just living, he’s absolutely living the dream. We talk about him now and we look at his lovely big mansion that he has and we look at it and think, ‘Mate, look at you, son. Look what you’ve achieved.’ And you’ve got to pinch yourself to know that he’s not just totally secured his kids’ lives, but his great-grandkids’ lives. That’s how much he’s making. Which is good because at the end of the day, that’s all you want your son to do, be successful in everything that he does. And now he has a shot at the WBC. How good is that?”

That is all well and good, but Conor has come this far in 26 fights and he’s now 29. But there is only one thing that Nigel really wants to see his boy get out of boxing.

“Be a world champion,” he said.

“That’s it. Win the green belt like I did. And then at the end of the day, he decides if he’s going to carry on or if he’s going to leave and start a new life… But it’s very hard if you’re a world champion, which I believe he will be. I’ve never seen anybody train like my son, ever. Ever, ever. I ain’t seen nobody train like my son. He’s another level. Since day dot. It’s even more intense now. He’s got his strength and conditioning coach Dan [Lawrence], Pedro [Neymar], Tony [Sims]. He’s got everything. He’s got his chef that cooks him special foods and everything. So he’s got everybody working around him.”

And the Benns have been going to church often in the build-up. Sims is a born-again Christian, Nigel is a man of God and Conor has followed that path, too. And this is something else Nigel has gratitude for.

“I think he had a tough time [with] at religion going to school,” Nigel said of his boy.

“He found it very hard. But now, he knows that he needs faith and he realised everything that he went through [with regards to the doping tests], he thought like, ‘Why did God let him go through things like that?’ And now he’s seeing, we don’t understand why he went through it, we might never know why he went through that but he knows that, without Jesus, he would never have been here. He would have been six-foot under. I believe that he was suffering with depression the day that Jesus got him through all this.”

Conor has spoken about the gloom that descended as he tried to prove his innocence and fought the authorities tooth and nail until he was allowed to fight in British rings again. But it wasn’t just Conor who felt it. Seeing his son through that period took a toll on Nigel, too, and he, of course, remains convinced his son is a clean athlete.

“I was suffering with him because I stayed in England for six months. And so what he was going through, you’re watching your young boy broken,” Nigel recalled. “And yeah, I don’t even drink. I ended up drinking, this is no word of a lie. For six months, I must have drunk a half a bottle of wine at night. I don’t drink. And plus I had bipolar, so everything I was taking was really affecting me. And then when I come back to Australia, I was sitting on the bed and [wife] Carol said, are you alright? And I just burst out crying because I think to myself, ‘I just watched my son go through that.’ But yeah, it affected me as well. And I didn’t realise I just had to get out of that. It went on for a while. But by the grace of God, we both got through it. And now we’re looking at the other side and we’re in a great position. Three beautiful kids, a lovely wife. He’s got everything you could ever dream of. I don’t know if I can say [it was good] God putting him through that and the way he went through that, but he’s come through the other end and he’s in a good place now. He’s in a good headspace. “Very good headspace.

“I think after this fight, when he’s got that belt around his waist, I don’t know where he’s going to go. I don’t know who he’s going to be looking at. But he’s going to have so much opportunities. I know he’s going to win that fight. I’m 100 per cent sure.”

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It’s been more than three decades since Nigel Benn saw his name up in lights in Las Vegas. This week, he has seen his son, Conor, repeat that feat ahead of his WBC welterweight title challenge of Ryan Garcia.

“I think I’m just going to take a picture of it, frame it, put it up on the wall… WBC champion,” Nigel said, asked how it would feel to see his son’s likeness in Sin City.

“You know what I mean? That’s it really, knowing that my son’s made it, to have his name up in lights like I did in Vegas. How good is that? And fighting out at the T-Mobile, brilliant, brilliant.”

Benn had some big fights against some top Americans, including Doug DeWitt, Iran Barkley, and Gerald McClellan, who travelled to London to face the Essex warrior in a tragic fight that McClellan never fully recovered from. Benn had five consecutive US bouts between 1989 and 1990, having lost to the brilliant Michael Watson before he returned to England for his historic fight against Chris Eubank.

He has been in Los Angeles in camp with Conor before they arrived in Sin City this week, and just three months ago, Benn was in the sleepy town of Canastota in upstate New York to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Benn is a very fit 62 years old. He won 42 times as a pro, lost five and had one draw – which came in the Eubank return.

One of his big wins came in Vegas, 36 years ago last month, when he destroyed Iran Barkley in a roughhouse one-round blitz.

Benn remembers mauling the New Yorker well.

“I didn’t actually want the three-knockdown rule,” he said. “Because I know for a fact I would really have ironed him out. I knew that. I think we were fighting in eight-ounce gloves. I don’t even think there were 10-ounce gloves then, they were little small gloves and I mean, I was hitting him hard. He hit me but I just knew that I had the strength to stop him. And I would have stopped him. I know I would have stopped him. I really would have stopped him. I didn’t want the three-knockdown rule.”

Benn and Barkley have only crossed paths once since, at a WBC convention, and Barkley has constantly labelled Benn as a dirty fighter.

“He still keeps whinging and all that. I hit when he was on the ground and all things like that,” said Benn.

“Dirty fighter.”

“All that rubbish, you know what I mean? It was the emotion that got me. When he got up, he was okay. It’s just he wasn’t going to beat me, that’s it, so they’ve got to make up some frigging excuse. Americans like doing that when they’re not on top.”

Whatever Benn says, the history books show he took on some audacious challenges. It is his heart, spirit and courage that eventually got him his plaque at the Hall of Fame.

Ironically, the Hall of Fame reached out to me to get in contact with Benn, and he wasn’t having it. He didn’t want anyone to have his number and so told Ed Brophy, via me, to go through his lawyer.

“I’ve heard about being inducted many years ago,” Benn laughed. “I didn’t know if it was real. I just thought ‘Oh no.’ I just thought it might have been a Mickey Mouse company. I really don’t know.”

I’d told Nigel it was legitimate, but he remained suspicious.

“And then, when I found out it was real, me and my wife, we were over there,” he said. “It was a good experience meeting all the ex-world champions, referees, that was really nice. I enjoyed it and it’s like I look at it, it’s the guy from little Ilford, Essex getting inducted to the International Boxing Hall of Fame. It was just amazing, and then you go down and they’re driving cars down these roads in the parade and you’re waving at everybody and the street is all packed with people down there and it’s going on for a couple of miles. It’s just an experience. I was part of that [2026 class] with Antonio Tarver and Triple G [Gennadiy Golovkin], so what a great time to get inducted to the Hall of Fame and Nigel Benn’s in there.”

This year, both Benn and bitter rival Eubank Snr were on the ballot but only Nigel was elected.

Does he think Eubank should follow him in?

“I don’t know, really,” Benn said.

*

The relationship between Benn and Eubank is complex at best. They could not be any more different. Benn was a straightforward warrior, no frills. Eubank was the show pony, substance, yes, but style, too.

But Benn’s body of work included top US fighters and that is, he contends, what sets his career apart from Eubank’s.

“I think because I fought everybody,” Benn said. “I didn’t avoid nobody. I went over to America and I fought. I fought all the best, they put their best over here and I fought them all. I didn’t avoid nobody. Anybody that they put in front of me, I came to fight. I didn’t have hand-picked fighters. I fought everybody that come my way, win, lose or draw, fighting Eubank, fighting Watson, fighting Steve [Collins], fighting Gerald McClellan, fighting Iran Barkley, fought Doug DeWitt, Robbie Sims, everybody. Didn’t avoid anybody in my time. Nobody.”

Eubank has often talked about facing less capable fighters to maximise his earning potential. That was not Benn’s attitude.

“No. I didn’t do that,” he added. “I just think fighting the people that the public wanted to see… I didn’t care. I’d fight anybody, whoever they put in front of me. That was my whole attitude. I just wanted to fight. The British public, I know the kind of fights that they like and that was me. Didn’t avoid nobody.”

It was after he was upset by the superb Watson that he travelled to the US to train. Benn went to the gyms and learned what he could from some of the best fighters and coaches and there was a marked difference in gym cultures.

“Yeah, it was different because I actually didn’t really like sparring,” Benn revealed. “But in America, they live for sparring. That’s their life, sparring. I wasn’t like that. All I needed, all I wanted to do was just get my distance. Some fighters, you look at Tommy Hearns, you look at Terry Norris, all of them, they’re all punch drunk because you know what they’d done? They had wars in the gym, left it in the gym. I wasn’t going to be one of them people.”

Benn is in shape today, and he believes the discipline he has has allowed him to keep his health.

“I kept all my faculties intact and I keep training, I train twice a day, every day without fail,” he said. “So I’m always keeping myself active. I’m in good shape.”

Benn was in some brutal fights, but it was never about how he might be remembered. It was about testing himself against the best. His legacy stands there now, but he never considered it at the time.

“Do you know what? You know, at that time, Tris, I wasn’t thinking about legacy,” Benn said.

“I’m just going out there and I’m just going to fight the best Americans that come my way… To Iran Barkley, to Doug DeWitt, to Robbie Sims. I just fought everybody that came my way.

“I didn’t care who they were. America got what? But, you know, I wanted to show them that, you know, that... Because back then, Americans were the best fighters. They had all the gold medallists in the Olympics and everything. I just wanted to fight whoever was around. As you know, I’m against everybody. I’m not going to avoid nobody. And in those days, if you want to be the best, you had to beat the Americans. And that’s what I did. I never lost to an American.”

*

It was a different story for Benn in England, where he lost to Watson, once to bitter rival Eubank and twice to Irishman Steve Collins.

Unlike Eubank, Nigel has remained on very good terms with Collins; Steve defeated Benn in the final two fights of the Dark Destroyer’s career.

There is a reverence in his voice when he talks about Collins.

“I think because me and Steve, we know what we have to do,” Benn explained.

“It’s not like the other person [Eubank Snr]… Me and Steve, we can go out, we work together [doing after-dinner speaking], me and Steve. When I come back to England, I’ll be working with Steve and Michael Watson. We have no pressure and no one’s trying to nick the stage, nick the limelight. We all work together. We all know that we all make a living together and we love it. You know, we don’t try and talk about frigging poetry and all that rubbish while we’re talking… while we’re talking about our careers.

“He’ll come out with a poem or something rubbish like that, it kills the atmosphere all the time. But with Steve, we talk, we laugh, we joke, we’ve got time for each other.”

While the bouts involving Eubank Jnr and Conor were sold with the backdrop of spite, both appear to have mildly softened their stances on one another since.

But the fathers’ up-and-down relationship continues as they both mature, and it was the fights between the youngsters that seem to have driven a further wedge between the dads.

Eubank Junior contends he was ill and terribly weight-drained, which resulted in his rematch loss to Conor after he edged their first bout, a war, on points.

“Right, right,” Benn added.

“Let me explain something. How many fights has Eubank fought at middleweight? Most of his career. All of a sudden, he fights a welterweight and then ‘Oh, I’m struggling at the weight’ but all through his career he’s fought at middleweight?

“‘Oh, I’m struggling. I’m going to let people see me sweating.’ Mate, grow up. And then Eubank [Senior] said, ‘Oh look, they’re trying to kill my son.’ Nobody’s going to kill your son. Your son’s like 33 or 34 years old. He knows what he’s doing. He’s fought at middleweight all the time but all of a sudden – and this is what drives me up the wall – Eubank Senior comes in there saying like, ‘Oh, they’re trying to kill my son.’ Nobody’s trying to kill your son. Your son chose to fight because he’s getting paid good and he knows he can make the weight, so that’s whatever he’d done. That was all down to him. Nobody had a gun to his head. That was all his decision. So when you come out with it all, it’s a load of baloney.”

Does that mean that the old opponents are no longer on good terms at all? There had previously been a thaw in their relationship.

“Nothing, we’re just like… we’re as far from the east to the west and the north to the south,” Benn said. “We’re just different people: me and Conor and Chris Eubank Senior and Junior, we’re just different people. Before the fight, at the weigh-in, I went to shake his [Senior’s] hand and he put his arm in my chest and I thought to myself, ‘You got no respect. You ain’t got no class.’ He thinks he’s all class but you know what… I thought, ‘How are you so disrespectful’ and I told him to, ‘F off, don’t come near me.’ That was it. And he was lucky that I didn’t actually put my fist in his face because that was so disrespectful, but I won’t speak to him again anyway. Got nothing to do with him.

“Me and Chris set this platform for them [the sons], we set a platform for them… You know he loves the limelight, but hey, ‘Chris, look what we done.’ It’s sad because of how he’s carrying on. He just wants to be in front of the cameras posing and doing what he normally does. We don’t care. So when he comes out and put his elbow in my chest like that, I thought, ‘Mate, nah.’ He ain’t doing that again to me. I got no time for him. I’ll never work with him again. “We’ll never do a show with him ever again.”

**

Benn has been absorbed into Conor’s camp for this fight. He and Tony Sims have been pumping iron at Gold’s Gym where they managed to see Arnold Schwarzenegger working out, but the Austrian icon escaped before doing any pictures with anyone.

But Benn is about peace now. He’s religious, and thrilled that Conor has followed him and has the church as a significant part of his life.

Nigel has suffered openly with depression, but his love for his family is his priority when it comes to enjoying life today.

“My journey is me now spending time now, I’m over the other side of the clock [living in Australia], it’s about me now spending quality time with my wife. That’s all,” Benn said. “All I want to do is travel the world with her now, once Conor’s fight is out of the way, all I’m going to do is dedicate my time to my wife … My little boy Levi, he wants to be a professional footballer. Now I’m going to have to channel my energy into him. He’s 16 now and he’s a good little footballer and I can see God’s hand is upon him. He’s an anointed one and I want to see him do well, like Conor, so I’m going to try my best to help my little boy get there and that’s what I’m going to do: spending quality time with him because he’s coming back to England. First, he’s going to Barcelona to play football out there, then he’s coming to France and then back to England, then we go back to Australia. So he’s got the opportunity. I’m just encouraging him to get that mindset like what Conor’s got.”

That is the mindset Nigel had, too, as one of the great British boxing warriors and, yes, as a Hall of Famer, even if he thought it was a prank.

(Pictures courtesy of Matchroom Boxing)

Part 2 is coming tomorrow and will feature Nigel talking about Conor and his upcoming fight with Ryan Garcia, Conor leaving Matchroom, the dark days they’ve shared and much more

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman is headed to Las Vegas to preside over the big T-Mobile Arena bout between WBC welterweight champion Ryan Garcia and challenger Conor Benn. Here, we’ve spoken about Zuffa’s arrival in the sport, Benn-Garcia, Turki Alalshikh, why the title is not yet on the line between Noël Mikaelian and Jai Opetaia, where Fury and Joshua should take place and what he does to relieve stress.

Okay, Mauricio, it’s been a while since we’ve actually had a catch-up, so how has 2026 been for you and the WBC?

Well, it’s been a sensational year in many ways. The activity worldwide has been tremendous, great fights, great match-ups, historic events, a fight at the Pyramids, which was unbelievable, also to see the Tokyo Dome sell-out with Inoue and Nakatani.

So it’s been a great year overall, and I believe that boxing is in very good shape, with many great fights coming up in the second half of the year, and I feel very well about the status of the sport.

You mentioned there a couple of highlights, but what are the biggest challenges boxing is facing right now?

Well, the challenges are the constant battle between the promoters and the networks and the creation of that league that has created too much confusion regarding the changing of the law [the Ali Revival Act] in the United States, which has not happened. Everybody is talking in different directions, but boxing is global.

Boxing is a sport that depends on the value of the fighters, and every fighter comes from different backgrounds, from different countries. They all come from a platform that is already established, that begins with a small gymnasium, small trainers, small promoters, and they come up the ladder to become superstars. I’m hopeful that all these powerful entities will continue to work together, will continue to try to make things happen, and that boxing grows as a sport deserves to grow worldwide.

And this week is an example of them actually working together. Obviously, Zuffa have the show but Ryan is a Golden Boy fighter and they’re fighting for a WBC belt, having said that they weren’t necessarily going to follow the sanctioning bodies. So this week is an example of people working together, is that right?

That’s absolutely right. It’s a great example. I am very proud of both our champion Ryan Garcia and challenger Conor Benn. The way they both have spoken about the WBC green belt is humbling.

Ryan has displayed his belt with pride, and Conor has proudly given many interviews saying how much he has dreamt of conquering the green belt that his father won decades ago. So it is a special fight and the attention will be fully on Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, with television networks working together, Paramount and DAZN, Golden Boy and Zuffa. So it’s a good moment for the sport.

Hopefully, that will carry on, with more agreements and more understanding that we all can work together.

And your cruiserweight title is on the line too, right, with Noël Mikaelian against Jai Opetaia.

Not at this moment.

The WBC ordered Noël Mikaelian, who is WBC cruiserweight champion, to fight David Benavidez. And Benavidez’s promoter Samson [Lewkowicz] reached an agreement with Mikaelian’s promoter Don King. They reached an agreement to fight in December and Mikaelian went ahead and committed himself to another fight other than the one that the WBC had ordered.

We have made a strong effort to mediate, to try to accommodate all parties to make this work, and we’re still hopeful that the promoters can work it out between themselves and make this a WBC fight.

Do you have a deadline for that?

Well, there’s never a deadline.

Our goodwill is on the table. I remember when Cotto fought Canelo, we were still in the arena an hour before the fight trying to solve it and resolve a problem. So it is not about deadlines or threats.

It is simply about rules, about the facts that are clear and our good disposition to try to make things work out. We accept agreements between promoters. We accept step-asides.

We accept people reaching agreements to grow something for the future. So we will see what happens this week.

Ryan Garcia is a big favourite to beat Conor Benn. Do you see it that way?

I don’t think it’s a landslide. I think Conor Benn is coming off an unbelievable win against Eubank and, being such a brave and strong fighter, has all the chances in the world in the fight.

I think people are expecting an exciting fight, though, with obviously Ryan being so quick and Conor so aggressive.

Yes, the styles are what make big fights. Conor Benn is an aggressive fighter, has a good technique and Ryan has fast hands… and his power, his ring generalship.

It’s going to be a tremendous fight this Saturday night.

I know that the belt is on the line for that main event. Does it bother you that they’re not putting WBC on the posters and marketing materials? They’re just saying world title.

It doesn’t bother me. We know what the fight is all about. I hope it was a mistake by a human being doing the art or artificial intelligence doing the artwork.

But this is not exclusive. We have seen other fights in the past where they do not put the WBC belt, the WBC logo, the WBC letters... That is not proper and it takes a little bit away from the hype and the importance of the event, but it doesn’t bother me.

I don’t think it was done with bad intentions.

They didn’t include it with the IBF middleweight title in Ireland when Aaron McKenna won the title last month and they called it a world middleweight title fight, but they didn’t credit the IBF either. So I don’t know.

Maybe it is human error. I’m not sure. Well, it’s minor things.

I am not into getting into arguments about this. I believe things will be working better in the future for everyone. And, of course, artwork is a beautiful piece that remains for eternity.

When we see posters from the era of Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Leonard, all those great fights, Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed, it’s always nice to see what that event was for. So it’s one small piece of a big puzzle that should be resolved.

Obviously, both fighters have had positive tests before for PEDs. Has there been testing for this through the Clean Boxing Program?

Yes, yes. They’re both enrolled in VADA and tests have been performed. And also both fighters have submitted the safety weigh-ins, the 30, 14 and seven-day weigh-ins – they’re en route to making the weight this Friday.

There are critics out there who don’t think Conor should be ranked number one at welterweight given he’s not been down at that weight for so long. What would you say to those people?

Well, I respect anyone who has a critical belief. I respect it.

The WBC has been in very close communication with Conor Benn for several years. He was mistreated and abused through a missed or a positive anti-doping test, a banned substance. We did full research that took a lot of effort, a lot of resources from the WBC.

We had meetings with Conor personally and the ruling from the experts proved him not guilty. He was maybe banned… or he suffered the consequences for two years. But all this time we kept close to him and he always expressed his desire to fight for the WBC welterweight title.

He took and advised us of the fights he was doing against Eubank at a higher weight, these being two good opportunities for him to make the money that he made. But at all times he requested the WBC to keep him at welterweight and after his last fight he contacted me directly and pleaded to be named mandatory contender for the winner of Barrios-Garcia, which we did.

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I talked to Tyrone McKenna a few weeks ago ahead of his big fight with former sparmate Paddy Donovan in Dublin’s historic Croke Park.

There has always been so much value, for me, of taking yourself out of your comfort zone in camp and paying the price, and often that means travelling and often that means travelling to America.

It’s different out there, as McKenna eloquently describes.

Here, we speak in the midst of his camp ahead of his crunch crash on Saturday.

Hey Tyrone, thanks for doing this. Do you feel it’s another level, going to Philadelphia to prepare?

Yeah, it’s a different level. The last few years, I think, I’ve kind of just picked the easy way, the easy camps back home, and I’m training. It’s still hard training back home, but when you go away, you come over to Philly, it’s just a different level.

I’m sparring some world-class fighters. I’m in the gym with Boots, Andy Cruz, some unbelievable world champions. Bozy is a world-class coach, so the training’s just next level. It’s really, really tough, but it’s the best camp that I could get myself.

What made you decide to go out there, and why specifically Philly?

Bozy actually phoned me. I started off my career in Bozy’s gym years back. Twelve years ago. I had about three fights with him before he was even a major name in coaching. Before Boots was even known, he wasn’t even pro at the time, and he had me boxing absolutely unbelievable. He had me quite possibly in the best form I ever was in. So when he phoned me just before this fight was announced, he said he wants me back over.

He thinks that he can get me the win. He believes in me. He knows what he’s doing.

He can bring out the best in me, and I thought, you know what? This is a massive opportunity. It’s a historical night, and when I get this win, it catapults me into massive, massive fights.

So I want to give myself the best opportunity possible. I thought coming over here, being away from my family again, being away from my kids, just focusing on boxing, being in a camp where it’s tried and tested… There are world champions in there.

There are some of the best fighters in the world in that gym, and Bozy is an unbelievable coach. So I think this is my best chance to be part of that.

Getting up, I’ll be sore. I’ll be working very hard. I’ll be doing weights.

I’ll be doing sprints. So I’ll not be feeling fresh every day. So there are days that I’ll spar shit.

But sparring, as long as you’re learning, you’re learning. And as long as the sparring opponent is better than your opponent that you’re fighting, it fills me with confidence. I can’t get any better sparring out here.

It’s perfect. I’m so confident going into this fight that Paddy isn’t as good as my sparring partners. Even some of the people you wouldn’t even know are over here.

Philly is just a boxing city. It’s a real tough city. Their average boxer would probably be British champion over in the UK.

They’re very, very tough places. Spars are very, very like a doghouse. You’re shouting at each other.

You’re giving each other shit during the rounds. I’m just out of sparring right now. Me and my sparring partner talking shit the whole time.

Giving each other shit throughout the whole rounds. So yeah, that’s just a different vibe out here. And I think you need to go through a kind of tough, tough sparring to get you ready for the fights.

I’m going to walk into this fight very confident and knowing that this guy is not as good as my sparring partners. It’s not going to be as tough as my sparring partner.

How far out of your comfort zone are you in terms of living?

I’m hating life. I’m hating every day. That’s where it’s going. I’m counting down every day to go home.

It’s just tough. It’s hard being away from the kids and the family. It’s hard to go into this gym.

Like, I’ve come from gyms back home where I was only sparring, maybe six or seven spars at camp. I’m sparring three times a week over here, every single week. It’s tough, tough work.

And it’s not just easy spars. This is hard, hard work. So yeah, there’s no comfort in this at all.

Like, I haven’t got an easy day. I’m dreading every single day. But it’s for a purpose.

It’s to get me in the absolute best shape. And I know I’m so confident I’m going to be in unbelievable shape on September 5th. There’s not going to be any what-ifs after this fight.

I’ve done absolutely everything I can do to win this fight. And I believe in myself. I’ve come on leaps and bounds.

And the change in me is massive. I think I’m going to shock a lot of fighters, or a lot of people, during this fight. I think people on the inside think, ‘He’s a bit washed up, and he’s passed it, and he’s not that good anymore.’

They’re going to be shocked.

Has it made you think about, ah, if I’d done this four or five years ago?

I wish I had done it 10 years ago. But then again, would I have been where I was if I did? It’s hard to say. Obviously, I was getting the fights back home. I mean, if I was over here, would I be getting fights for an American? Would it have been different? So I can’t really complain about my career.

My career’s been unbelievable until now. So it’s a change I needed for this fight. It would have been great to have stuck with Bozy from the start because he’s an unbelievable coach.

But I can’t regret my career. I’ve had an unbelievable career so far.

And you’ve got this underrated gauntlet of fights that you’ve been on. Like the last 10 or 12 have all been against very good fighters.

I think people, a lot of people, sleep on the people I fight. I always, as I’ve said, I want big fights or no fights. I’m not one of these guys that gets beaten and has three or four journeyman fights and then fights another big fight. I fight big fight after big fight.

Back to back to back, always. I want to get in. I want to be worried in my comps.

I want to have to get up in the morning. I know I have to put it in the gym or I’m going to get beat. I don’t want to be in a camp where I go, I can slack because I’m going to win this fight.

That’s not what I’m in boxing for. I’m in boxing to test myself in every aspect in life. I don’t want to be away from my family for a journeyman.

If I’m going away, I want to be away for a reason. And yeah, so I love being in big fights. I love being involved in big fights.

I love testing myself. Seeing how good I am.

And I was there in Waterford for possibly the best two-round fight I’ve ever seen, you against Dylan Moran.

And do you know what? Going out, that wasn’t the game plan, but sitting there before, and I’ve spoken on this before, I genuinely didn’t sleep the night before. I don’t know what happened, but I could not sleep for the life of me. And then I was getting in my own head.

‘You’re not going to sleep tonight. You’re not going to sleep tonight.’ And I didn’t.

I didn’t get one minute of sleep. And then I tried to sleep during the day. Same thing happened.

It was just in my own head and I couldn’t sleep. So going into that fight, I had five rounds maximum in me. And I said to myself, I need to go out, pile the pressure on, stop this guy as quick as possible, because if this goes past four or five rounds, I’m beat.

So I went out bombing. Thankfully, I got him out in two rounds, but if I’d have gone any longer, I’d have been in trouble.

I think, you know, consensus probably had you down as the favourite in both fights against Dylan, right? Which is fair, but going into this one with Paddy, obviously they’ll certainly have you down as the underdog.

There’s no pressure.

I had a lot of pressure on Dylan because a lot of people expected me to blow him out of the water. And at the end of the day, you’re in a fight, so anything can happen.

So I was in my head, and it was like, I need to win this fight, and there was a lot of pressure in that fight, whereas this fight, everyone’s written me off. Everyone.

I don’t realise, you know, how hard of a bastard that I am. Like, I’m out here. I’m training my bollocks off.

I’m on the other side of the world. I put absolutely everything in this fight. No one should write me off.

I’m very confident. As I said, there’s no pressure on me. There’s all the pressure on him.

He’s number one in the world. He’s this future star of Irish boxing, or an Irish star of boxing now. I’m just this old man that people think is washed out.

So it’s lovely to have the pressure like that, to have people really doubting you, to have the bookies not giving you a chance, because I know for a fact that this is a winnable fight for me.

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Have you done much with Paddy in the past?

I’ve sparred Paddy about 100 rounds. I’ve sparred Paddy about 50 times, so more than 100 rounds. We know each other inside out. But I wouldn’t read into spars.

We sparred each other for about four years solid. So there were times where he was in camp, and I was out of camp, so he’d probably got the better of me in those spars. There’s spars where he was out of camp, I was in camp, I was getting the better of him in those spars.

There’s spars where I was hungover and sparring him. There’s spars where he was probably hungover and sparring me.

I don’t think we ever sparred when both of us were in camp for a fight, to be honest. So it’s hard to read spars because you don’t know where people are at in their journey. How fit they are, how sharp they are.

Are they even taking it seriously? You actually can’t read spars. What I do know is we know each other’s faults, we know each other’s weaknesses, we know each other’s strengths. And I know he’s very good.

I don’t doubt that. I know how good Paddy is. But he is beatable.

And I’m confident in exploiting his weaknesses.

What do you think of his sort of Jekyll and Hyde performances against Crocker?

Yeah, well, I think Lewis made it easy the first fight. He didn’t know what to expect. And he kind of sat up perfectly for Paddy Donovan.

That’s the kind of style Paddy likes – is what Lewis was giving him. And I think Lewis came back, read the game plan from the first fight, and came up with a new game plan. And it worked a treat for him.

So, but yeah, it’s completely different. Lewis and me, we’re completely different fighters. So I don’t read into the fights previously.

I mean, he could have had an off day against Lewis the second time. Something could have happened or whatever. So you never know what it is.

I’m just preparing for the absolute best Paddy Donovan there is. I’m sure he’s preparing for the best Tyrone McKenna.

Is there a best fighter that you’ve faced so far in the pros?

Harlem Eubank was very, very good, I think. But it’s hard to say because sometimes your camps go better than other camps, so your fights are easier or harder.

I think with that fight, I didn’t spar enough. I wasn’t as sharp as I should have been in that fight. So Harlem Eubank was on his game that day.

He’s very fast, so it was a tough fight for me that night. But my favourite fight was Jack Catterall, even though I got beat.

It kind of announced me on the world stage. No one really knew me before then. Everyone thought I was going to get stopped and I gave it to Jack Catterall in a war. People loved it. I was only beat by a point.

I was put down two or three times that fight. I only lost by a point.

And I loved it. I loved announcing myself on the world stage that night.

What do you think of this occasion that you’re going to be a part of with Paddy, Croke Park, Katie Taylor, the whole thing?

Unbelievable. As I said in a few interviews, you would never have dreamed of us. It’s too big to dream. It’s huge.

It’s Croke Park. It’s the biggest stadium in Ireland. The last boxing event was Muhammad Ali.

That’s how long ago boxing was in that place. So you never would have thought, ‘I’m going to be boxing in Croke Park. That’s my dream.’

Because it’s nobody’s dream. Unless you’re an absolute legend like Katie Taylor. That’s the only person in Ireland who could ever achieve something like this, I guess.

And to be part of this is massive. There was everyone in Ireland queuing up to fight in this show. Apart from me, I didn’t even step up.

I didn’t even think I could get on the show. So I wasn’t even thinking about it. I genuinely was like, there’s no chance.

I’m trying to get other fights on different shows. And then out of the blue, my manager just texted me here. ‘It looks like you could be on the show.’

And I was like, ‘Fucking hell.’ And trying to keep it secret for three weeks, it was killing me.

And I was worried. I still didn’t believe it when I got told until he was saying it’s sealed.

I was still doubting. I was like, ‘Is it actually happening?’ Because every other boxer is saying they’re on it. We all can’t be on it.

So someone’s lying. So when I got the phone call to come down to the press conference, that’s when I knew it was definitely on. And honestly, it’s beyond my dreams.

It’s something I’ll talk about. I’ll be the new Carl Froch. I’ll be in the bars. I’ll be telling absolutely everyone, ‘Do you know I boxed in front of 80,000 people?’

That’s going to be my new line to everyone. I’ll be drinking on this for the rest of my life.

I’m just buzzing. I’m buzzing to be part of it.

(Main picture Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing, the remainder from McKenna’s Instagram)

To follow Paddy Donovan is to ride the roller coaster.

The crushing disappointment of throwing away a lead only to be disqualified against Lewis Crocker, the opportunity to put things right in the rematch only to be dropped twice and lose a decision and then to be written off in Germany as an underdog by many, only to score a superb win over dangerman Karen Chukhadzhian.

It’s been quite an 18 months for Donovan, who now, while sitting as the No. 1 contender for Liam Paro’s IBF title, faces old sparmate Tyrone McKenna on the biggest fight card in Irish history on Saturday night.

Donovan and McKenna will box at Croke Park on Saturday before 80,000 expectant fans, who will fill the stadium to watch Katie Taylor’s final fight against Flora Pili in the headliner.

The chance for Donovan to be part of the show while he waits for Paro, who incidentally claimed the title from Crocker, was too much for the Limerick southpaw to turn down.

“Obviously Tyrone is a very experienced fighter. He’s been here many times and it’s a fight that I can’t have a slip-up in, simply. It’s a must-win fight. I can’t allow myself any slip-ups, so I’m working really hard.”

I spoke to Donovan a couple of weeks ago as the fight drew near and McKenna rounded out his training in the US under coach Bozy Ennis.

Donovan had seen that his countryman had been in Philadelphia and knew it was a sign of how seriously McKenna is taking the job.

“It’s a very, very dangerous fight, it’s one where we have to be on our best game and same goes really for the two of us. It’s two experienced fighters and we’re fighting in front of 80,000 Irish fans. So we’d want to be we want to perform. So let’s see what’s gonna happen.”

As circumstances would have it, I was in Paddy Donovan’s locker room as he wept having lost to Crocker the first time, and I was in it again in Germany as he celebrated breathing new life into his career against Karen.

The relief was palpable. Promoter Eddie Hearn had made the trip to Mannheim and I had breakfast that morning with Andy Lee, who knew what the stakes were in Germany.

Wherever it takes Donovan now, it’s been a crazy journey for the pair of them. It was Donovan who brought Lee into the coaching sphere, such was his prodigious talent, and at the start of the ride, they looked for experienced men to spar. One was Tyrone McKenna.

“Let’s just say the start of my professional journey, I would have done a lot of rounds with Tyrone while he was at the peak of his powers, so we know each other pretty well,” Donovan recalled.

Asked for detail, he added: “Listen, to be fair, Tyrone has always been very durable, very, just very experienced really, you know. I’ve always been extremely talented and, yeah, the rounds were great. They’re a great experience for me and I’ve helped him a lot in his career at that time, so we learned off each other, but it’s in the past and anything can happen and I’m just looking forward to fighting with him.”

And Donovan is expected to win. He’s a significant favourite, with McKenna a 10/1 outsider. Of course, that takes the pressure off McKenna, but Donovan is looking forward to enjoying the occasion.

“It’s the first time that I really get the chance to express myself, but the Irish fans, really whether they’re supporting me or him, they’re gonna enjoy a cracking fight. It’s a southpaw fight, he’s durable, he’s Irish. There’s a lot to it, so I’m excited to see how it unfolds. The whole venue… the whole stadium… The event. I’m just looking forward to this one.”

It is hard to envisage a time when Paddy is not asked about Lewis and Lewis is not asked about Paddy.

Donovan saw his great rival lose his IBF title in Australia and felt Liam Paro – who Donovan is now in line to face – had done enough to deservedly win the fight.

“He won the early rounds, Lewis came on strong at the end,” recalled Donovan. “I think Lewis left it a bit late to up the gears and when he did up the gears Paro struggled the last two or three rounds, but this is a big chance for me. It’s a very, very big chance to win a world title and I was confident with Crocker and I was favourite to win the fight. I ended up losing the fight, but I think this fight would suit me a lot better than Crocker did. I’m a lot more experienced, a lot more hungry and I think it’s just my time. I’m 27. I’ve felt it all so far and I’m eager now to get in and just express myself, become a world champion.”

Matchroom lost both purse bids at the time, for Crocker to fight in Australia and Donovan to fight in Germany.

Does Donovan covet the Paro fight in Ireland?

**“**It doesn’t really matter,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter where you fight. They’re saying about Crocker and Paro and if it was at home [in Ireland] he [Crocker] would have got the nod, it wouldn’t be fair because Paro won the fight, deservedly won the fight. No matter where the playing ground was, Paro won the fight. So realistically, I really don’t give a heck where the fight’s gonna be as long as it’s just a fair decision. He beats me? Well and good. But if it doesn’t and we fight, I win the fight, just give me the decision. We move forward.

“Lately, it’s all about who’s at home blah blah blah. Who really cares? As long as the best fighter wins, that’s what boxing is about, the best fighter goes through to the next stage and it gives the best fighter a chance to express himself further in his career. Doesn’t matter where the fight’s gonna be, just as long as the fight’s gonna be fair. That’s all.”

Paddy has often been the main event already in his 15-2 (11 KOs) career. Now 27, he’s happy to play second fiddle tomorrow night because, of course, when Croke Park comes alive, it will be for Katie Taylor, and Donovan is just fine with that.

“Listen, it’s hard not to listen to the noise about Katie,” he smiled. “Katie is the greatest female fighter that has ever lived. She’s from the Emerald Isles. She’s the greatest athlete we’ve ever seen in this country or probably ever will see. She’s been amazing. It’s an amazing opportunity for me as well to be on her card. It’s my third time and I’m very, very excited. Katie has done amazing things for Irish boxing and she deserves everything because outside the ring and inside the ring she’s the greatest.”

Taylor is now 40, and while she has many years on the young Limerick man, Donovan has seen more than his fair share in and out of the ring.

I joked that he must feel nearer 37 than 27.

“It feels like that lately. It just feels like that, even for myself, I suppose boxing is a strange sport,” he sighed.

“Really, it’s an extremely unforgiving, unforgettable sport. So far in my career, there’s been ups and downs, clearly to be seen. But I think that’s what’s gonna make me a better champion. I think when my story is written, to look back at it, it’ll be one of the best boxing stories that ever come out of Ireland. The controversial fights with Crocker, not becoming a world champion and to go into Germany against Karen Chukhadzhianand let’s be realistic, he is one of the most avoided fighters in the welterweight division, no one wants to fight him, so going to Germany was an extremely dangerous thing to do. A lot of people wrote me off going there and that to lose that, three losses on the record, it would have been a hard bounce back, but thankfully we got the job done. Even though I felt very, very comfortable in the fight, I thought I won the fight quite clearly. I won it by the narrowest, so yeah, boxing is a crazy sport, but this is the journey that I’m on right now and it brought me to Croke Park and it’s brought me to fight Tyrone McKenna and challenging again for a world championship [if he moves on to Paro], so hopefully, God willing, it will all be worth it in the end.”

He pledged to go “full steam ahead” at McKenna and that he is looking to win in the “best fashion possible.”

“We called him Eddie Boy,” Donovan said. “My uncle Edward was just 49 and he passed away after a stroke shortly after the Karen fight. You know, all my family is quite a close-knit family, you know, it’s just one of them things. I’m going used to it. It feels like every fight now, Tris, before or after there’s a death in the family, so we’re a bit numb to it. We just continue to go forward really.”

And while there has been trauma both in and out of the ring, there has been a consistent presence in the shape of coach Andy Lee.

The two have become incredibly close, and Donovan has stayed on track largely as a result of Lee’s experienced and calming approach.

“Listen, without Andy, I’d be in a strange place. I don’t even want to say on here where I’d be. But I’ve a great team. Andy’s been monumental to me. Keith O’Sullivan in America has been the same thing. These guys keeping me on… It’s not about what Andy is doing because when I turn up to train, I’ll always be the same… very, very disciplined. I work extremely hard, but sometimes I can suffer outside the gym and I think Andy’s done a great job managing me, like what Jose Mourinho did with Chelsea or Alex Ferguson did with Manchester United to all the players. I think Andy is very, very good at managing all of us in our own aspects individually brilliantly. He’s done a great job and I’m still here. I’m still fighting and I’m still trying to keep on that path of becoming world champion, which is not easy. My God, it’s not easy.”

And yet, in what could be considered criticism for the likes of Lee, we are often told there are no teachers left. Donovan scoffs at that, of course.

**“**Listen, I think Andy’s become a student himself under Emanuel Steward and under Adam Booth and I think Andy is a teacher. He’s one of the best of what he does, not just an exceptional coach. Let’s just say maybe my story is not as dramatic as Mike Tyson and Cus D’Amato, but without Cus D’Amato, Mike Tyson would have suffered early on and Andy was that figure for me – simple as.

Does Donovan ever wonder whether he is being given advice that was given to Lee by Booth, or by Steward?

“Say in the lines of boxing-wise, I always question that, and for this camp I’ve been training a bit like the way Emanuel would have trained Andy, I suppose,” he explained. “But then there’s some fights where Andy will be on the pads and he’d be a bit like Adam Booth. But as a teacher, I think he’s so wise and intelligent. I think he has a bit of Adam and a bit of Emanuel. I think Andy is just a different breed, really. He’s the last of a dying breed, and thankfully he’s in my life.”

And Donovan’s life is dedicated to boxing, even through those ups and downs and even though he might no longer view it through the same lens.

“When you start any sport, you’re a kid, you’re enjoying the sport,” he said. “You’re doing it because you love it. But once you kind of come to an age where things really change, your mindset really changes, problem starts to come, family issues, blah blah blah, etc. But it goes for a lot of fighters.

“It’s not easy. I didn’t understand that it was going to be this tough or this challenging. But look, the main thing is just winning in the ring. Right now, Tyrone is in my way and it’s probably the first fight where I feel like not angry, but I really just want to get on with this, get Tyrone out of the way and go win the world championship. Just as simple as that really. I know it’s not an easy task to do but my God, I’m hungry now.”