The Hardest Fight of My Career
I’ve had a lot of hard fights.
I’ve fought British champions. I’ve fought guys who went on to fight at European level and even world level. I’ve been in wars, I’ve been hurt, and I’ve had fights where I’ve had to dig incredibly deep.
But when I think about the hardest fight of my career, particularly psychologically, one fight stands out.
And strangely enough, it wasn’t for a title.
It started very early in my professional career.
I was unbeaten at the time.
Four fights. Four wins. Three knockouts.
I was flying.
Going into my fifth professional fight, I’d had an amazing training camp. I felt seriously good. I was fit, sharp and full of confidence.
I had an opponent lined up who was making his professional debut.
Then, I think literally on the day of the fight, we started hearing a little bit more about him.
His name was Michael Fontaine. He was from Mauritius.
And it turned out this wasn’t exactly your average professional debutant.
He’d been an Olympian. He’d competed at the Commonwealth Games twice and won a silver medal.
So although this was technically his professional debut, this guy had an enormous amount of high-level amateur experience.
But it didn’t really change anything in my head.
I was supremely confident.
I’d trained so well that I remember genuinely believing:
Even if he’s a great boxer, I’m going to outbox him.
Then I got in the ring with him.
And fuck me.
He was good.
He was sharp. He was difficult to hit. He was tough. He could punch. And stylistically, he was an absolute nightmare for me.
I’ve fought some very good fighters since then, so I’m always careful about saying somebody was the “best” fighter I ever fought. Styles make fights.
But in terms of somebody whose style gave me problems, Fontaine was probably the most difficult opponent I ever faced.
We had a very hard six-round fight.
And he beat me on points.
He also caught me with an uppercut and put me down.
The crazy thing is, I didn’t even know I’d been knocked down.
It wasn’t until I watched the fight back afterwards that I saw myself go down and get back up looking slightly wobbled.
I had absolutely no memory of it.
That first professional loss was a very hard pill to swallow.
I’d gone from four wins in four fights, with three knockouts, to suddenly having a loss on my record.
And when you’re a professional boxer who isn’t a massive ticket seller, an early defeat can completely change the direction of your career.
Things became pretty chaotic afterwards as well.
There were problems around trainers and management, and eventually I had to change gyms.
I went from training in Brighton to travelling up to London. I went through different gyms trying to find the right place until eventually I landed somewhere that turned out to be brilliant for me.
There were British champions and European champions training there.
The sparring was incredible.
I had a great trainer.
And for the next six months or so, I developed massively.
Then came my next fight.
Gary Buckland.
He was unbeaten.
He’d represented his country as an amateur and, at the time, was ranked number three in Great Britain. As I remember it, he was being talked about as someone who would potentially be fighting for a British title next.
And I’d had five professional fights.
I also knew perfectly well why I was being brought in.
I was supposed to lose.
It was a ridiculous jump in level at that stage of my career.
But I believed I could beat him.
We fought a six-round war in Portsmouth.
And I won.
To this day, it’s probably the win I’m most proud of as a boxer.
But this story isn’t actually about Gary Buckland.
Because after beating him, while I was obviously excited about what might happen next, I had this feeling in the back of my mind.
They’re going to make me fight that Mauritian kid again.
And sure enough…
A few months later, the rematch was made.
This Time I Knew
There was one enormous difference between the first fight and the second.
The first time I’d fought Fontaine, I didn’t really know what I was walking into.
This time I knew exactly what I was walking into.
I’d felt how sharp he was.
I’d experienced how difficult he was to hit.
I’d felt his power.
He’d already put me down.
And he’d already beaten me.
Truthfully, I knew this guy was better than me in certain areas.
That’s a difficult thing for a fighter to have sitting in his head while preparing for a fight.
The whole training camp became a massive psychological battle.
I was doing a lot of meditation and self-hypnosis at the time, and I remember having this strange but incredibly vivid representation of the fight in my mind.
I could see two outcomes.
On one side, I could see myself winning.
On the other, I could see myself losing.
And as the fight got closer, it felt like the image of me losing was getting bigger and bigger.
The image of me winning was getting smaller.
I realised I had to do something about it.
So I started deliberately putting my attention into the winning side.
I’d meditate on it.
I’d concentrate on it.
I’d try to expand that picture in my mind.
I was basically fighting the fight in my own head before I’d even stepped into the ring.
Then, about two and a half weeks before the fight, something else happened.
I got caught in sparring and developed a black eye.
Nothing particularly unusual.
That evening I went to yoga.
I folded forwards into a stretch and suddenly felt this rush of pressure into my eye.
Within seconds, the thing blew up.
It became enormous.
And that basically put an end to my sparring.
Normally I’d spar until about a week before a fight. In fact, I was the kind of fighter who liked to spar as close to the fight as possible. I needed that feeling of being sharp.
Now I’m preparing to fight the man who has already beaten me, the doubts are already there, and suddenly I can’t spar for the last couple of weeks either.
Another little seed of doubt.
Another reason why this might go wrong.
Do or Die
Eventually, fight night arrived.
And by that point there was nothing else I could do.
I’d done the training.
I’d fought the doubts.
I’d visualised myself winning.
Now I had to walk to the ring and actually do it.
And I remember making a decision.
This is it.
Do or die.
I knew I couldn’t give this guy space.
If I stood off him and allowed him to box, he was too sharp. Too skilful. Too difficult.
So I had to take all of that away from him.
I had to be on top of him constantly.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I went at him like a man possessed.
I pushed him back.
I put him onto the ropes.
I clubbed him.
I out-hustled him.
I out-tussled him.
I just kept punching and punching and punching.
I wasn’t trying to have a beautiful boxing match with him anymore.
I was trying to make his life fucking miserable.
And it worked.
But it was still an incredibly hard fight.
Around the third round, I came back to my corner and realised something was seriously wrong with my vision.
I’d been caught with a good shot and what felt like about 60 percent of my vision had gone.
There was a huge section in the top right-hand side that I couldn’t see properly. It was blurred, distorted, strange colours.
I’d experienced something similar once or twice before after being hit, so I knew I’d taken a serious shot.
And I still had three rounds left.
My corner looked at me.
“You all right?”
“Yeah. I’m all right.”
I didn’t tell them.
I didn’t tell anybody what was happening with my vision.
Looking back now, obviously that was dangerous. Visual disturbances after being hit in the head can indicate a serious injury, and I certainly wouldn’t advise a fighter today to hide something like that from their corner or the doctor.
But I’m telling you what was going through my mind at that moment.
Nothing was stopping this fight.
I’d already lost to this man once.
I’d spent months fighting the possibility of losing to him again inside my own head.
I’d finally got myself into that ring.
There was no way I was going to allow anything to get between me and winning.
So I got off the stool and went back out.
And I stayed on him.
“YOU HAVE TO KNOCK HIM OUT!”
By the last round, I had him backed into his own corner.
I was bashing away at him, keeping the pressure on, still refusing to give him any space.
But he was dangerous right until the end.
And there’s one thing from that last round that has always stayed with me.
I could hear his trainer screaming from the corner.
“YOU HAVE TO KNOCK HIM OUT!”
Then:
“UPPERCUT! UPPERCUT!”
“YOU HAVE TO KNOCK HIM OUT!”
And Fontaine was sitting down into his legs and throwing these huge right uppercuts, trying to take my head off.
Remember, this was the same guy who had dropped me with an uppercut in our first fight.
And now I couldn’t even see properly.
I knew what he was trying to do.
I managed to avoid the shots.
And I just kept going.
Kept pushing.
Kept punching.
Kept working.
Then the final bell went.
And I’d done it.
I’d beaten him.
Why That Fight Stayed With Me
That wasn’t the biggest fight of my career.
There wasn’t a major title on the line.
It probably isn’t the fight most people would pick if they looked at my record and tried to decide which one meant the most.
But nobody looking at a boxing record can see what was happening inside your head.
That’s why, for me, this was probably the hardest fight I ever had.
The physical side was brutal enough.
But the real fight had started months earlier.
It was the doubt.
The knowledge.
The first defeat.
Knowing how good he was.
Knowing he’d hurt me before.
Knowing there were areas where he was simply better than me.
Then losing the last couple of weeks of sparring.
Then getting hurt during the fight and suddenly not being able to see properly.
And somehow having to keep finding a way forward through all of it.
The first time I fought Michael Fontaine, I walked into the ring full of confidence because I didn’t really know what I was facing.
The second time was completely different.
I knew exactly what I was facing.
I’d already been there.
I’d already felt what he could do.
I’d already lost.
And I had to walk back into the same place and convince myself that this time the ending was going to be different.
That’s why that fight has always stayed with me.
Because sometimes walking into the unknown isn’t the hardest thing.
Sometimes the hardest thing is walking back towards something that has already beaten you.