THE REDEEMER
A stint in prison and an unfortunate injury have left Mitchell Smith in a state he never thought he would be in. Now, he tells George Gigney how and why he intends to turn his life around – before it’s too late
Mitchell Smith tells us that he needs to turn his life around, before it’s too late
WHEN driving on ice, if your car begins to lose its way the best advice is to turn into the slide before reassuming control. It’s not a stretch to say that 25-year-old Mitchell Smith had been driving on ice for a while before his life began to badly fishtail over a year ago. Instead of turning into the slide, Smith hit the accelerator and let go of the wheel altogether.
A promising super-featherweight, Harrow’s Smith began to take things for granted and indulged himself far too much outside of fights. An upset loss to George Jupp in December 2015 saw unchecked anger issues drastically worsen. Friendships and familial bonds were bent and broken until, last year, the inevitable crash finally came.
While out celebrating a routine win over Lee Connelly in May 2017, Smith was confronted by a couple of men.
“I felt like it was going to become a bad situation so I felt the need to do something there and then and unfortunately I ended up hurting someone. It wasn’t too bad, but I ended up giving someone a clump,” Smith tells Boxing News.
“It was just a row basically, a fight, and it got a little out of hand. I ended up coming off better out of it, and when they looked back they saw I kicked off first so I ended up getting banged up for it.”
From May until November, Smith was held in Wormwood Scrubs on remand. When he was eventually found guilty of Actual Bodily Harm with intent and Affray in November, he was handed a two-year suspended sentence, 80 hours of community service and probation.
Though there is a part of Smith that blames the people who provoked him in the first place, he still accepts that, as a trained fighter, he should never have resorted to violence. That being said, he claims to understand why he reacted so poorly in the circumstances.
“I was drinking alcohol. It was a week after the Lee Connelly fight [w pts 6] and I was still celebrating, out drinking and if I hadn’t been drinking alcohol I think I would’ve dealt with the situation differently,” he says.
“I might’ve just walked away, but because I’d been tanked up on alcohol and thought I was Billy Big B ****** s, I felt the need to sort it out there and then. That’s cost me well over a year.
“From that, I’ve learned a lot. I don’t drink alcohol anymore. Nothing good comes out of me drinking alcohol.
“Alcohol has ruined my career, and I couldn’t see my daughter for a long time because of alcohol. I lost a fight and I started to lose my career because of alcohol. It wasn’t like I’d wake up and have a drink, it wasn’t that sort of problem, it was that I would go out all the time, I loved the high life, and it bit me on the arse.”
He describes his time incarcerated as “emotional” and it’s evident that his main struggle was being unable to see his five-yearold daughter Sienna for months at a time.
As soon as he was released from jail, Smith began work on a building site in a bid to earn money for his family. On his first day, in a particularly cruel twist of fate, he accidentally dropped something on his foot, breaking several bones in it. That injury has healed and Smith is back in regular contact with family, in particular his father.
He admits that avoiding the drink is unlikely to be a lifelong decision, but he certainly plans to stay off it for the rest of his boxing career. And, with nothing but time on his hands over the past year, Smith has also concluded that a physical relocation is a necessary step toward happiness and, hopefully, success.
“I’m going to move out of Harrow as soon as I can. I’ve had to come back because of probation and community service but after I’ve sorted this out I’m probably going to move away. I’ve been thinking a lot about moving to somewhere else in the country. I don’t know if that means I’ll be training somewhere else but I’ll need to sit down and talk about that.
“I may move out of London, and I might move closer to Adam Booth [his trainer]’s gym. If that’s not possible I might move up north, just to get away from this area. I’ll be honest, this isn’t the first time this has ➤
I’VE LOST A FIGHT AND BEEN SENT TO JAIL, ALL FOR THE SAKE OF GOING OUT AND HAVING 12 PINTS”
I NEED TO ELIMINATE THINGS THAT COULD F**K IT UP AGAIN”
happened. It’s not the first time somebody has had a dig at me and a situation has occurred.”
There is no room for clichés in prison. Or, perhaps, there is too much room for them there. You can fill the time and space around you with worn-out quips of wisdom and motivation, but once they drift away and fizzle out – which they always do – one must face the stark reality of their situation. You messed up. Big time. It’s actions, not words, that will ensure you don’t wind up back there.
Smith accepted his situation and now hopes to salvage as much as he can from a wreck of his own creation.
“I took time to understand myself and realise where it can go wrong again and I don’t want that, so I need to eliminate things around me that could possibly f**k it up again,” he insists.
“You’ve got nothing to do when you’re in those four walls for 23 hours a day, nowhere to go and sometimes I’d be completely alone, I wasn’t even sharing a room at times. You tend to overthink things and it probably did me bundles of good.
“There’s no one to blame but me. At the end of the day I was an idiot for going out and drinking all the time, and probably for my attitude while I was out. You’re a completely different person when you’ve had alcohol. Now I’m out the other end and in July I’ll be able to look back. It still seems far away but it’ll creep up on us, that’s something to look forward to.”
It is, however, a lot more complicated than just waiting for July to roll around. He will need to apply for the suspension on his boxing license to be lifted. He is also currently walking around at about 12 stone. In prison, he was only able to use weights and so his fitness and conditioning both took a serious hit.
“Since May, I’ve done nothing, no training or anything and I could’ve said ‘f**k it, I’ve gone too far, there’s no way I can get back to where I should be.’ But when I do get back, the story I should be able to tell is crazy,” he says.
“Last week I did a mile run and I’m still feeling it.” He pauses. “F ***** g hell, how did I let myself get here?”
After gathering his thoughts, he continues: “But I know that if I was to quit boxing I’d look back in 10 years’ time and hate myself.”
Having recovered from his foot injury, Smith is now working on getting his weight down. He trains each morning at Bushey ABC before working all day on the building site, after which he does a bit of training in the evening.
I’VE GOT A PROBLEM WHEN I’VE GOT TIME ON MY HANDS”
“I’ve been back training for a couple of weeks now but [laughs] a lot of people would have just quit if they were in the situation I’m in now. There’s nothing more I want to do than get back to boxing and show people I can still be a champion. I owe myself that, I’ve not given myself the best chance here, I’ve taken things for granted so it’s time to get my head down.
“I’ve spoken to Adam since and he said ‘I can’t have you in the gym at the moment because you’d be wasting your time.’ It’s an hour-and-a-half away from me so I’d be wasting three hours a day travelling there just to go in there for 45 minutes and hit the bag like a fat little s**t.
“He told me to get my weight down, get sensibly fit and he’ll have me back straight away. He has a lot of faith in me. If I can sit down and talk to him about moving out of my area and finding somewhere over there, that’s what I want to do, that’s where I want to be. There’s nothing more I want to do than move close to Adam, stick with Frank [Warren, his promoter] and just knuckle down.”
Prior to the Jupp fight, Smith had been named Young Boxer of the Year in 2015 and was well ranked with the WBO. His fall was long and hard but, with few miles on the clock, he feels ready to recommence the climb.
“I got to a certain level once, and I want to go beyond that now,” he says. “There was talk of potential world title eliminators for me but I couldn’t get through the Jupp fight because I didn’t want to act like a professional athlete. I wanted to go out drinking.
“I was out having 12 pints a day, then eating fried breakfasts in the morning. I know where I could be now and it frustrates me – I don’t care what anyone says, I know I could’ve been on the path to a world title, maybe even have fought for one by now, and unfortunately through drinking alcohol and hanging around with idiots I’ve lost a fight and spent the best part of a year in jail. All for the sake of going out and having 12 pints.”
Having been in and around the building and construction trade since the age of 14, Smith and his older brother are now taking steps to set up their own company. Mitchell’s voice almost goes up an octave as he talks about having another avenue besides fighting for pay.
“If I can run my own company outside of boxing, there’s something to fall back on. For fighters, especially myself, you have to keep busy. I’ve got a problem when I’ve got too much time on my hands, it’s almost like I’m like a kid.”
In three months’ time he hopes to get back to Booth’s gym full time before a comeback fight in July at lightweight. He’s also aware that he’ll need a few warm-up bouts before trying to revitalise his career in earnest. He’ll be expected to win, and if he does he will then need to face down the urge to go and celebrate to excess. That is when we will see how much Smith has learned and changed.
Mitchell conducted several interviews after this one, highlighting that the faith and interest in him remains. And while those horrible memories of prison that he spoke about will undoubtedly creep up on him in quiet moments, ultimately, they don’t matter. What will keep Smith on track, off the booze and in a healthy state of mind are those things that do – his daughter, his family, his goals and the potential he appears hell-bent on fulfilling.