RECENTLY RETIRED
Anthony Ogogo endured a nightmare series of injuries. Finally, nearly losing his vision, he has been forced out of boxing. He speaks to John Dennen
We speak to the 2012 Olympic bronze medallist Anthony Ogogo
IT WAS THE SCARIEST, MOST HORRIBLE THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO A BOXER”
IT was the stuff of nightmares. A fighter ought to be in control of his body. He needs to know where his opponent is, understand what shots to throw and what he will defend. Without that control everything falls apart. Two years ago Anthony Ogogo’s eye caved in. Fighting in Birmingham the socket shattered. Without the bone the left eyeball was unprotected. The muscles could not support it, twisting its position. It utterly compromised his vision. Craig Cunningham stood in front of him, but Ogogo’s right eye told him his opponent was down to his right, his left eye showed a vision of Cunningham on his side up to his left. Anthony couldn’t judge distance, he couldn’t fix Cunningham’s position and all the while blows kept raining in, making his eye progressively worse.
Ogogo had been desperate for his fight. For years he’d struggled with significant injuries. He’d had problems with his Achilles tendons, he had to fight and win with a dislocated shoulder. These issues had set back his professional career time and time again. Now he faced disaster. He couldn’t bear to tell his corner, he wouldn’t let himself quit but he needed a miracle to win.
He swung at the two Cunninghams flitting in front of eyes, desperate to hit one of them.
“I had no clue what was going on, how can he be here and here and lying down,” he recalled. “I could hear him breathing heavily. I was sure he was there. I thought I’m going to whack him. I threw a right hook. I thought
I’m going to knock him out now. I threw the biggest right hook I could throw, missed by a country mile.”
He almost spun off his feet, it was a hopeless miss. “It was the scariest, most horrible thing that can happen to a boxer,” he said.
Ogogo clamped his left glove to his head, to try to shield his eye. He moved back, thinking he had given himself plenty of space, so he could shake out his arm. But Cunningham was right there. “He smashed me right down the middle, with a left hand down the pipe and I was thinking I was sure he was six feet away. My eyes were telling me he was six feet away but he was right in front of me,” Anthony said. After a hellish eight rounds, his corner eventually stopped him. It had been exceptionally dangerous. “I’m lucky it was a good boxer who was hitting me at will who wasn’t a very big puncher compared to a great boxer, a Golovkin, a Canelo who can whack. I was fortunate to leave that fight with just a shattered eye socket. Had I fought one of them, I’d have been fortunate to leave the ring at all,” he said.
The damage he sustained to his left eye wasn’t just a problem for his boxing. It affected his life. A few weeks later he was heading over a road to go to a restaurant. “I looked at the road and I was sure that the car was about 50 meters away, ages away. I’ve gone to cross the road. I heard a massive honk, I felt the car miss me by millimeters, it’s broad daylight, the car whizzed past me. My heart, like a cartoon character is almost pumping out my skin, [I felt] the gust of the car,” he recalled. “I sat on the edge of the ➤
pavement on the road and an old woman came running over to me. She asked me are you OK and the man pulled over in the bus lane and had a massive go at me, the man driving the car, because it looked like I tried to kill to myself. It looked like I walked out into the car, it was right there but in my head it was 50 meters away. My depth perception was out. I thought it was way further away. I thought I could cross the road before the car comes. He thought I tried to kill myself in front of his car. I was hyperventilating. Casey, my wife was panicking because she was wondering what’s going on, the old lady was like panicking and I had to justify it. I said look mate, I can’t see properly. I can’t, I can’t see.”
He embarked on a series of seven operations to try to restore his vision. Physically that was all he could take. These were lonely, expensive trips to America for surgery. He spent the money he had on frightening operations to try to get his eyes working together again. “I’ve trained every single day for two and a half years to get back in the boxing ring because that’s my job, that’s was what I love to do, that’s my passion,” he said.
Ogogo hadn’t even considered failure. “I got into boxing to become a world champion and I come from very humble beginnings, very humble. I come from a small town in East Anglia. Now I wanted that Rocky story where I succeed above all the odds, I win the world title in spite of all the injuries. I can sit there and say guys with a strong work ethic and belief in yourself you can do anything. Look at me I’ve come from that and I’ve achieved that, with my world title around my waist,” he said. “I’ve had so many lows I always thought that eventually I’d get my moment.” He hadn’t even allowed himself another option. There was no Plan B. “I’ve only wanted one plan and I was adamant three weeks ago that that would be the plan that I was going to journey down,” he said. “I thought plan A must work.” After his final operation he fully intended to return to the sport. He bought himself a new £400 pair of sparring gloves, convinced he’d be able to go again. But his career ended in the gym with a first and last spar. “In round one we just used left hands, just left hands and the left hand obviously it’s more on the right side of my eyes, so I can deal with left hands a bit better. Right hands I struggle with because of my left eye, which is the damaged one,” he said. “In round three we did right hands and then I knew the right hand was coming, I knew it was coming yet it still hit me. I didn’t see it coming. I knew is it was coming yet I still didn’t see it coming. “It wasn’t a big shot at all but I didn’t see it coming and it’s the shots in boxing that you don’t see coming, they’re the ones that leave you with serious damage.” The finality of the verdict gradually hit home. He couldn’t do it again. “I thought this can’t be the end. It cannot be the end. And then I went home and just trying not to think about it but me being me, I’m an obsessive person. I’m obsessing over it and then I woke up the following morning and my left eyelid, which was droopy before anyway because I had an injection in my eye two years ago which went drastically wrong [and] caused me to have a droopy eyelid, the following morning it was way droopier,” he said. He had taken enough damage. “This isn’t me giving up, this is my body giving up on me. My body is not
fit for task,” he said. “The hard thing is this dream, this obsession for me, this passion has been cruelly ripped away rather than me deciding it’s over now. It’s been taken from me so it’s very hard to accept because I never got to have a career. That’s the hardest bit. I never got to show the world how good I can be and what I can do in the ring. All the courage and determination and sheer just willingness to succeed that I’ve displayed on the physio bed or on operating tables or in doing rehab, nobody’s got to see those same qualities displayed from me on fight night in a tough fight. That courage when you get off the floor time and time again or that courage when you kind of push on through when the going gets tough, that’s what endears you to the public.”
He finishes with an 11-1 professional career. He has had success. His career with GB as an amateur saw him selected for the middleweight spot over Callum Smith. Having recovered from an injury, he launched an astonishing comeback in a qualifying tournament to win a place at London 2012. At the Olympics, with his mother falling gravely ill, he won a bronze medal, edging out the reigning World champion along the way. He turned professional with Golden Boy Promotions, he was the first boxer represented by Wasserman, a major sports agency, he was the first Briton since Frank Bruno to be sponsored by Nike. He did have successes but these took place out of the spotlight. He never got what he really wanted – a professional career.
Now he has to find a plan B, something to do next, although currently he does not know what that might be. It is hard to take. “Maybe if I would have had my moment… [Now I’ve got to] go after whatever I set my sights on with renewed determination and resilience and with all the skills that I’ve learned and become world champion at that, whatever that may be, you know. That might be as little as becoming a great husband to my wife and a good dad in the future. I don’t know,” he said. “I do not know what my future holds for me at the minute. I know that whatever it is I’m going to give it my absolute best because I’ve got this burning desire in my belly and I won’t stop until it’s gone.
“That’s enough to make any man bitter but I refuse to let this make me bitter. I want this to propel me to become a better, more humble, stronger person.”
“It’s like I’m shackled to this dream. My dream of becoming a world champion, just being the person I want to be. I’m shackled to this dream and for so long I’ve been trying. My dream is there. It’s just out of my grasp but I’m trying as hard as I possibly can to get it and it’s proven to be unattainable,” Ogogo reflected. “The dream’s done now. I cannot get the dream anymore. I was hoping a bit of relief would set in because boxing’s caused me a lot of pain and frustration and hurt in the past, but it’s also allowed me to have an amazing life and meet some wonderful people. So there’s no relief at the minute there’s none, there’s just heartache and sorrow because more than anything, I just, I just want to box.”
HE THOUGHT I TRIED TO KILL MYSELF. I WAS HYPERVENTILATING. I HAD TO SAY I CAN’T SEE. I CAN’T SEE”