‘This is a grassroots sport – boxing does lots for young kids’
The Hull lightweight takes on American Ryan Garcia for boxing’s interim WBC world title on January 2 and is giving his support to Metro’s Save Grassroots Sport campaign
Your fight with Garcia was postponed from this month after you contracted coronavirus. Are you back on track?
I wanted to go through with the fight but my coach said, ‘let’s put it back’. This was the next available date and it means I have to be away from family and friends over Christmas but that’s part and parcel of boxing. I’m focused and I will be raring to go on the night.
Garcia is a bit of a cocky character, isn’t he?
He runs his mouth and talks absolute s***e but he hasn’t got the intellect to throw me off. He talks a lot and calls out everyone. Who knows what goes through his mind? What people say and do are two different things. I’m used to hearing it.
Do you still have your sights on Vasyl Lomachenko, who beat you on points last year, in 2021?
I’m not looking at the future. These are the fights everybody wants to be involved in. I do look at the last Lomachenko fight and believe I can be so much better than that. You have to take the opportunities that come along and I grabbed this one with both hands.
Given you’ve not fought in 2020, how hard has this year been for you?
It’s not been easy and quite a few of us haven’t boxed for a year or so. We’d been talking about Garcia since April and it kind of meant I didn’t get the chance to box at Fight Camp in August or behind closed doors in the UK. I’ve just been concentrating on training.
You’re opening Coolhand, your gym for physical and mental health, in your home city of Hull.
Funnily enough, I’m looking to open the gym on January 2 – the day of the fight, when I’ll be in California! Me and my business partner have put our own capital into it, we haven’t looked for investment, and once I’m back from this fight I will look to get more involved.
What’s the concept behind it?
It’s not like any other gym in the world – I’m sure of that. We are going to have a full-time psychologist. Mental health is a massive issue, one which costs the NHS millions every year. This is what I want to do, to help people with their problems. This is about me rather than anything to do with boxing.
What did you make of boxing getting nothing from the government in the recent bailout for sport?
There are boxers who have not been able to fight all year. This is a grassroots sport that’s struggling, so it really astonishes me boxing got nothing. Why? It teaches you things like discipline, hard work and dedication and I don’t like to think about what I would be doing now if I had not got into the sport.
Will grassroots boxing survive?
The qualities boxing give you last a lifetime. It gets people off the street. It does a lot for young kids. It needs help. There are so many clubs and organisations who could have done with a little bit of financial help.