Ring star on days with Mayweather & Manny

“Every time I saw him he would shout, ‘Am Scoattish, am Wulliam Wallace’. He’s a busy guy nowadays but he treats me like family still.

“In the eight-week build-up to Manny’s fight with Oscar de la Hoya I happened to be training for one of my f ights at the same time and on the first day my wife Sally brought our baby son Callum in to watch me train.

“When they came in Manny was halfway through his session.

“It was the first time he had seen Callum, who was soon kidnapped and the next hour was lost as Manny played with baby McEwan and was photographed by the world’s boxing press.

“After an hour of this Freddie pulled me aside and asked me to keep Callum away from the gym in future unti l after Manny’s training was finished. ‘ I’ve never barred a baby from the gym before,’ laughed Freddie. “I still speak with Freddie too, he has Parkinson’s so we joke my accent along with his illness makes communication difficult. But we message back and forth.”

Back then a 6am wake-up call had never been so easy for a boxer who came through as an amateur at his dad Rab’s Clovenstone Amateur Boxing Club.

Ri sing to the scorching California sun, he would run for miles through the Hollywood Hills, racing through the streets of Los Angeles and beyond the Santa Monica Mountains.

His route into work isn’t as scenic these days with the same 6am wake- up call seeing the dad- of- four throw a gym bag over his shoulder and f ight through the freezing cold to train other f ighters at his old man’s Edinburgh gym.

Working with both kids and adults, McEwan spends his days trying to send even just one fighter on the same unexpected journey he once embarked on.

McEwan off icial ly cal led time on his boxing career last year after a draw with Oldham boxer Sam Omidi in Motherwell.

And he said: “Working in my dad’s gym obviously isn’t the same as my days in Hollywood but I came back five years ago and it is what it is.

“At some point you have accept that it’s time to pass the torch. I miss everything – the atmosphere, the sun, the whole lot. I’m starting at the bottom again and I don’t really know why.

“I’ve gone from the top to the bottom and done it backwards.

“When I came back to Scotland a few years ago I had talks with Eddie Hearn and Frank Warren but nothing ever materialised.

“But I know I made a little bit of history as a Scottish boxer and I’m proud of it.

“My first ever fight was in Las Vegas and I’ve worked with more world champions than anyone else. I remember turning up to spar with Freddie Roach and I was signed on the spot. That was it – I was living the American dream.

“It was a different world and when I look back on it, of course I wish I was still there. I could have stayed. There comes a point when you have to make a decision about what to do. We could have had a lovely home over there and raised the family.

“When my first son Callum was born we came home for two weeks because giving birth in America costs £ 25,000 and went back to Los Angeles two weeks later.

“But I wasn’t getting the fights I wanted and so the choice was made. I do enjoy what I’m doing now.

“But I miss the days of running through Hollywood and seeing guys dressed up as Batman, Superman and SpongeBob SquarePants on my route. It really was something else.”

McEwan represented Scotland twice at the Commonwealth Games, returning north from