Mayweather’s focus is money – my values are a bit different...
Liam Walsh is so dedicated, he went sparring when his partner was giving birth . . . it’ll all be worth it if he beats U.S. legend’s protégé
GERVONTA DAVIS v LIAM WALSH
WHEN he was a kid, growing up on Greave Avenue in Rochdale, Liam Walsh’s father, John, taught him in word and deed about the bonds of family. If Liam came home with a chocolate bar, his dad snapped it into three pieces and gave one to Liam, one to his twin brother, Ryan, and one to his elder brother, Michael.
Liam smiles at the memories. One day, Michael missed school to do a day’s work and earn some money. He came home with £ 20 in his pocket. Their father took it and gave Liam and Ryan £ 7 each. Michael got £6 and he was the one who had done the work.
The message was clear. Liam recites it now as if his father were still saying it. ‘If one of you gets kicked, you all limp,’ he says. ‘It is always going to be that way for us. We will never change. I have got friends who have got brothers and relatives and sometimes I think some of them don’t know the meaning of the word family.’
The Walsh brothers are still close. So close and so loyal that in today’s increasingly fractured, peripatetic, insular society, it can feel unnerving. It is the most intense relationship in each of their lives. Liam makes no attempt to disguise that.
He and Ryan made history a couple of years ago by becoming the first twins to hold a British title at the same time, they and Michael work together with their trainer, Graham Everett, at the Kickstop Gym in Norwich and they live next to each other in adjoining houses on a plot of land in Cromer with their partners and their children.
THEIR partners don’t mind, Liam says, but it wouldn’t make any difference if they did. ‘They have to be on board otherwise they’ve got to go,’ he says. ‘ Us three need to be together no matter what, so if they are on board, that’s great, and if not . . .
‘The bond between us brothers means more than anything. We are together all day, every day. This morning, I got i n the gym 20 seconds before Ryan and Graham said, “Where’s Ryan?” It would be the same if Ryan walked in 20 seconds before me. If we’re apart, something’s not right.’
The principles their father taught them have endured, too. All their money is still shared between them. The purse Liam, 30, is earning for his IBF world super-featherweight title shot against the champion, Fl oyd Mayweather’s prodigy, Gervonta Davis, at the Copper Box Arena in London next Saturday night will go into a joint account.
Everything they bring in goes into that pot. And everything they spend comes out of it. Michael and Ryan, who both fight at featherweight, and Liam have got 14 kids between them. I say it sounds a bit like a commune and Liam, who has an unblemished professional record of 21 fights and 21 wins, nods.
‘We have got three houses on one plot of land but they are ours,’ he says. ‘No-one owns an individual house. Everything that we have is ours. Every title that is won is for this family.’
Walsh’s story and his way of life, eschewing material things, driving around in a beaten-up Volkswagen, fighting out of the dilapidated Kickstop, which doesn’t even have a shower, could barely be a starker contrast to Mayweather’s world of conspicuous consumption.
Davis comes from a hard, tough background in the projects of Baltimore, t hat t he t elevision series, The Wire, was based on but he has acquired some of his mentor’s propensity for trash-talk. He is an overwhelming favourite to win and he knows it. ‘To be completely honest, I am just on a whole different level to Liam Walsh,’ said Davis a couple of days ago.
Walsh shrugs that off. He is the opposite of flash. He is the opposite of brash, too. He says he respects Davis, 22, who is being touted as the greatest young talent in boxing. But he also says Davis will never have fought anyone like him before and it is hard to argue with that.
‘I am not motivated by money,’ says Walsh, who is promoted by Frank Warren. ‘My sole aim in life is to try to be happy. I go up to bed at night and say, “I’m going to be happy tomorrow”. No-one knows why we’re here or where we’re going, so I’m just trying to be happy. Happy and comfy.
‘I could never imagine buying a 20-grand car. What for? Why do I want to spend 20 grand on a car? Ryan’s bus has got 200,000 miles on it. As long as all the family are healthy and happy, I feel like I’m winning.
‘ Mayweather’s focus in life is accumulating as much money as possible. If that’s making him happy, I’m happy for him. Good for him. My values, my morals are different. Different paths.’
IF MAYWEATHER and Davis exhibit the cynical worldliness of modern life, there is a winning kind of innocence about Walsh and his brothers. Boxing breeds dedicated fighters. It breeds men who live for their trade. Walsh is right up there with the most committed of them. It is interwoven with his loyalty to his brothers and the debt he feels he owes to his father, who died five years ago. ‘My dad was a big boxing fan,’ says Liam. ‘ He never boxed himself. He used to give us his war stories that he couldn’t afford the gym fees, but I don’t think that was quite true.
‘I think it was more the dedication that was a struggle for him. He wasn’t a bad boxer when he’d had a few pints. He loved a scrap. But professional boxing was never going to happen for him.
‘He collected all the magazines, watched all the old tapes. He would sit us down to watch Duran, Leonard, Benitez and Hagler. We were allowed to stay up late if we watched boxing. So you can imagine, every night we watched boxing.
‘Michael is only 22 months older than me and Ryan, so you have got three boys all close together and we were forever scrapping. So dad got us some gloves and said, “Put these on”, and sat back and enjoyed the fights in the front room.
‘That’s how it all started. We went to a gym i n Rochdale call ed Popeye’s Gym and then started at Aylsham Boxing Club when we moved down to Norfolk.
‘I wouldn’t have made it in boxing if it wasn’t for Michael looking after me and paying for stuff. Ryan and I made a promise to Michael as youngsters. He said, “You two, never get in trouble, stay in the gym and I will always, always help you”. If I don’t win on Saturday night, it is going to bring me a lot of sadness. It will feel like I got so close and it passed. There will probably be a lot of physical pain if I have lost. We are going to have to have punched lumps off each other or I will have been knocked clean out.
‘So there will be pain one way or another. I will be gutted for everyone who helped me get here. If I lost, my mentality would be that I am still going to be a world champion. I will still make it.
‘And if I win, the world title would bring me so much fulfilment and happiness. It would justify every last hour I have spent training. I don’t just train for fights. I dedicate my whole life to boxing. I train every day, all year round.’
Ten days ago, Liam’s partner, Sarah, went into labour with their fourth child. Liam wanted to stay for the birth but he had organised sparring sessions with IBF world featherweight champion Lee Selby six hours’ drive away in South Wales. And so he left. ‘I had to do what I had to do,’ he says. ‘Her waters broke and she was in labour. I wanted to stay but the sparring had been arranged for months beforehand. She was gutted because she was going to be on her own.
‘ I’d like to think she’s a good woman and there aren’t many about. She understood. She sent me a message saying, “Spar well”. I’ve been with her 10 years and we’ve got four kids. She’s all right.’
Liam and Sarah called their new son Ryan. Their next eldest child is called Michael. Their first-born is called Lenny, partly after Sugar Ray Leonard. Their daughter is called Elsie. Liam was away in Wales for five days. When he returned to Cromer, Ryan was five days old.
Into the midst of all this dedication, love and sacrifice, the memory of his father’s faith in him as a boxer is always there. It was his father who never wavered in his belief that Liam would one day be a world champion.
Now, fulfilling that dream is so tantalisingly close that the mere mention of his dad makes the hairs on the back of Liam’s arms stand on end as he sits on a battered old sofa at the Kickstop Gym, knowing that only one man stands between him and achieving what his father wanted so badly for him.
‘The thought of being able to say, “We did it, Dad” is almost overwhelming,’ he says. ‘If I brought a girlfriend home when I was 14 or 15 years old, he’d always had a few beers and he’d sit her down and tell her, “Stick with him because he’s going to be a world champion”. I was so embarrassed.
‘He thought I was great. I don’t know why. He always wanted me to promise him I was going to be a world champion. I never did. I promised him I would give my all. I promised him I would give everything I could.’
Sat, May 20 ‘WHY WOULD I SPEND £20K ON A CAR? AS LONG AS THE FAMILY ARE HAPPY, I FEEL I AM WINNING’