GAME-CHANGER

Leon Mckenzie talks earnestly to Tris Dixon about his battle with depression, a spell in prison, and explains why crossing over from football to boxing, which ultimately left him ‘paralysed’ on the canvas, is not for everyone

Retired footballer/boxer Leon Mckenzie opens up about depression and prison

IT WAS LIKE I WAS PARALYSED. I HAD NO STRENGTH. I RETIRED BECAUSE SOMETHING HAD JUST LEFT ME”

THERE is an increasingly well-worn phrase in this sport, that you can’t play boxing.

Trainers, fighters and those in the know have latched onto it and it has been used in countless memes and GIFS, because it is true. It is not a game.

Leon Mckenzie, a former Premier League footballer has also retired from boxing. He knows you cannot play at this. In doing so, he has left serious voids in his life, though the deep, darks days of his post-football trauma are behind him.

We meet in a light office space where he works in central London.

Despite coming from a family of fighters – Uncle Duke was a three-time world champion and father Clinton won British and European titles – there are few rough edges to Leon. He has a soulful look and a calm disposition. He thinks before he talks.

He has fought back from the brink, from prison, from depression and losing almost everything and now transitioned from scoring goals in front of 40,000 fans and knocking out opponents in front his proud father into the cold, harsh light of the real world.

Mckenzie lost his final two boxing contests before he called it a day last year, with a 8-2-1 (4) record. He was off colour against Jahmaine Smyle, losing a split for the English title, and then wilted under the hammering fists of Peterborough banger Cello Renda in one of the domestic fights of 2017.

Mckenzie felt his 18-year football career and his four-year stint as a prizefighter were combining to catch up to him.

He was tired in training camps and not feeling right after fights.

“It was epic,” he recalls of the Renda war. “He’s an experienced pro, his 42 fights to my 10, it was a risky fight to take but we were confident and we were winning the fight. I’d say I was two to three rounds up, it was close. It got to round nine and although it goes down as a knockout we both know that I sort of collapsed through exhaustion. I had nothing left.

“I thought, ‘There’s something wrong here.’ I was winning that fight but there was nothing. As soon as I hit the canvas, it was like I was paralysed. I had no strength. Something just left me. I was 39 years old and the next day I happily retired because I knew I wasn’t recovering properly anymore.

“That’s education. That’s experience. I had to retire from football the first time when I wasn’t ready to do it and I couldn’t cope. This time around I’d given my everything to boxing in the short time I had. I’d understood the journey, the risk factor. Yes, I could come back. Yes, I could carry on. But it’s getting hard and I’ve been around boxing since I was a baby. I’ve seen the effects and what it does. So I thought, ‘Right, I’ve won an International Masters title, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s more than most. I’d fought for an English title, fought for a Southern Area title, I’m 40 in a few days. I can’t complain.”

Despite having played Premier League football for Crystal Palace and Norwich, Mckenzie was never an oddity in boxing. In part that can be put down to the bloodlines, but it can also be linked to his outlook. He wanted to earn his success, not be considered some sort of freakshow.

In some ways, that he was not backed by a major promoter or network gives him and his 10-fight career more credibility.

“I never really got the support, I was never with a Matchroom or anyone like that, a big promoter,” he explains. “I always fought in small halls and I tried to work my way up. No one sort of looked after me, nurtured me or guided me nicely and I wasn’t fighting regularly, sometimes once a year. It’s too long between fights, so that was a problem. I was still selling tickets and doing everything someone coming up has to do and I think that’s probably where I gained my respect within the sport, because I did everything a kid would do coming up.”

While he wanted to honour the family name, it did not bring about more pressure because he had already been a success in another discipline.