He is the man to beat right now and knows a thing or two about getting to the top. Here are his top tips.
GET YOUR HEAD DOWN AND LEARN YOUR CRAFT. Yes you may have been a top class amateur but that’s all in the past. You’re in a money sport now and what you do will impact your future. Pro boxing is nothing like the unpaid ranks. Relearn and don’t rush into big fights.
FIGHT OFTEN. You will blow away your early opponents. They are there to lose and test you. Forget training camps. Do what every great champion did. Train for 3 weeks, fight, rest for a week and repeat. You’re 18 years old, you don’t need massive recovery times. You are fighting the bottom of the bunch. You don’t need to train for months per fight. Get 10-12 fights in the first year.
GET THROUGH THE FIRST FEW YEARS. Training for championship fights can be gruelling. Nothing is as hard as those first three years. I worked full time as a ground worker, trained all evening, tried to eat and drink enough water throughout the day. It was hard, I nearly quit. Every champion has been there and they all nearly quit. No if’s or but’s, if you keep winning, the big money will come. That’s a fact. A few torturous years from now and you will be a full time boxer.
COUNT THE PENNIES. I know, I know. I sound like your Dad. Guess what, parents are always right. You’re surrounding by friends and girls. Those girls are models and models like champagne. You have a different model in your bed every night and that’s a lot of gifts your buying. 20 fights in, and money is the last thing you need to worry about right? Wrong. Boxing is for young people. Those years will go quickly. The girls, the friends and the money will fade away. Better to be rich and lonely than poor and lonely. We can learn from the EBUs biggest winners. DelBrey and Havey may not have been mentally prepared for their careers ending, but they were financially prepared. They were as keen on models as the rest of us, but they invested first and partied second.
FIND YOUR INSPIRATION. Learn everything about your hero. Model him and then surpass him. If he wakes up at 5am, you wake up 10 minutes before. If he runs 8 miles, you run 9. You get the message. Here’s the plan, one day your hero will be your rival.
English Boxing Union 