Abused as a child and trafficked as a teenager, Bilal Fawaz is all too familiar with struggle. That’s why the ring offers him a strange sort of stability
A ‘fighter’, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is “someone who continues to try hard and will not give up easily when things are difficult”.
To expand on that, it must also be highlighted that this interpretation transcends the art of combat, suggesting that an individual can display traits of such fortitude outside a gladiatorial environment, too.
In that sense, newly crowned English super-welterweight champion Bilal Fawaz might as well be considered the poster boy of “fighting”, his performances in the ring offering just a brief glimpse of what he is truly capable of.
Having been downtrodden by life itself, enduring untold abuse as a child in his parents’ homeland of Nigeria and then being trafficked, it is as if Fawaz quite literally had no option but to become a fighter.
But the fact that his identity was crafted through circumstance, rather than built by design, is perhaps sufficient evidence to explain why, mentally, he is almost in a class of his own.
That much became apparent during his rematch with Junaid Bostan earlier this month.
The 37-year-old not only soaked up an obscene amount of punishment, but swiftly came back firing, and soon enough, it became something of a man vs boy type encounter, leading an increasingly fatigued and demoralised Bostan to suffer his first professional defeat.
“That’s nothing new to me; it’s something familiar, something I have seen before and already overcome,” Fawaz says of their gruelling 10-round battle.
“Because I know what struggle is, and know what needs to be done, having those tough fights will never faze me.
“Junaid has a British passport – he could work from when he was a kid.
“He’s not afraid of deportation, he’s not afraid of opening a bank account, he’s not afraid of renting a house.
“In some kind of way, my struggle is my strength.
“The tougher it becomes, the closer I am to reaching my goal. It’s like when you’re running a race – the last lap is always the toughest, because you feel fatigued.
“But the thing with me is that, once I feel pain, I push even harder.”
Often, as Rocky Baloboa said in the eponymous movie, “it’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward”.
While that may be an overused quote, taken from an overplayed film, you would nonetheless struggle to find a line that more aptly reflects Fawaz’s story.
“I was once a little kid, begging for mummy and daddy,” he continues. “I never had that [a normal childhood], so I had to grow up real quick, feeding myself from the age of eight.
“Because I’ve had struggles in the past, most people think it’s a curse, but even if I could choose another life, I would still choose the life that I’ve had.
“I am tough; I am resilient; I am hungry – and I’m not talking about food.
“My mum made me feel like I wasn’t a child. She would say, ‘You stole this [money],’ and then beat me to the point where I would have to tell her that I stole it.
“I was only six years old, and my sister was the one who stole the money, but I lied and said that I did it, just to stop the pain.
“My dad sent me to Lagos [Nigeria] after he saw the marks from my beatings.
“After a couple of years, my uncle then took me to London and sold me [to be trafficked].”
For Fawaz to experience such hardship, yet still come out the other side, just goes to show the type of character it takes to not only overcome every layer of adversity, but also transition into what most would deem a ‘normal life’.
That is not to say the existence of any boxer is particularly normal. But rather, the chance to introduce a level of stability to his life, and perhaps even raise a young family, was what Fawaz had always dreamt of.
“I’d walk in the streets of London, look into peoples’ houses at night – with their kids running around Christmas trees – and I craved that life for myself,” he recalls.
“Then, a woman came into my life, and she was fed up with mediocre men – men who promised things but never delivered – and she said, ‘You’re actually a nice person.’
“We never planned [to have children], but we had a baby and, from there, my life changed. I became a man.”
As for his majority decision victory over Bostan, a highly touted prospect, it is fair to say that Fawaz has only created more pages, and possibly even chapters, in which to extend his compelling underdog tale.
With their first encounter, which took place last January, ending in a highly contentious draw, Fawaz had little confidence that he would claim a favourable decision in their rematch.
To his surprise, though, he was ultimately announced as the rightful victor in Sheffield, causing an expression of shock and elation to appear across his face.
“I thought I won the first fight more clearly, so I was thinking that they [the judges] would give me a defeat, or a draw at best [in the rematch],” he admits.
“But once they called out my name, and I won, my whole life became different – people know me now.
“I’ll walk down the street, and people are coming to shake my hand; it’s never been like this before.”
Traditionally speaking, the next step beyond English title glory is a shot at the coveted Lonsdale Belt and, for Fawaz, it would seem that, once again, the well-trodden path – which he intends to explore – is one defined by circumstance rather than design.
After being trafficked from Nigeria to the UK, the Londoner was refused a work permit, and faced numerous threats of deportation, while attempting to establish his citizenship status from the age of 16.
Even now, it would appear that these issues have been only partially resolved, with Fawaz insisting that he cannot fight overseas.
At the same time, though, the English champion should not need to go searching far and wide for a worthy opponent at 154lbs.
More than anything else, a shot at the winner of Sam Gilley and Ishmael Davis, who will contest the vacant British title on November 15, looks a natural next step.
“I don’t think anyone in this country is stronger than me right now,” says Fawaz. “I would dismantle and demolish both of them [Gilley and Davis].
“Whoever is in the top six [in the UK], I’m going to fight them. I can’t travel, so I can only fight people in this country.
“I’m an English champion without a passport, and don’t belong to any country, but I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Indeed, Fawaz is unlikely to be removed from our screens anytime soon, not least because of his fan-friendly style and fearless approach against Bostan.
But regardless of what comes next, the fact that he holds an English title while not strictly being classed as a British citizen – and, moreover, given everything he has been through – is no less an achievement in itself.
It is, for want of a better cliché, a real-life Rocky story.
