“I SUPPOSE you’ve heard the story about me in the back of an ambulance,” Liam Cameron says, not waiting for the response before pressing on.
“At that time, I was drinking every day and I ended up in that ambulance. They thought I was going to die. They gave me an injection to calm my heart down. I was going to have my heart reshocked, they thought that were it.
“I said to myself that if I can survive this, then I’ll stop drinking… It’ll be two years in January that I haven’t had one drop of alcohol.”
It is often said that a year is a long time in boxing but Cameron has pushed that old adage to its extreme over the last 12 months.
At the start of October 2023, although sober, Cameron was close to 200lbs and had been out of the ring nearly five years as a result of a controversial drugs ban imposed on him in 2018.
Cameron, who was the Commonwealth middleweight champion at the time, had failed a post-fight drugs test after his victory over Nicky Jenman on April 27 that year. UKAD announced that Cameron had tested positive for trace amounts of benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine.
Cameron had been informed eight weeks before the fight that there would be a drug test, “So why would I then take something stupid like cocaine to humiliate myself and my family?” He had said at the time. Cameron was horrified at the findings and protested his innocence. It was suggested that he may have accidentally ingested the amount, said to be 25 nanograms, while handling bank notes gleaned from selling tickets for the Jenman clash.
Regardless, UKAD came down hard and made an example of him by issuing a four-year ban with Cameron refusing to admit any wilful wrongdoing. Then, when he failed in his appeal to reduce the ban, Cameron decided to retire from boxing altogether. In an age where boxers test positive for actual performance enhancing drugs and avoid punishment altogether, the fact that Cameron received such a lengthy ban for a tiny amount of a recreational drug which would only ever hinder performance remains mystifying.
Cameron, of course, was left to pick up the pieces of his shattered career. The ironic thing is that banning him for ingesting the substance in question only pushed him to ingest even more substances in far more harmful measures. An entire bottle of gin every day, for instance, had become his normal diet.
“Me, I used to spend four days in my bedroom drinking,” he tells Boxing News. “I used to lock the door and let nobody come in. I’d be doing other stuff, too, and it’s crazy that I’m still alive with what I was doing.
“When I got banned I couldn’t even bear to watch it and kept myself away. My biggest regret is that I felt sorry for myself and I wish I never did now. I wanted pity. But as soon as I told myself to stop pitying myself and get back up it gave me something to work on.”
His sobriety paved the way for an unlikely comeback to boxing and it was the Steel City Gym in his native Sheffield that facilitated his return. “I only went into the gym to watch sparring and see Dalton and Grant [Smith],” he recalls. “I hadn’t seen them for years because I kept away from boxing when I was banned. They said, ‘right, do you want to train properly starting from Tuesday?’ I said, ‘yeah’ but I thought to myself that I’m definitely not going on Tuesday.
“But I ended up turning up on the Tuesday and then six weeks later I thought that I wanted to spar again, just to see what I’ve got. I ended up sparring Lerrone Richards for my first spar back and I did well. I thought, ‘bloody hell, I’ve still got something in here’.”
His absence from the ring had also resulted in weight gain and the man who used to do his fighting a little over 70kg, was now close to double that at 130kg. But the more he turned up, the more his weight dwindled and it was not long before an official return to the ring was scheduled.
On October 6 of last year, at 190lbs, Cameron boxed Robbie Connor over six threes and squeaked a 58-57 points win in the opinion of referee Darren Sarginson. It was exactly 1,988 days since the urine test that changed his life but, aged 33, he was back where he belonged.
“That Robbie Connor fight was only after about 10 weeks of training,” he points out. “It was a bit rushed, probably me being a bit deluded thinking I could just jump straight back in.
“To think that was only 12 months ago is mad. Since then I’ve also fought Lyndon Arthur who has proved himself as one of the best light-heavyweights in the country. I only fought him after nine months of being back in the gym. Then, obviously, that brings us to Ben.”
Cameron, of course, means Whittaker, the rising star of the division who he faced in Saudi Arabia on October 12, a year and six days after his comeback against Connor in Sheffield. Of course, Whittaker was a huge favourite with the bookies but Cameron looked to be in with a real chance of pulling off an upset at the Kingdom Arena when things took a strange turn.
The underdog had enjoyed a good fifth, hurting Whittaker to the head and body, but, as the bell sounded to end the round, the youngster inexplicably pulled him and Cameron over the top rope and out of the ring. Whittaker appeared to sustain an injury to his right foot during the incident and was unable to continue, which resulted in a technical draw. Immediately, a new slur for the Olympian emerged on social media.
“Ben Quittaker,” Cameron says. “That’s what it is. Do you know how I know he quit? It’s because he was exhausted. The body shots wore him down and I could hear him breathing. He was absolutely spent. I was getting in his head and telling him, ‘wow Ben, you’re breathing so heavy – it’s only the fifth round!’
“I was being deadly serious. On the fitness side alone, he wouldn’t have got through the 10 rounds, not a chance. He wouldn’t have been able to stand up.”
Although he was denied a victory which would have transformed his life once again, Cameron was rewarded for his part in the fight with a promotional deal from Frank Warren and Queensberry Promotions. Now, he has only one thing on his mind. “Ben Whittaker rematch,” he says instantly. “That’s the No.1 priority at the minute.
“I’ll always have his number. He can’t improve from that. It’s going to be so soul destroying for him. Imagine him in his changing room before the rematch knowing he’s fighting me. Putting his boots on, tying his laces, knowing I’m there coming to take his head off. He knows I’ll be even better.
“I don’t know what he will do but if it was me I would have to have the rematch straight away. I couldn’t handle it from a pride point of view. Everyone is taking the piss out of him and calling him Ben Quittaker. He’s even smashed a fan’s phone at the airport. He’s lost his head.”
But for Cameron, after plumbing the depths of despair during his years in the wilderness, his head is in exactly the right place.
“Boxing has changed my life,” he says. “It hurt me but it’s changed my life so it’s a mad one to get my head around. You can never predict boxing, I’ve been saying it for years. Whether that’s Ben pulling me over the top rope or me getting a promotional deal with Frank Warren. It’s crazy how it ends up. You can never predict it.
“People used to say to me, trust the process, you’re going to do well. I didn’t believe them, I thought there’s no way. But it has happened for me, I’ve done it. I’m living proof.
“You know when you’ve had so much sh*te in your life, you don’t believe things can be good. You just don’t. Everything’s negative in your head. So to finally get it now, I’m amazed by it.
“I didn’t believe it could happen.”
