IF YOU love this sport so much, how can you ever give up?
The sun will rise again, the days will keep going no matter what happens. If you quit now the days will carry on, so you might as well keep going rather than wondering what if. I never want to be a person that lives with any regrets.
It feels great. I’m very humbled at the support and the blessings. The reception I’m getting is unreal. Everybody is so made up for me and happy for me. I’m really relishing the moment and it just feels very good. I want to thank everybody that’s been supporting me, a massive thank you because it wasn’t an easy road, but I feel grateful for that.
I have more a sense of gratitude, I’m very grateful for this. Not everyone can wake up with the health to get up and do normal things and I’m here working hard, chasing my dream and I’ve got the British and Commonwealth titles now. I feel like I’m in a really good place.
At the start of your boxing career, or when you’re fighting as an amateur, you have to get up early to do your runs and that’s hard for you and all of that stuff. I’ve passed all of that now. The next stage is avoiding the friends that say, ‘come to this place’, ‘come to the club’, the distractions. What God gives he can also take away and I’m just using what I have to my advantage because I know not everybody can have this. Not everybody has this chance, not everybody has these opportunities so I’m trying to take every opportunity with both hands.
I expected Mikaal Lawal to bring the best out of myself and whatever he had we tried to nullify absolutely everything. Every time we stepped to the right, he looked for his right hand but ended up coming off square. He was never in balance to throw, that was the key thing to do. You would punch and then move out the way. Punched and smothered, punched and manoeuvred and that’s literally what we was doing, using my experience to my advantage. There was time when it got nitty and gritty on the inside and he was surprised by my strength, trying to push back. It was very uncomfortable in there for him, but I had to be very wary because he’s still a very, very hard puncher.
I had some niggles in the camp before, like a rib injury, but I had to just keep going because I didn’t want to pull out or anything. He hit me a few times in that sore area. “Shit,” I thought to myself. “I gotta be a smarter, a bit cuter in my approach.” I had to smother his work, make it work to my advantage and that was the tactics for the whole 12 rounds.
The way that we nullified him with the jabs and the feints and the twitching that would be a hard night’s work for anybody. I was trying to jab to the head and body. Feint, hook, feint, jab, feint, double jab. If I wasn’t doing any of that he would have probably found it a lot easier to try and come in and throw his shots. I was utilising that and I utilised that for so long. We utilised that in the build-up to May 27, he pulled out, and we just carried on the same tactics into the October 21 camp. So, it was drilled in my head. I was training for this guy for two months. A feint, jab, feint, twitch, all of that was drilled into me. That’s why I only got hit by two shots from him throughout the whole fight.
So what comes next? Honestly, I’ve no idea. Right now, I’m in a space of at last it’s done. I’m not even thinking about the future or next opponent or what’s next. I just want to take a nice, well-deserved break with my family because I sacrificed a lot so now, I want to relax and chill out. I can’t wait for the holiday!
