BY DECLAN TAYLOR
THE last time Galal Yafai boxed Sunny Edwards he had to take annual leave from his 9-5 factory job. “I wasn’t even a proper boxer then,” he says. “I was only dossing around at that point.”
Fast forward a decade and the pair are about to collide in perhaps the most significant all-British flyweight clash of the generation and there is not a holiday request form in sight.
It was April 2015 and Yafai had barely heard the name Sunny Edwards when he arrived at the Echo Arena in Liverpool for the semi-final of the ABAs. Yafai lost a split in their contest on the Saturday and Edwards went on to beat Joe Maphosa in the final 24 hours later but the seed had been sown for a rivalry that would run for nearly a decade.
They were reunited in Sheffield later that year as they both plotted paths towards the 2016 Olympics in Rio. However, there was of course only one slot at 49kgs and it was Yafai who filled it after winning at the qualifiers.
It is a moment that seems to irk Edwards, given he was the one who won their earlier contest. But Yafai, never one to get riled by anything, smiles when asked to recount his side of that story.
“I was going to tournaments and winning,” he says. “I improved because I’d quit my job and I was fighting seven or eight times a year. Before it would only be two or three times a year so I just improved a lot rapidly. I went from boxing Sunny in the ABAs and half taking it seriously to fighting the No.1 Cuban in the world and having really close fights with them guys.
“I don’t have anything against Sunny but he lost in the ABAs that year as well. Sunny lost in the final to a guy called Kiaran MacDonald so Sunny knows better than anyone that you can get beat on any given day on a split decision or whatever.
“He lost in the Olympic year to an English kid here. If it goes by that then he shouldn’t have gone and I shouldn’t have gone, it should have been someone else. He seems to not tell anyone that he lost to Kiaran MacDonald. He knows better than anyone.”
Although their time together on GB was reasonably fleeting in the grand scheme of their careers, it was long enough for them to share what Edwards has described as ‘hundreds’ of rounds of sparring. But while Edwards flew the nest at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield to plough a lone furrow as a professional, Yafai stayed put on GB for two Olympic cycles, the second of which gleaned gold.
And Yafai’s decision to launch his professional career with GB Performance Director Rob McCracken, and keep training in Sheffield, also drew criticism from Edwards, who suggested that using a facility run on lottery funding gives him an unfair advantage. “McCracken doesn’t pay for his gym,” Edwards said earlier this year. “He gets the best gym in the country for free, the strength and conditioning facilities, the indoor running track, the outdoor running track, saunas, steams, massage, physio. You name it, they’ve got it. He can type in Sunny Edwards into their system and they will have every single spar I’ve had in the GB ring on a TV. You’re telling me that’s a level playing field?”
Another smile from Yafai. “I don’t care where I train,” he says. I just need a ring, a bag and my legs to run. I know Sunny has said that I get the best of this and that, and that I get to watch my spars back. Me watching my spars back doesn’t do s**t. It’s not going to make me win on the night. To me, it’s a load of s**t really. The gym is a great gym but I only need a bag and a ring.”
He also disagrees that he was always favoured by McCracken from the start. “Let’s not get it twisted – I’m a flyweight,” he says, laughing. “I was 28 when I won gold at the Olympics. Rob is not going to be a millionaire from me, let me tell you. Rob has had Carl Froch and Anthony Joshua. I don’t think when he first saw me, 49kg, 5ft 4ins, little man he thought, ‘Yeah, that’s my way out’. For Sunny to think that Rob was favouring me, I think he’d rather favour a heavyweight who would make him loads of money.
“To be honest, when I went professional, I thought I’d go to America to train with somebody but I just thought I got on with Rob and he’s a straight guy. I had that trust with him and I thought I’d try it out and see what he wants to do. It just happened really. I said I’d like to stay there and train with him and he said, ‘We will see how it goes’.”
So far, it has gone as well as possible. Yafai is 8-0, 6 KOs and has been on the fast track from the start, making his debut over 10 rounds against the capable Carlos Bautista in February 2022. He ended it after 2-11 of the fifth. Even so, despite being three years older than Edwards at 31, the southpaw cannot match his opponent’s professional experience.
Surrey-born Edwards, who has spent much of his adult life living in Sheffield, is 21-1, 4 KOs and a former world champion with four successful defences and a reputation as one of the very best in the division. It is a bold move for Yafai, therefore, to select Edwards as the opponent for his first 12-rounder.
“I think it’s time because I think I’m better,” he explains. “My team around me know I’m better than him, too.
“I don’t want to throw digs at him and say I beat him up in sparring but if Sunny had got the better of me in sparring, the fight wouldn’t be happening so it’s really simple. We sparred in the amateurs of course but then also before my debut.
“When I turned pro, I went to his gym and we sparred for about a month. We would spar twice a week for a month, doing 10 rounds. That’s 20 rounds a week for a month and then again in 2023 I think so I got a good gauge on what he was all about because he was world champion at the time and I hadn’t even had my debut. Really, I shouldn’t be laying a glove on him but it was good sparring.
“But sparring doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean that if sparring was comfortable for me that I’m going to win the fight. A fight is a whole, another thing, you have to rise to the occasion. We will see on the night but if I had got beat up in sparring, the fight wouldn’t be happening, trust me.”
On the line at the BP Pulse Arena in Birmingham is the WBC interim flyweight title, despite Kenshiro Teraji only winning the full belt last month. Even so, the winner in the Second City will likely secure a shot at the champion at some point during 2025. Yafai is not bothered either way.
“I’m just not looking too far ahead,” he says. “I don’t even know why there’s an interim title for this one. I don’t really care either. I’m not thinking about the Japanese champion or whoever. Let me get past Sunny, that hurdle, then I might think about who there is next or what titles are available because it can all end so quick if I don’t get past Sunny next week. Then I’m five hurdles back. Let me get past Sunny and then we will see what Eddie Hearn and the team want to do.
“If he loses, I don’t know what he does and, if he wins, I don’t know what he does. It’s either going to be s**t for him or s**t for me.”
