MRS Shabaz Masoud was in no mood for celebrations after the new champion returned home.
“It was straight back to reality,” said Masoud, remembering the scenes that greeted him when he walked through the door of his house in Stoke-on-Trent with the IBO super-bantamweight championship belt in his bag.
“As soon as I got home I had to change my boy’s nappy!
“My head was buzzing. I didn’t know what to do for a few days after the fight. I went back to the gym and kept taking my dog for long walks trying to keep myself grounded.”
Masoud spoke to Boxing News at Wellington Boxing Academy’s amateur show in Telford six days after outpointing Liam Davies on a split points vote in Birmingham.
The build-up had been tense.
Davies and Masoud were from rival amateur gyms in Telford. Davies was the product of the Donnington Ex-Servicemen’s club that his late grandfather Brian ran – and Masoud served his amateur apprenticeship at Wellington, where his uncle Mo Fiaz was head coach.
Fiaz had been part of the coaching team at Donnington before setting up Wellington and twice Masoud and Davies had boxed as amateurs.
Both times, Masoud won.
“It didn’t bother me,” said ‘Maverick’, “but I think it bothered him.
“I knew he had developed since then and I had as well. It was a new fight for me.”
Davies was the more vocal of the two ahead of the fight.
“I was glad with the way I conducted myself,” said Masoud. “I didn’t let anything get to me. Everyone deals with their emotions differently. I bottle mine up. I have a poker face like Floyd Mayweather. I study him all the time.”
Masoud describes himself as “a student of the game” and studied Davies, along with coach Ben Davison and analyst Lee Wylie.
“We worked on different strategies because Liam is a versatile fighter,” said Masoud. “We looked for things we could capitalise on.
“Everyone was saying he can punch hard and I didn’t want to get hit. I went in there confident in my skills and defence.
“If he had some success, straightaway I got him back. Even on the inside I was blocking and slipping and landing the better punches.”
Masoud put on something of a clinic and won a split decision that deserved to be unanimous and put him on the radar of one of the sport’s pound-for-pound stars, Naoya Inoue.
“I knew that was going to happen,” said Masoud, reflecting on the 14th – and by far the best – win of his six-and-a-half year career.
“Being the underdog brings the best out in me. You can talk as much as you want before the fight. I did my talking on the night.”
Davies was the favourite for a reason.
He had won his previous three inside the distance, was coming off a career-best knockout of Mexican Erik Robles and had a spotless record against southpaws.
Davies had dealt with four left-handers in his 16-0 career and stopped two.
Best win on Masoud’s record was his 12-round dissection of Jack Bateson, the former Great Britain amateur who had won all 17 going into their fight in November, 2022.
“That was a big fight,” said Masoud. “I was the underdog again.”
Until he beat Davies, the fight that seemed to define Masoud’s career was his desperate struggle with Jose Sanmartin in Newcastle last December.
Masoud scraped past the seasoned Colombian on a tight 10-round split verdict.
“People don’t realise that I had Covid and pulled out three weeks before,” he said.
“Then they came back to me and asked me to the top the bill. I hadn’t boxed for a year and, if I don’t fight, I can’t look after my boy and my wife.
“I was hard on myself after that. You have to be critical if you want to get better.”
Davison got him through that fight, telling him he had to win the final three minutes to get the decision, and their bond is strong.
Masoud joined Davison ahead of his fight with Midlander Louis Norman in March 2021, a fourth-round stoppage of the former English flyweight champion that improved his record to 8-0.
“When I went to Ben, I had nothing,” Shabaz told Boxing News.
“I was minus in my bank account.
“He looked after me and paid or a lot of stuff when he didn’t have to. He told me there would be ups and downs and told me to believe in the process.
“He knew the talent he had. He had seen me spar Isaac Lowe when he was working with him and Tyson Fury.
“We have had good times and there’s a lot more to come.”
Masoud joined Davison on the advice of his uncle.
The fighter says he was “five or six” years old when he was taken to the Wellington gym to train with Fiaz, inspired by the theatrics of Prince Naseem Hamed.
“I grew up watching Naz all the time,” he said. “That was the reason why I boxed.
“My dad [Tahir] had a video of him boxing Steve Robinson and I watched it over and over again. Other kids were watching cartoons and I was watching Naz. He was so good to watch and he was a man of faith.”
Masoud, a devout Muslim, says he hasn’t met the former world featherweight champion, but says sons Aadam and Sami Hamed are friends.
“They told me they have grown up watching me,” said Masoud, “after I grew up watching their dad. It’s crazy how it’s come full circle.”
Becoming the first to beat Inoue would put Masoud alongside his boyhood hero in British boxing history.
“You have to fancy it,” he said of the possibility of fighting the 28-0, 25 KOs Japanese ‘Monster’ who recently secured the backing of Turki Alalshikh.
“He is a pound-for-pound fighter and I’m in the game to have fights like that. I watch him all the time. There are vulnerabilities. I would bring a different style that he may not have seen.
“I’m going to be highly ranked now, but I would like more experience. I’m only 14 fights into my pro career and some fighters are still fighting journeymen after 14 fights.
“But I’ve never said: ‘No’ to a fight. Mo would say: ‘You’re fighting tonight’ and that would be it.”
Masoud had 50 amateur bouts with his uncle in his corner, winning “42 or 43” and reaching the semis finals of the Elite Championships in 2017 where he was beaten by Louie Lynn, before turning over in May 2018.
He says the win over Davies was the result of “a lifetime’s work” both in the gym and in front of You Tube watching the greats!
Favourites include Vasily Lomachenko and Terence Crawford – “fighters who use angles and movement” – and Masoud studies himself as closely as his heroes.
“I came out of that fight [against Davies] thinking: ‘What can I do to improve ?’” he said.
“I’m already thinking about that. I did think I was punch perfect when I watched it back, but I will watch it again and again until I find things I need to improve on.
“I didn’t want to get caught by a single shot. That was my mindset going into the fight. In such a big fight, you will get hit, but that was my mindset going into it.”
The pro-Masoud crowd – between 300-400 of them and every single one noisy it seemed – didn’t just cheer every time Shabaz landed.
“They cheered every time he missed as well,” he said, smiling. “They were all people I knew.”
The number of tickets Masoud sold won’t have gone unnoticed by his promoter, Eddie Hearn.
Masoud was straight on the phone to him after the fight.
Shabaz remembered: “I said to him: ‘I told you I was that good.’”
