BUYING P*RN FOR ENGLAND
Jamie Hughes boxed for England as an amateur and left the sport unwillingly as a 4-0 professional. His journey from "obese kid" to prospect is a fascinating one. He tells his own story in this multi-part piece.
Slimmed down slightly, had my first amateur fight at 64kg and got bashed in that, lost some weight and got battered in that next one too. Well, I got beat, it felt like being battered, but when I look back at the VHS which was all we had back then, I just got beat. These guys were two feet taller than me and I had a proper go. The balls I had, I think I earned respect from that.
My coaches knew I had to get to an acceptable weight. I won my fourth fight, I’d got down to about 57kg. I beat a guy in Waltham Forest in a working man’s club and I couldn’t even see him across the ring there was that much smoke in the room. The quality old days of amateur boxing- enough fagging it up to cloud the ring. A losing streak after got me to 2-8, imagine if you did that as a pro, everyone would have a fucking heart attack.
From that point there, I don’t know what happened but I won two fights in a day and an area title at Earlsfield in the schoolboy championships- at 54kg. I don’t know if there was something in my brain going “you’ve fought these lumps at 64kg what are these gonna do to me?”, but it worked.
Following that loss I won a load of fights, sixteen in a row, then I got beat at York Hall in the NABC London final. He boxed me up. That was the icing on the cake for me because the guy who beat me there also beat me in the London semi-final later, but we’ll get to that. I really felt like I beat him but I watched the tape back and thought fair enough, so from that point there I really trained hard, like properly hard. Shot selection, footwork and so on.
Going all in, I got picked for south east London, boxed against Kent and won that. I got called up for London, then on the England squad and was training at the national base in Crystal Palace, before it moved up to Sheffield. George Groves and James DeGale were there, people like that. Amateur boxing is all about scoring points but George Groves, he was a fucking destroyer. I used to stay behind at competitions to watch him. There was one in Stevenage and the whole club waited around just to watch him. Left hook to the body or something, always a stoppage. Groves was a beast.
On an England versus Scotland select thing, my first time up there some shithouse came in the changing room with a bullet, showed it to me and put his fingers to his head like a gun and said “if you win”. At that point, what do you do? I was in the room on my own. So I laughed and I went out and gave him their national champion beating all round the ring, idiots.
My second time in Scotland me and my teammate were in the hotel room and I bought all of the porn channels, my mate was so scared that we was gonna get in trouble. We boxed in some old round theatre in Glasgow and the crowd were screaming at me “you’re gonna die” and all that shit when I was walking to the ring. I just thought yeah alright you cunts, but I went out that night and beat a guy called Liam Gallagher. Now I ain’t losing to a geezer called Liam fucking Gallagher in Scotland, on Burns Night, and I beat him 17-2; that’s a convincing win in amateur boxing.
I beat him so convincingly that the next day at the hotel check out I just owned it, walked down there with confidence and said to my England trainers “look I ordered a load of porn to the room”. They thought it was funny but I’d won, if I’d lost maybe they’d have thought I was a fool but we’ll never know the answer to that will we. Probably happens all the time.
A lot of these kids’ fights, competitions, it was all rubbish and my fight got used as evidence in a tribunal about how shady that all was. These representatives, they were just there for a free sandwich, it was corrupt, shitting on kids’ dreams and it affected me. I went to my room and smoked weed for weeks. My Mum saw how I was, she begged me to get out and they took me, but it was the last proper amateur fight I had. It was supposed to be at about 63kg, I was 67kg. I hadn’t been training.
We went to Wales, he was a bronze medalist at the junior World Championships for Wales. I could have beat him if I wasn’t in Swansea or wherever the fuck I was, but I went to touch gloves with him and I dropped the medal we had to exchange because of the gloves and obviously I couldn’t pick it up so I kicked it out of the ring.
My trainers said “well that was a good fucking start” and I got a slap then had to fight a guy third in the world. I think I could have got the decision if I wasn’t in Wales and hadn’t kicked their medal out the ring. I never got to the level I could have done if it wasn’t for chasing birds and doing drugs, but that’s a repetitive theme for me. It happened in my pro career and in my life as well. What could have happened if I managed to keep my shit together. What would have happened? I made terrible decisions.
I basically stopped boxing, started fucking around again. My amateur career wasn’t the greatest, but it could have been better; McGuigan told me I could have been the next Ricky Hatton, I was with the England squad, if I’d put the work in I would have won the ABA’s, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. It was one of the stupidest moves I’ve ever made to walk away from that. What does any young, dumb and angry kid do though? Fed up, I walked away at sixteen to go drinking in parks and chasing chicks, fucking around.
Boxing gives you that foundation for life. I wish I could go back and persevere, but what can you do.
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