When I met Macaulay McGowan a few days after his stunning European title win over Abbas Barau, I found him torn between celebrating the acclaim he was currently receiving and preparing for the dark, silent days that might follow. After all, it wasn't the first time the Manchester native had gotten drunk on post-fight excitement, and the 29-year-old McGowan is not naive enough to expect it to continue.
Still, this awareness at least prepared him for what was to come: he knew from experience that the immediate euphoria was followed by a period of silence and reflection, and, if something was lost, by waves of disappointment and regret.
“I'm actually a bit excited,” he told me last Tuesday, four days after his brave defeat to Ballough at Bolton. “I didn't sleep much, but it will wear off. People will be making a fuss and calling me a 'warrior' and stuff, but eventually it will wear off and you'll just be left with the feeling that you've lost. It's going to take some time to settle in. Around here, or over the next few days, I'll have to come to terms with the fact that I lost and that will hurt. But I'll hang in there, I won't get too upset. I'll just calm down a bit and that'll be it.”
Abass Barau (left) is not taking Macaulay McGowan (right) lightly.
At the time, McGowan had just placed fourth in the fathers' race at his seven-year-old daughter's school sports day, so he seemed relaxed and happy, as one would expect from a father who had spent four days as a professional fighter. Sure, his face still bore the marks of those grueling battles, but aside from that, he was unscathed and enjoying his transition from fighter to civilian and all the perks that came with it. He could now eat what he wanted, go where he wanted, and spend as much time as he wanted with his daughter, Florence.
But such freedom also comes with downtime, the idea of which can be either liberating or unfreeing depending on one's personality. For boxers, who are used to being in the gym with other fighters, used to a routine and being the center of their own world, the idea of escaping into some kind of meaningless world can be rather frightening for some.
Maybe that's why retiring at the right time is so hard for many, and why fighters like McGowan, who was back at work measuring and cutting drywall on Monday, don't want to stay away from the gym for too long. In fact, that same Monday he was back in the bag and in the corpse, desperate for this post-fight honeymoon period to last, so no one would forget.
By the way, it's not easy when you get to the top. In fact, when boxers prepare for a world title fight, what they typically experience is the reverse of death – instead of the soul leaving the body, the body leaves the soul. This empty corpse goes back to the gym day in and day out, relearning sensitivity, compassion, decency, saying goodbye to family and friends, and essentially relearning morality.
Suddenly, every language feels foreign except for the dialect spoken within the four walls of the gym, and every problem seems trivial except for the issues being discussed within those same four walls. Soon, the world of boxers preparing for a world title fight becomes smaller and smaller, structured to meet their own design specifications. They see what they should see, hear what they should hear, and do what they should do. Anything else is deemed unnecessary — an inconvenience.
“It's easy to be a boxer if all you think about is being a boxer,” George Groves told him before his fight with Carl Froch in 2012. “You forget about everything else, you neglect the other people in your life. You don't think about any other responsibilities. I'm lucky to be that ignorant and able to ignore everything outside of boxing.”
“Boxing makes you very selfish and I think that’s part of the success. need “That's how it has to be to be successful, but it's actually really easy. I don't have kids, I don't have a lot of responsibilities and I can just focus purely on boxing.”
This would eventually change for Groves — the losses would come, the titles would come, the responsibilities and energy resources would be shared — but as he prepared for the biggest fight of his life, Groves had never felt more free, more important and, above all, more in control.
With everything designed to suit his quirks and needs, his training-camp routine blurred the line between reality and fantasy, and the pains of training and dieting were always tempered by the thrill of being able to act selfishly without fear of retribution. For a boxer, this hall pass sometimes lasts as long as 12 weeks. Sometimes longer. But eventually, as Groves, McGowan and every boxer learns, the bubble bursts, and the day after the fight, life is… Real Life – You need to restart.
“It's a strange feeling,” Groves said. “I never feel more alive or important than when I'm preparing for a fight, because then everyone wants to talk to me and get to know me, and the sad thing is, you don't have much time for the people that really matter to you.”
“Then, once the fight is over, he goes back to being a completely normal person and is a normal guy who comes into the pub. But the difference is, I When I go to the pub I always have to take my laptop with me as my friends and family are back to work. Proper work.”
