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  Mick sent the professional contract to me in the Algarve, where I was on my honeymoon with Paris in November 2008. I was supposed to be there for two weeks but I flew back home after just four days because Mick said I could make my debut on the undercard of Carl Froch’s challenge for the vacant WBC super-middleweight title against Jean Pascal in Nottingham, live on ITV. It was too good an opportunity to turn down so on 6 December 2008 I made my pro debut – and thankfully Paris forgave me for cutting short our honeymoon!

  I was enormously excited about starting a new chapter in my career and ultimately the professional business was where I had always wanted to be as a boxer. I believed I was going to take the sport by storm, and the sooner the better. At the time, Carl Froch was becoming a prominent name in the sport and being part of some of his shows was great for me. Before my debut, I didn’t feel nervous, it was just excitement. Mick had told the media that I reminded him of former world heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, who reigned as the top man in the division between 1978 and 1985. Mick had no doubt that I was going all the way.

  I wanted to make an instant impact and I did just that when I enjoyed a first-round technical knockout of Hungarian Béla Gyöngyösi with a head-body combination. After that I wanted more and more fights and, true to his word, Mick had me fighting eight times in 2009 so that I was quickly able to start making a name for myself. The bitterness of having my Olympic dream shattered had to be put behind me, and that’s exactly what I did, because that was history.fn1 It was time to start showing the public that I was not going to be denied as a professional fighter, and that I was the future of the heavyweight division.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  School of Hard Knocks

  The rain was dripping from my nose, it was freezing cold and my uncle Hughie was passing on his boxing knowledge the way he knew best: another day’s training outside his old mechanic’s shed in Lancaster.

  Having chosen Mick Hennessy as my manager, I had decided to be trained by my uncle at the start of my professional career. The facilities were basic. There was no fancy, modern-day gym with all the weights and machines you could ask for. Instead, the icy shed was situated a few feet from a trailer in Hughie’s back yard where I was living with my wife Paris. The ring inside wasn’t in the best of order either; the boards were loose and I would occasionally turn my ankle during pad work or sparring. But I put 100 per cent faith in Uncle Hughie, and in return he put 100 per cent faith in me. It worked.

  I was twenty years of age with plenty of puppy fat and certainly no strength and conditioning programme or nutritionist to speak of. In fact, it was quite the opposite with Hughie. When I look back, it’s funny really to think of how well I progressed. After training sessions we would often go along to the local Asda and he’d say, ‘Right, Tyson, get a couple of those meat pies into ya.’ But I trained hard and I fought hard, and it turned out that I could go twelve rounds on a diet of pies! With Uncle Hughie I would eventually go on to amass a winning streak of seventeen fights unbeaten, in the process winning both the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles. I will always be thankful for the hard work and wisdom that he bestowed on me as a young professional.

  However, one opponent that it seemed I was always going to be battling with was my weight. Keeping the pounds down on the scales was something I had to work really hard to manage. Fortunately, I could always fight, even when I wasn’t in the best of shape. I think most of this was down to my heart and determination; even when I was so tired that I felt like I would fall over, I never let myself give in. I used to drive on. I would sometimes say to Hughie, ‘This can’t be right that I feel super tired after five rounds and I’ve seven more to do.’ But he just used to say, ‘This is how you feel, get through it.’ It was a long way from the much more scientific approach that I would later have in camps with my other uncle Peter, who would take over as my trainer in 2012. But the one thing that Hughie was really good at teaching me was the sweet science, the art of boxing. He loved studying boxers. He had studied them all of his life and was a master scholar of the sport. Because of that, he was great at reading a fight. He could tell me within ten seconds the information I needed to go out there and win.

  With Uncle Hughie we worked a lot on how I could deliver punches correctly, making sure that every punch I threw counted. Like my earlier work with Steve Egan, we continued to concentrate on my movement – the slipping and sliding that were traits that other heavyweights didn’t really have, and probably haven’t done since the days of Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes back in the 1970s and 80s.

  Even in my early days as a professional I felt that I was every heavyweight’s worst nightmare. Part of my confidence grew from my athleticism. I’ve always had excellent flexibility. I’m probably some kind of genetic freak, I really shouldn’t be able to do it, but even when I’m 25 stone I can spar twenty rounds, ducking and diving and moving around the ring with ease.

  Perhaps one of the reasons for this lies in a discovery that I would make in the second part of my career: my lung capacity is out of the ordinary. When compared to another fit man of around 20 stone, the expert who tested me said that I was able to take in 21 litres of air in the same time that the other guy would take in 12 litres. So while I have the heart to dig deep, I also likely have the physical capacity to dig deeper than anyone else in the heavyweight division. That gives me an incredible amount of stamina and fuels my resilience in the toughest of moments.

  During this time training with Uncle Hughie, I also realised that I was good at adapting to situations; handling problems in the ring and finding a solution. This was something that would prove to be very important throughout my career. When things haven’t gone to plan, I have managed to stay on track. A lot of boxers have only one way of fighting and struggle to deal with a different style that doesn’t suit them. Thanks to Uncle Hughie, I found that I could work guys out very quickly and was able to make adjustments to my own style if necessary. One key factor that you will always see with elite fighters is their ability to control the ‘distance’ in a fight, to be clinically aware of how they can dictate the fight. I found that I could naturally find the right distance between me and my opponent, in order to be able to land my own punches, and then move out of range of the punches coming my way. Being able to slip a punch by a fraction like this meant that I could immediately be in the right place to connect with my own big shots, and that is crucial.

  When I wasn’t training in Uncle Hughie’s gym, my manager Mick Hennessy was keeping me very busy in the ring during my first full year as a pro in 2009. I had a fight a month for the first five months, which for someone as energetic and impulsive as me was perfect. Keeping my mind busy and focused is so important for me so I loved the fact that the fights were coming thick and fast.

  After enjoying my debut in December 2008, a month later I was fighting in Wigan and my opponent raised more than a few eyebrows among the boxing media. I was matched with a 6 foot 1 German, Marcel Zeller, whose record was twenty-one wins and only three defeats. This wasn’t the typical journeyman opponent that would usually be served up for a hot prospect. Normally you will see a young professional box a string of guys with losing records as they learn their trade. That is accepted because, for many fighters, moving from the amateur ranks to the professional business is a big step up in quality. The amateur sport is very different to boxing as a professional, and for the majority of fighters the transition can be tricky. Getting used to the slower pace and learning how to pace yourself as the rounds move up from three as an amateur to six to eight to ten and then twelve is all part of the learning curve. But I was put in with Zeller and I had no hesitation because I had full confidence in my ability, as did Hughie.

  The experienced German, who for some reason came into the ring wearing something like a kilt, came at me swinging wildly and I rapped him with my jab. As I backed him up to the ropes and landed a five-punch combination, he tried to show me that he wasn’t intimidated by this cocky kid and he be
ckoned me in for more of a close-quarters scrappy fight. That was fine by me and for the last two minutes of the round I bounced right uppercuts and jabs off his chin as well as some well-placed body shots. Credit to Zeller, he hung in there and he came out for the second round looking to do some damage. But I put him almost immediately on the back foot with stinging punches from every angle. Around forty seconds into the third round, I caught him a bit lower than the belt in the middle of another attack and he made the most of it by taking a knee and complaining to the referee. It was a clever way of taking a breather. But when the fight resumed after about twenty seconds I kept up the one-sided beating and, as he tried to cover up against the ropes, the referee called it off with ten seconds remaining. What was supposed to be a tough challenge was made to look easy.

  The next stop for me was Norwich four weeks later on the undercard of local man Jon Thaxton’s European lightweight title fight. I easily dealt with Russian journeyman Daniil Peretyatko, forcing a stoppage in between rounds one and two due to him having a badly cut left eye.

  The fight-a-month treadmill rolled on to Birmingham and another sharp performance saw me force Lee Swaby to retire at the end of the fourth round. My fifth fight created a bit more interest because I was matched with Mathew Ellis, a former ABA national champion from Oldham, which was only eight miles from Manchester. I didn’t waste any time getting to work, and I delivered a strong right hand followed by a left that had him sprawled out on the canvas within thirty seconds. Another quick one-two combination finished him off. I had made a very impressive start to my professional career, and ITV, who had screened every one of the bouts, was loving it.

  In May I had my sixth professional fight, against a guy from Northern Ireland, Scott Belshaw, who was being hyped up by his promoter, Frank (now known as Kellie) Maloney. He could punch a bit but we had sparred together when I was an amateur so I was feeling relaxed, and with the fight being shown live on ITV, I wanted to put on a show. I did.

  A left hook to the body in the first round had a delayed reaction before Belshaw fell to the canvas and then just before the bell I put him down again with a body shot. Early in the second round, I caught him again to the solar plexus and although he didn’t go down he creased up in pain so badly that I backed off and allowed the referee to step in and stop it.

  Another stoppage win followed in July against Latvian Aleksandrs Selezens and then I signed to fight John McDermott for the English heavyweight title in September. It was one fight after another in relatively quick succession and that kept me focused on boxing. Facing McDermott was a big step up from the class of boxer I had been facing, as he had gone the distance twice with former world title challenger Danny Williams in two British title fights. A lot of people saw me as the underdog and I seemed to inspire McDermott to train harder by giving him the nickname ‘McMuffin’ because he was always on the chubby side. He was twenty-nine and I had just turned twenty-one. He also happened to be managed by Frank Maloney, who seemed to think that this fight was going to be too much too soon for me. Not many young heavyweights would have been prepared like me to step up and face someone like that so early in their career. After all, I had only been a pro for ten months. Maybe, looking back, it was a bit of a risk.

  For ten rounds I had to stand in the trenches and go to war with him. I had to dig incredibly deep at times; I was breathing hard and finding it tough, but I felt pretty fit so I knew I could cope with the situation.

  Handling yourself in such a fight is as much to do with your mental state as it is the physical condition you are in. There are two things you can do in that kind of situation: you can take a good punch and fall over and look for an exit, or you can dig so deep until the well is empty and then get a shovel and keep digging in the dry dirt until there is nothing more to dig and nothing matters more than winning. That’s how I felt in that McDermott fight.

  A right hand caught me in the ninth round which stung me a little. But then I regrouped and slowed up McDermott with some body shots of my own. The last round was relentless and I landed some good uppercuts. The crowd at the Brentwood Centre in Essex loved it and at the end of the fight, opinion was divided. The Sky television commentators had it for McDermott but thankfully referee Terry O’Connor, who was the sole judge, raised my hand in victory.

  It had been a real test and I had given the fans at a national level the first look at my heart and desire. Credit to McDermott, he was harder than I thought he would be and he was angry at the decision, as was his manager Maloney, who said the referee’s decision was a disgrace. It was close but I felt I had done enough, and even as a young fighter I showed my true fighting spirit by immediately offering him a rematch.

  For the first fight I had probably over-trained; by the time I stepped into the ring I had no real snap in my punches. But for the second one with McDermott I was undercooked because I took it at three weeks’ notice. Still, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, it’s often better to be under-trained than over-trained. A man who has over-worked needs a month off and it’s like he’s stuck in first gear; a man under-prepared has power in his fists until the gas runs out.

  I had a couple of fights in between the two McDermott bouts, the first of which was to be just two weeks later in Dublin. Having the opportunity to box in Ireland for the first time as a professional meant a lot to me and my arrival generated a lot of interest; I spoke to the media about how proud I was of my Irish heritage. Unfortunately, I suffered the first setback of my pro career during my points win over Tomáš Mrázek of the Czech Republic when I damaged my hand. It was a bad night all round for the Irish as Bernard Dunne lost his WBA super-bantamweight title in the main event. I had hit Mrázek high on the top of the head and it was confirmed later that I had broken my hand. I needed to get it seen to straight after the six-round fight, but not before I rang Paris, who that morning had gone into hospital to have our first child. I may have been feeling frustrated and in some pain but when Paris answered the phone and told me I was the father of a bouncing baby girl, Venezuela, I couldn’t have been happier. The hand injury meant nothing when I first looked at my first-born child. She was so beautiful and it was such a special moment for Paris and me. It was very emotional as we sat around the hospital bed as a new family unit. I knew Venezuela would always be her daddy’s girl!

  The broken hand obviously meant I was out of action for a few months. I finally got back into the swing of things with a routine victory over Germany’s Hans-Joerg Blasko in March 2010. I wasn’t sure what would be next for me so I decided to take a trip to Holland to meet up with a cousin. I had told Paris that I would be away for a couple of weeks but as it happened I missed the boat from Hull and a day later Hughie called me to say that I could have the McDermott rematch if I wanted but the bad news was that it would be in three weeks’ time! That was no real time to get ready for such an important fight but I didn’t care, so I immediately said to Hughie, ‘Go for it.’ So it was set for 25 June 2010 back at the same venue in Essex where we’d had our first fight.

  I’d had no sparring for the fight because I took it at such short notice and I weighed in at 19½ stone, which was heavy for me at that time. It turned out to be one of the hardest fights of my career. I won it on pure guts because after four rounds I had nothing left. I then took a headbutt to the eye in the seventh round but to be honest I was that tired I didn’t even care about it. Sometimes fighters panic when they’re cut, but when I tasted the blood I thought, ‘Lovely. This will look good on TV.’

  In the eighth round we were both feeling the pace but just before the bell I felt a sense of relief when McDermott hit the floor after a quick flurry of my punches. But he got up and I thought, ‘Oh no, my chance has gone.’

  I went back to the corner and I told Hughie, ‘I’m totally gassed but I’m going to knock him out.’ McDermott had plenty of bottle and he came out swinging at the start of the ninth but just as he caught me with a right hand, I responded with an uppercut and McDermott hit the flo
or again. He got back up but then moments later I had him down once more. He got to his feet but the referee Dave Parris called it off.

  I felt like I’d proved a point because people said I’d lost the first fight and McDermott had a new trainer in Jim McDonnell, who he thought could make sure he got his revenge. But, again, I showed my grit and got the job done and made sure there was no controversy. Doing the ringside interview with Sky afterwards, I got very emotional because I had a strong sense that people had written me off but I had proved them wrong.

  That was a British title eliminator, which meant that a victory would leave me expecting to fight for the belt within around six months or so. But it would be another thirteen months before I would fight for the title when I had the first of two scraps with former European champion and world title challenger Dereck Chisora. In those thirteen months I had a solid win over American Rich Power, who also came into the fight unbeaten, and the fight was shown across the States on Showtime. It was just an eight-rounder but they were showcasing prospects so it was very good for my profile. Next I went to Quebec City in Canada and had another points win, this time over journeyman Zack Page on the undercard of the world title fight between Bernard Hopkins and Jean Pascal, who was a big hero over there.

  As I described in the first chapter, I had been to Detroit to train with the great Emanuel Steward and he was in my corner that night in Quebec City, which was an experience I remember fondly. That was probably the first night that I showed off my boxing skills in a disciplined way. I was staying busy again and learning with each fight.

  But then, on 11 February 2011, I was hit with one of the hardest blows I had ever taken, and it wasn’t from my next opponent, who was to be the unbeaten Brazilian, Marcelo Luiz Nascimento. He was the WBO Latino champion and a big puncher, but he wasn’t the biggest danger to me because by the time the fight came around a week later I couldn’t have cared less whether I won or lost. Just days before the fight, my dad was handed a prison sentence after being involved in a row with another man – and it hit me like a sledgehammer. He had always been there for me throughout my amateur and professional career and now I knew I wasn’t going to see him for many years.