Conah Walker interview: I was at rock bottom before boxing saved me

When Walker steps through the ropes at Birmingham’s Resorts World Arena tonight to face Lewis Ritson, it will mark the latest step in a career where he is now being rewarded for having done things the hard way.

It has been the same in life, where he has been transformed from a troubled teenager who was excluded from school and spent nearly two years in a junior detention centre, to a mature, proud father who claims there are simply no words to properly explain how happy he is. He says he owes it all to boxing.

“For me, it is everything,” says the 29-year-old welterweight. “I would be lost without boxing. It is much more than just a sport.”

Walker has never spoken in public before about the difficulties he faced in his youth but is doing so now because, he says: “I want it out there. I want to show kids you can make mistakes and come back from them. 

“I was at the bottom of the bottom. I was low, I was in jail. I have done it the hard way but if you just keep going, with grit and determination, you can get there.”

Walker describes that period, early in his life, as his “wake-up call” and says it is boxing which first gave him a sense of purpose.

“I have a lot of energy and sometimes I could go off the rails but boxing always brought me back,” he says. “My head and my body work at 100mph but boxing sort of mellows me out. It releases all my anger, everything I have got inside. 

“I can go to the gym if I’m having a bad day or under the weather and I come out with a massive smile on my face. I’m like a totally different person.”

A more than handy rugby player growing up, Walker was playing scrum half for Wolverhampton when he got his first proper taste of boxing during an organised training camp. From there he joined Merridale ABC and under the guidance of head coach Mick Smith, to this day a close friend and confidante, things progressed quickly.

Walker won two national titles as a novice before reaching the semi-final of the elite tournament, his performances catching the eye of a British boxing legend. Ricky Hatton had spotted the Wolverhampton fighter - and his considerable support - while watching his son Campbell in amateur action. 

“Ricky’s team approached me and asked if I would go up and have a trial at his gym in Manchester,” explains Walker. “I’d been assessing my options, considering whether to remain amateur and have another crack at the elites the next year.

“They wanted me to turn pro and so that’s what I did. I was travelling up there on a Monday, coming back on Friday, training full-time.

“I did that for nearly two years and used up all of my savings with the travel and living. It was money spent in a good way because it was building my profile but when it came to an end I needed to get back to work.” 

Walker, who now lives in Sedgley via Graiseley, Bradmore and Warstones, resumed his profession as a tiler and initially continued boxing part-time, under the guidance of Richie Ghent at the latter’s RG Boxing Academy in Bilston. He duly won the Midlands Area title by beating Levi Ferguson and though there have been defeats since, including three in his last six fights, a closer look at Walker’s record reveals a fighter who has been prepared to take on any challenge presented to him. In a sport where far too much emphasis is placed on maintaining an unbeaten record, it is a refreshing approach.

“It goes back to my amateur days,” he explains. “Because I had started late in boxing I just said get me any fight, at any time and that is what we did. Any time, any weight and we kept winning.

“Most of the time I have been drafted in as a B fighter, to get beaten essentially. My opponents have been the prospects expected to put a performance on. I have done it the hard way but now I am showing people I should be at this level and they are getting behind me. They are putting me on the right side of the table.”

Walker’s big breakthrough campaign in August last year when he stopped previously unbeaten prospect Cyrus Pattinson in Birmingham. Pattinson was put down three times before eventually retiring in the eighth round. The latter’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, claimed it was one of the best fights he’d ever seen.

It was followed in January by another win over an unbeaten prospect, Lloyd Germain, before in June he faced Lewis Crocker in a bout many believe will be named British boxing’s fight of the year. 

For 12 rounds the pair went toe-to-toe with many at ringside believing Walker, who went into the fight as a big underdog against the heavy-hitting, unbeaten Irishman, had done enough to get the decision. The judges’ disagreed but the performance alone won him even more fans, as did the sporting way in which he took the defeat.

Where others might have ranted and raved, Walker took a more philosophical view.

“Both our stock has risen,” he said to Crocker during a post-fight interview in which both warriors - there is no other fitting term considering the brutality of the bout - displayed mutual respect. Walker then showed humility in thanking Hearn for the opportunity and got a surprising response.

He says: “The silver lining was me having a chat with Eddie after and him saying: ‘No, you will be back, you won’t have to go anywhere’. That put a good spin on a bad situation. 

“There is a way of losing. No-one wants to lose, obviously. If you go out there and get splattered in the first couple of rounds you get pushed back to the end of the pile. 

“But if you go there and give a good account of yourself and it is nip and tuck all the way through, there is always room to come back. With me, I leave it all in the ring. There is no doubt about that.”

That has brought him to tonight and a meeting with Newcastle’s Ritson, the former British lightweight champion who, while hugely respected, is considered by most to be on the downslope of his career and has been stopped in three of his last five bouts.  

Walker, so used to himself being written off, knows that makes him a dangerous opponent.

“Is there more expectation on me? Definitely,” he says. “I am a massive bookies favourite, which is obviously a first. Everyone is writing Ritson off. 

“But he has done everything in boxing, other than win world titles. He has been a formidable force at super lightweight and lightweight. I can’t be taking him lightly. But at the end of the day he is just another head and he is in my way.

“I won’t stop until I get to where I need. I am hungry. It does not bother me what the scorecard says. I am not going to stop doing what I am doing until I get where I need to get to.”

The planned destination will come as little surprise.

“World champion,” says Walker, when the obvious question is asked. “I want to secure the life of my family. I want to put my son in private school and I want a house in the countryside. 

“This is what I want to do. I want to be successful and I think boxing is the way I am going to do it.”

Such is his belief that, allied with obvious talent, you would not bet against him realising the dream. He will certainly have no shortage of support. More than 700 fans made the short trip east to roar him on against Crocker in June. More are expected to be in Birmingham tonight.

Yet whatever the future may bring, in many ways Walker has already won. His past now stands as a lesson, an inspiration. But that is where it remains, the past. 

“For me it is a way of life and at the minute I am thoroughly enjoying boxing,” he says. “We are getting looked after, on the big stage. 

“Everything is going well, inside the ring and out. I have a lovely family, a lovely partner and son. I can’t explain how happy I am.”