{"id":260041,"date":"2025-11-03T16:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/260041\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T16:37:08","slug":"liam-williams-reveals-coach-gary-lockett-discouraged-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/260041\/","title":{"rendered":"Liam Williams reveals coach Gary Lockett discouraged comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Liam Williams, left, is plotting a return to the ring<\/p>\n

Liam Williams has revealed his long-time trainer Gary Lockett discouraged him from making a boxing comeback.<\/p>\n

Williams retired after a humbling first-round defeat by Hamzah Sheeraz in February 2024, citing fears over chronic traumatic encephalopathy<\/a> (CTE) after suffering “several concussions”.<\/p>\n

Last week the former world title challenger announced his comeback<\/a> and has since told BBC Sport: “I feel like a new man.”<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t want to look back in a couple of years when it’s too late and wish I had a couple more fights,” said Williams.<\/p>\n

But the 33-year-old’s decision was not initially backed by his coach.<\/p>\n

Lockett threw in the towel to save his fighter from further punishment against Sheeraz after he was put down twice in the opening round at London’s Copper Box Arena.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, he agreed with Williams’ own assessment<\/a> that he was “done”.<\/p>\n

Although the pair remained close, the former middleweight’s return to Lockett’s gym in Cardiff earlier this year was met with a cold shoulder.<\/p>\n

“Gary didn’t want to train me. He said: ‘I’m not really interested’,” Williams recalled.<\/p>\n

“He told me I was a good friend, it’s not just a boxer-coach relationship, and said ‘I care about you dearly’.”<\/p>\n

Lockett’s duty of care towards his fighter was unsurprising. <\/p>\n

He saw first-hand the dangers of boxing, having been in Nick Blackwell’s corner when he suffered a bleed on the skull against Chris Eubank Jr<\/a> in 2016, which left him in an induced coma for more than two weeks. <\/p>\n

Blackwell was also a stablemate of Williams.<\/p>\n

“Gary said to me: ‘Leave it alone. You have had some great nights, you have had a great career. You have got nothing else to prove, you can stay happily retired.'”<\/p>\n

‘I’m made for boxing’<\/p>\n

Like so many other retired fighters, Williams admitted he struggled to fill the void left after hanging up his gloves.<\/p>\n

“It was [rubbish]. Life is great for a couple of weeks or months, then it’s like ‘is this it?’,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I have boxed since I was nine years old. It’s in me. That’s what I’m made for.”<\/p>\n

The Welshman convinced Lockett he still had something left to give in the sport by telling him to let his stable’s best talents – which include ex-world champion Joe Cordina, European lightweight champion Gavin Gwynne and British title contender Rhys Edwards – try to knock him out in sparring. Now the pair are preparing to work together again.<\/p>\n

“Things went very well, no one took my head off,” said the man nicknamed ‘The Machine’, whose record stands at 25-5-1, with 20 wins via knockout or stoppage.<\/p>\n

“I feel a bit of a break has done me the world of good.”<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Williams was put down twice in his last outing before the bout was stopped in round one<\/p>\n

Williams revealed he suffered multiple concussions before retirement<\/a>, including one three weeks before facing Eubank Jr, when he was floored four times.<\/p>\n

“If you go and have another concussion you can drop dead. That was a bit of an idiot move from me [fighting Eubank Jr], but me being a fighter I thought I could still do it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I was losing too much weight. That last week, losing the best part of a stone in the 12 to 18 hours before the weigh-in, it’s a big ask to recover from that.<\/p>\n

“I was standing on the scales thinking, ‘I’m going to fall over’.”<\/p>\n

After those struggles to make the 11st 6lbs (160 lbs) middleweight limit, Williams did not rule out a repeat at that weight but was intending to return eight pounds heavier at the “safe option” of super-middleweight.<\/p>\n

Despite his new lease of life, thoughts of CTE remain on his mind.<\/p>\n

“It always has been because I have got children which I have to think about,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was much more of a worry at this point two years ago. Now I’ve got my stuff together and I’m doing things right.<\/p>\n

“I feel much healthier than I was back then, head and body. I have had a number of brain scans and everything is checking out.”<\/p>\n

Williams insisted he was also in a much better frame of mind than during the period when he fought Sheeraz and had won back the trust of his coach after four months back in training.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had a couple of chats, he says ‘I’m happy, you are looking good’,” said Williams.<\/p>\n

“I’m at that stage now where I’m ready for something to be announced.”<\/p>\n

So what can the boxing world expect from a man who won British, European and Commonwealth titles the first time round?<\/p>\n

“I’ve come back for the same reason I was in boxing before. Winning a world title would be the one. Realistically I don’t know if I will get back there,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The goal is just to be in the biggest fights possible. I’m not planning this being a five-year comeback, I’m going to go a fight at a time.<\/p>\n

“If things are going great then we will have longer. If things aren’t going great, it won’t be that long.<\/p>\n

“I have got a lot more to give and I know I can prove a lot of people wrong.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Images Liam Williams, left, is plotting a return to the ring Liam Williams has revealed his long-time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-260041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}