{"id":213418,"date":"2025-10-20T15:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T15:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/213418\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T15:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T15:33:08","slug":"why-boxers-are-reassessing-their-relationship-with-alcohol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/213418\/","title":{"rendered":"Why boxers are reassessing their relationship with alcohol"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;\">\u201cI would have been 22 and the culture then is to drink and party and it\u2019s like you\u2019re a product of your environment, and where I\u2019m from, that\u2019s what everyone does,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s like a British culture thing and to not do it, you go so against the grain, you\u2019re so out of place, you\u2019re really putting yourself in an awkward situation if you try and socialise, or even if you\u2019re trying to sell tickets and stuff and you\u2019re not mingling with those sort of crowds. It\u2019s difficult. I never drunk loads anyway. But what would normally happen is I\u2019d have a fight, I\u2019d go back to Cornwall and I\u2019d make up for lost time with drinking. I\u2019d go out with pals and drink, not train at all, not do anything productive, and then I went to a boxing show in Liverpool, a Wasserman show, June 17 [more than two years ago], and everyone drank apart from my gym mate and I was ill that week \u2013 because I was drinking \u2013 and he was back in the gym Monday. And I said to myself, \u2018I can\u2019t call myself a professional if I\u2019m not really gonna live the life.\u2019 I\u2019d missed a week\u2019s training because I was drinking, and I can\u2019t afford to be doing that at this level. That was a little wake up call for me then. That was the last time I drank, and after that I was completely done and I knew I wouldn\u2019t drink again. I\u2019d never drink too much. I would never do it in camp, but if you\u2019re being really honest with yourself and saying, \u2018Am I doing everything I can to better my career?\u2019 And drinking wasn\u2019t. You can\u2019t call yourself a professional athlete \u2013 and then go down the pub. I don\u2019t think so. By coincidence, or whatever reason, since I stopped drinking, I had all my biggest successes of my career, my biggest belts. I\u2019ve upped my following, I\u2019ve done everything positive since I stopped drinking. \u201cIt\u2019s got to coincide a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI would have been 22 and the culture then is to drink and party and it\u2019s like you\u2019re&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[235,91978,2560,6102,10078,91979,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-213418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-alcohol","9":"tag-boxers","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-boxing-news","12":"tag-boxingscene","13":"tag-errol-spence","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}