Boxers reveal what it actually feels like to be knocked out (2024)

BRITAIN’S BRAVEST boxers have explained in gut-wrenching detail what it feels like to be knocked spark out.

While our finest journeymen can lose hundreds of fights without ever getting cut, dropped or stopped, some of our best world champions have suffered devastating defeats.

And in Andy Clarke’s new book The Knockout ring icons such as two-weight kings Ricky Hatton and David Haye, former middleweight world champ Darren Barker and ex-WBA lightweight boss Anthony Crolla explain in painful detail exactly how it feels to be robbed of your senses.

From being totally paralysed by Vasyl Lomachenko, obliterated by Manny Pacquiao and remembering absolutely nothing about a savage amateur battle, these great men detail the depths they were driven down to and how they somehow battled back.

ANTHONY CROLLA - Vasyl Lomachenko 2019

I didn’t realise until after it, just how bad it looked.

In the dressing room my phone was obviously going mad, people concerned and wanting me to let them know I was OK, and then you look back a little bit at social media, which probably isn’t the best idea, and people were saying ‘that was brutal’ and this and that.

And the team is in there, most of the lads from the gym are in there. Eddie Hearn’s in there and I feel absolutely fine and I say ‘I don’t really understand all of this. I mean it’s really nice of people and everything but it’s not like it was a really bad knockout’.

And the room just went a bit quiet.

And I could see people thinking ‘ah, awkward, who’s going to tell him?’

And, to be fair, Eddie said: ‘It was pretty bad, Croll’.

And I said ‘what?’

And he said ‘yeah, it was pretty bad’.

But I still thought he was on the wind-up so I got my phone and watched it and thought ‘oh’.

But it was mad because I could remember everything really clearly, how he set me up, the shot he hit me with.

And I remembered being on the floor, face first, and I remember thinking I must look stupid.

But I couldn’t move, it was like I had been tasered.

And I am talking to the referee, telling him I was fine and I genuinely was, I just couldn’t move for a little while.

I have never actually been tasered but I can only imagine it’s something like that.

I was trying my hardest just to roll over but I’d face planted and couldn’t.

I remember thinking ‘I look like a right silly f***er here but there’s nothing I can do about it’.

Lomachenko came over and said he had broken his hand. I told him he had broken my heart and pride.

Crolla

I can laugh about it now and it wasn’t long before friends were sending me GIFs of me on a luggage conveyor belt, face down, like a suitcase.

But that was the feeling, my senses were all there , I just couldn’t really move.

I could remember it so clearly and it didn’t hurt one bit!

Lomachenko came over after and said he had broken his hand and I told him he had broken my heart and pride.

DAVID HAYE - amateur fight vs Jim Twite 1999

I didn’t accept it (could happen to me) until I got put on my a***e for the first time, when I was 18 against a guy called Jim Twite.

He threw a southpaw overhand left, I saw it coming, but the next thing the ref’s counting seven.. eight.. and I’m thinking ‘why the f*** did you start at seven, aren’t you supposed to start at one?’

I had blacked out and then I watched the tape back and I’d gotten up and then fallen down again and I don’t remember falling back down again.

Another time when I fought a guy called Lolenga Mock and he put me over real heavy and we were sitting in the changing room afterwards and the referee is asking me what my name is and where I live and I am thinking ‘did I win the fight?’

And he said: ‘Yeah, you won the fight , you knocked him out, don’t you remember it? You got put down pretty heavy in the second round’.

SCOTT WELCH - James Oyebola 1994

In this game we know that, to get the best out of yourself, you have to accept the worst that can ever happen to you - and, in boxing, that is death.

It’s a very dangerous game, especially the heavyweight division, one wrong shot and you are knocked out.

What it does to you, we don’t know, all through history it has done different things to different people.

It’s not a nice place, it’s a terrible, terrible place.

To come back from it I had to refind, reinvent myself.

If I could have found a rock to hide under I would have done, and probably never have been seen again.

But we couldn’t. We had to come back and rebuild and put it back together again, find the reasons we got beat.

I was winning the fight and for a split second I dropped my hands and next thing you know…

But you have to find yourself, there’s not many people who do come back, or you come back broken and you never get there again.

Getting knocked out is just the worst thing.

I felt embarrassed, I felt I was an idiot. Every single thought went through my head.

We watch boxing every day, what do we want to see? We want to see knockouts.

I’ve got 17 knockouts on my record, out of 22 wins, fantastic.

What did I do in the gym? Knocked out as many people as I could.

Getting knocked out is just the worst thing.
I felt embarrassed, I felt I was an idiot. Every single thought went through my head.

Scott Welch

Did I think about it? No.

But, when it happened to me, my whole world collapsed.

For three months I was walking around in tears, just coming out of my eyes, running down my face.

It’s a disgustingly terrible thing but it’s a wonderful feeling when you do it. And, unfortunately, people pay a lot of money to see you do it.

What do I still want to see now, after all these years in the game? Do I want to see boxing and winning on points? No.

Do I like a tough fight? Yeah I like a tough fight, I like to see knockdowns.

The beautiful brutal game of boxing, that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s a beautiful, brutal game.

RICKY HATTON - Floyd Mayweather 2007 and Manny Pacquiao 2009

When I got beat by Mayweather I cancelled all my functions, all my appearances. I was walking around my hometown in Hyde and I thought people were laughing at me.

They weren’t, they were proud as punch of me, but in my mind - because I had told everyone I was going to win and not only did I lose, but I got knocked out - I found it hard walking down the street of my own town.

For several weeks I just couldn’t leave the house, it was the embarrassment.

Some people can cope with a knockout well and move on and get past it and get back in the gym, which I eventually did, but it took a lot to get my head around the fact and to rebuild again.

Some people can just shrug it off and say they’ll come back stronger and I didn’t feel that way at first. I didn’t think I would come back stronger. I didn’t want to see anyone. It was bad.

I was knocked out cold against Pacquaio and then, after a couple of minutes, you come around. And there’s people around you saying ‘Hi Rick, are you alright?

When you get destroyed in two rounds, that was embarrassing.

With the Mayweather fight at least I could look in the mirror and go ‘you gave him a fair go, Rick’.

But getting knocked out in two rounds, that was an embarrassment and, ultimately, after that fight, I knew I had to retire.

I have been knocked out in two rounds, that’s it now, my career is over, I’m never going to fight again.

I have been destroyed in two rounds so I need to retire now because I know I haven’t got it anymore. That was very hard to cope with.

When you’re a fighter and a winner you have to have that belief in yourself, and that attitude that nobody can beat you and you are the best.

And if you don’t have that attitude then you won’t go very far in boxing.

If you’re a proud man, a proud boxing champion, it doesn’t matter what you put in the bank or how big your house is, it f***s you up a bit.

DARREN BARKER - 2002 amateur spar

There was one in Repton when I was sparring an African guy, he had just come through the doors, apparently he was in the Commonwealth Games.

I got hit with a jab, I thought ‘wow’ and the next thing I know I was sat in the ring, I was sat down and I had no recollection of what had happened.

Tony Burns (trainer) was saying ‘you alright?’ I carried on training and it was the first time I had ever been concussed.

But I carried on as normal and then got on the scales as I was fighting Timothy Bradley a week or two later and Tony Burns walked up to me and said ‘when you fighting next?’

I said ‘I don’t know, Tone’.

He asked ‘where do you live?

I said ‘I don’t know, Tone.

I remember thinking ‘I am here, I know what’s going on, my body is working, I’m on the scales’.

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• THE KNOCKOUT by Andy Clarke is published by Aurum.