When Adam Booth watched David Haye box Mark de Mori 10 years ago, in what was Haye’s first fight for three and a half years, he did so from the corner of a sofa, not the corner of a ring. He also had only one question he could think to ask: “Why are his shorts so small and so tight?”
All other questions had been answered by then, and all that both needed to say had been said. It was why the pair were now experiencing a fight from two different locations, despite them having worked together, as trainer and fighter, for 18 years. It’s why Booth focused exclusively on shorts and the likelihood of them splitting – like everything else. “They might rip,” he said that night. “He used to wear bigger ones.”
As nonchalant as it seemed on the surface, that comment, it was not without traces of sadness. In fact, Booth’s reaction to Haye’s new look was not dissimilar to how one might react when reuniting with an old flame over coffee and noticing them wear an item of clothing they had never seen them wear before. To move on they had clearly changed their wardrobe. They may even have changed their style. Their taste.
“I genuinely felt nothing,” Booth said of Haye’s 29th pro fight, “and I was a little bit surprised by that. I didn’t think, Oh, David, why are you still boxing? The only thing that concerned me were the shorts.
“Our relationship had kind of fully evolved. We’d been through a lot together. Nothing will change that. He achieved phenomenal things as a fighter, and as a coach I achieved alongside him. They are black and white facts. Along with those facts there are colourful stories. I have no regrets. I have fond memories and an emotional attachment to everything we did and achieved together. I don’t allow the disconnect to stop me remembering how it was.
“When George Groves first lost to Carl Froch [in 2013],” Booth continued, “that was a difficult one to sit and watch. I genuinely felt absolutely gutted for him because he had the fight won and, although I was no longer working with him, I wanted him to win. But then it became easier to be detached. I remember being at Wembley Stadium for the rematch [in 2014] and actually just enjoying the occasion and not feeling emotionally attached to the fight.”
Given he was often called “Aloof” Booth by his own fighter, Haye, it should have come as no shock to discover that Booth was able to disconnect quicker and easier than most. Perhaps over the years he had steeled himself for disappointment. Perhaps he had conditioned his heart and soul for the inevitable collapse of the boxer-trainer relationship in much the same way he had spent his adult life preparing boxers for the harsh realities of the ring. Perhaps he is built differently. Or perhaps, by claiming to have felt nothing, he was merely protecting himself – his pride, his ego, his true feelings.
“Adam’s full of shit,” said an amused Dave Coldwell, one of Booth’s peers who worked alongside him for many years. “He would have felt something, surely.” He then added: “Me, I keep making the same mistakes. As the coach, you spend more time with a fighter than anyone else does – more than promoters, managers, strength and conditioning coaches. You kind of know everything about your fighter – their weaknesses, their strengths, whether they’re emotionally stable or not. With that, you get close. I don’t get these trainers who just view that relationship as a business and don’t let emotions get involved. How can you do that? When my fighters win a big title, I’ll cry. When they get beat, I’ll cry. I know what both those things mean to them.”
With money no guarantee and largely dependent on success, it is hard for any trainer to approach the job of training a fighter, even a professional, from a purely business perspective. There must instead be some additional pull or motivating factor to justify spending so much of one’s time around somebody who is, at the beginning, little more than a stranger. It is for that reason they look for common ground. It is for that reason they approach the relationship on a human level, eager to ask the boxer the same question they would have once asked a classmate at school: Will you be my friend?
“One of the biggest criticisms of me – and people tell me this all the time – is that I get too emotionally attached to my fighters and it causes a problem,” said Manchester’s Joe Gallagher, trainer of the four Smith brothers (Paul, Stephen, Liam, and Callum), as well as John Murray, Anthony Crolla, Scott Quigg, Natasha Jonas, Lawrence Okolie, and many more. “But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. My job and responsibility has always been to look after somebody’s son or daughter – whether aged 13 or 33 – and bring them home safe and sound to their parents’ doorstep. That’s stuck with me all the way through.
“You start off the relationship driving them up and down the country to compete in championships. You don’t get anything from that. You might get petrol money from the organisers, but you don’t even get that most of the time. You’re left to buy their kit, their food after the weigh-in, and basically anything else they need to feel comfortable and happy. You invest in them – time, money and energy – and then you turn pro together. You will work with them day in, day out for eight or 10 weeks for a fight and get nothing much at the end of it all. The way small-hall boxing works at the moment, you’ll get 10 per cent of something but it could be nothing. It could mean walking home with 40 quid. Or, on a good day, 80 quid.
“It’s an insane business. For this person, this boxer, you have sacrificed your own family and relationships. You have missed parents’ evenings. You have sacrificed school plays. You have sacrificed an awful lot of weekends, the only time your kids are off school, to spend that weekend with a boxer in a hotel somewhere. The fight is on a Saturday and you’re travelling home on a Sunday. By the time you get home the weekend is over and the kids are getting ready to go back to school.”
Really, if the trainer has any hope of first connecting with their boxer and then working with them for a prolonged period, they must treat them as though they are family. Without that kind of bond, it becomes difficult. It will be difficult, at the start, to find a reason to sacrifice so much, and it will be difficult later when money is not something you both dream about but something you split.
“Our intention is always just to help the fighter,” said Jamie Moore, the man behind Jack Catterall, Chantelle Cameron, and Carl Frampton, among others. “If we end up getting paid, whether it’s later on that year, or five or six years down the line, even better. If we don’t, unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be.
“When Carl Frampton came to me, we had him in the gym for a couple of days and during that time he told me about some of the situations he had been in and it was clear he had had a tough time. After two days we sat in my kitchen having a coffee and he said he wanted to train with us. He said, ‘So what’s the situation with money and stuff? What percentage would I be paying you?’ I just said, ‘Carl, let’s be honest, we’re two days in. By the sounds of it, you’ve had a pretty shit time. What I’d rather do is just train you for the fight, get it done, and then whatever you feel is right, in terms of wages for the job we’ve done, I’ll be quite happy to take.
“He paid me 10 per cent every fight, and I think that’s the most gentlemanly way to do it. I know a lot of people won’t agree, but fucking hell, we’re in a job where people’s lives are at risk. I need to want them to get to the end of that fight, first and foremost, and go home to their families. It can’t all be about money and winning. We have to care.”
***
When Dave Coldwell watched on a laptop in Las Vegas a live stream of Jordan Gill’s seventh-round knockout of Michael Conlan in 2023, he found himself overcome by an array of emotions. On the one hand, he was gutted not to have been there, having worked with Gill for years, while on the other hand he was overjoyed to see his former fighter fulfil his potential in the biggest fight of his career.
“I was very close with Jordan,” said Coldwell. “After the Kiko [Martinez] fight [in 2022] I did say he should retire, but he wanted to carry on training and see how he felt. So, he did. He carried on training for a bit and then one day he said, ‘I need to talk to you.’ That’s usually a bad sign. We talked and he said he was having personal problems. He was upset about it but he said he had to leave and go back home.
“That was gut-wrenching for me. But I said, ‘Listen, you’ve got to sort your life out.’ There is more to life than boxing and if a fighter is not happy, they have to figure out how to become happy. They have only one career, whereas I have more than one fighter I can train.”
Jordan Gill was not the first fighter to ask Dave Coldwell for The Talk, nor the last. Yet just as every fighter is different, so too are their reasons for wanting to end a relationship. Some are more obvious than others – a defeat, for example – while some are unclear even when explained.
“I remember as he was walking out for the Conlan fight I looked at his face and saw that he didn’t give a fuck,” said Coldwell. “Jordan’s problem was always that he tried too hard and felt the pressure of the world. But he walked to the ring that night in Belfast and knew he was going to win.
“When he did, I was jumping around and so happy for him. Then I remember he did the interview afterwards – when he told everybody he tried to commit suicide – and it broke my heart. I knew something had gone off when he told me he needed to go back home, but to hear that was devastating.
“The whole thing was so bittersweet. I was gutted not to be walking him out and working with him, I was then delighted because he got a massive win, and then I was brought back down to earth when I realised his torment. That changed me a little bit, if I’m honest. It made me realise I will never know everything about my fighters.”
Now Coldwell doesn’t even attempt to gain that sort of insight, accepting the limitations of both his power and control. He has over the years worked with big characters like Tony Bellew, Derek Chisora, Kell Brook, and David Price, and has done a lot of his growing up – as a trainer and as a man – alongside them. He is now working with the next generation and all the stronger, or simply better, for having learned his lessons along the way. The same goes for all the other trainers who have outlasted the pain of a breakup.
“I’m an older man now,” said Adam Booth. “Back when I started working with pros I was in my early 30s and some of the fighters I trained were in their late 20s, and even the young ones were only 10 or 12 years younger than me. Now I'm working with fighters who are 25 years younger than me. When you’re younger, you’re more excitable. You might be a coach or a trainer, but you’re more of a training partner and a friend at times.
“My relationship with my fighters now is probably more distant than it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, we get on and laugh and joke, but it’s definitely not as intense. If one of them wants to go out somewhere, I’m less inclined to spend the day or night with them. I’m not interested in going out with them. I did that in the past with fighters when I was a young man. I don’t do that anymore. The relationships I have with fighters now are purer and more professional.”
That for many is the goal, though it is, in truth, not an easy balance to strike. After all, should a relationship stray too far from personal towards clinical, one would then have to question whether there was any point to it at all. It surely becomes in that instance a loveless marriage, one of convenience. Then again, the alternative leaves as many scars as memories.
“When you’ve had kids from day one – like John Murray, from 15 years old all the way to Madison Square Garden in the pros – it hurts a little bit when you go your separate ways,” said Gallagher. “It hurts an awful lot.
“You don’t just fall out with them, either; you fall out with other people over them. Boxers are usually the least confrontational people you will ever meet, so you’re often the one fighting their battles for them, negotiating for them, and speaking on their behalf to promoters. When they then up and leave, it’s like, ‘Wow.’ It’s hard to take. You can get attached to people and they break your heart. It’s a hurtful journey.”
That journey of hurt becomes all the more traumatic when a broken relationship sullies everything that went on before, then leads to years of silence, bitterness, and regret. This we have seen countless times, of course, most famously with “Prince” Naseem Hamed and Brendan Ingle, the Sheffield trainer who guided Hamed from the age of seven to 24 only to fall out with him over money and then pass away, in 2018, having never reconnected. There are numerous other examples, too, each of them reminders of how ego and pride are as damaging as they are helpful in a macho sport like boxing.
“It is disappointing when a fighter decides they want to move on,” said Moore, “especially when you feel like you were doing a good job and nothing has really changed except they feel the need to now change. My perspective on that is they are quite entitled to do that because it’s their career. Regardless of what we believe, who am I to say how they feel? If they no longer want my services, that’s fine. They’re not under contract; they’re not obligated to work with me. It only hurts really because you have built an emotional bond with them.”
Moore then paused to exhale whatever he had been holding in. “I suppose the elephant in the room is Jack Catterall,” he said, turning his attention to the gifted welterweight with whom he parted ways in September. “We trained Jack for four or five years and didn’t really get anything out of it, financially. But it wasn’t about that. It was about working with Jack, who is such a nice kid and an unbelievably talented fighter. You sort of knew you would be able to achieve something with him.
“Unfortunately, the ultimate prize got snatched from him [because of a bad decision against Josh Taylor in 2022]. He then avenged that defeat [to Taylor] but lost to [Arnold] Barboza in a close fight. After the [Harlem] Eubank fight, which was a clash of styles, he decided he needed a change. He felt stale and wanted to freshen up in America. From his point of view, he’s right. If he feels like that, who am I to tell him different?
“But that doesn’t mean I’m not hurt. If his feelings are valid, so are mine. I was upset about it and so was Nigel [Travis, who works alongside Moore]. Nige was his best man at his wedding. I was an usher. You don’t get much closer than that.
“But we’ve all stayed in touch and three days ago I had coffee with him. I met his new baby. Life’s too short. We had an unbelievable time together and for whatever reason that came to an end. But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad bloke. I still like him. No one can take away our memories. God forbid something happens to one of us tomorrow, I would never forgive myself if I wasn’t on good terms with him.”
***
The only thing rarer than a fighter and trainer staying together throughout the course of a career is the prospect of a fighter leaving a trainer only to then return to them when realising they made a mistake. This, however, was something Jamie Moore experienced just last week when Chantelle Cameron, the super-lightweight he led to WBC, IBF and WBO titles, made her way back to his Manchester gym and asked him to train her again, having split almost two years ago.
“We’ve been speaking for a while and last week she asked me if she could come back and train with us,” Moore said. “She said that nothing has been the same since she left and she wants to finish her career with me.
“Her asking to come back is a massive compliment really. I was very close with Chantelle and so was my wife. It can’t have been easy for Chantelle to accept that she made a mistake and ask me to finish what we started. I take my hat off to her for swallowing her pride. We kept in contact even when we split and remained on good terms, which I think helped her feel like she could reach out and ask me to train her again.”
To keep in contact is an unusual thing in boxing, alas.
“You spend days, weeks, months and years with a fighter, then when they leave or retire, you hardly hear from them,” said Coldwell. “That’s a massive hole. You tell yourself, ‘No, I’m not going to leave myself vulnerable like that again.’ But you do. You fall into the same trap because you spend that same time with them. I won’t say ‘yes’ to training you if I don’t like you. Therefore, if I like you, I’m going to have that emotional connection. Also, because I’m very family-orientated, my family will get involved. They will spend time with the fighters. My wife, my kids. They will go to their fights. That only strengthens the bond.”
By choosing to go back, Chantelle Cameron is the exception to the rule. Most boxers in her position would rather suffer than return to the familiar and concede they were wrong. This is particularly true if the initial separation was due to either money issues or the belief that they had in some way surpassed their coach and heard from them all they ever needed to hear.
“Success,” said Coldwell, when asked to name the leading cause of breakups in boxing. “With success comes a feeling of ‘I’ve made it’ and the desire to improve is replaced by a desire just to maintain. That’s a dip straight away – because if you’re not trying to get better every day, you’re going to get caught up. But they think they’re good enough at that point. They feel they no longer have to do the mundane shit that the coach is still banging on about. When you remind them of mistakes they continually make, they look at you as if to say, ‘Well, I’m winning, aren’t I?’
“Also, when they become a success, they have more people around them telling them how great they are – new voices, different voices – and these voices become louder than yours. Whereas before they used to listen intently to your voice, now they hear it and think, Oh, here he is again. What’s he got to say now? When a fighter just wants to maintain rather than get better, their tolerance for correction – in terms of what happens in the ring – starts to drop. With a young kid who hasn’t yet made it, that’s all they want to hear. How they can get better. How they can correct mistakes. How you’re supposed to do it.”
***
Days after Adam Booth watched David Haye, his former fighter, demolish Mark de Mori in just 131 seconds, he elected to watch the fight again. He did so not because he had missed anything, or because it warranted a rewatch, but merely to find some amusement in the scared expression on the face of de Mori when Haye went in for the finish.
As it played, for the second time, the trainer was then interrupted by the sudden presence of his two young daughters, who entered the living room having returned home from school. One of them, Jessica, pointed to the television screen and asked her father: “Who is that?” She had, it seemed, recognised the boxer with the braided hair and tight shorts, but couldn’t put a name to the face. That meant it was left to Isabelle, her big sister, to fill in the blanks. “That’s Cassius’s daddy. Remember?”
