BELFAST – “The training sort of stays the same,” says Aaron Bowen, a talented former Team GB amateur making his way in the pros. “But I’d say I quite enjoy the fact that you get one fight lined up and you’re just prepping for that one fight. So you can sort of have stages in camp, which is nice. I enjoy that. And you got the one fight. I look forward to having that 10-to-12-week camp just focusing on one style and really drilling it.”
Bowen is 6-0 (4 KOs) and will fight at Windsor Park in Belfast on Saturday as part of the bill topped by Lewis Crocker and Paddy Donovan.
Bowen is up against a visiting Argentine and he is well prepared.
“I enjoy it. I mean, there’s not much difference in the training, [aside from] longer rounds, longer sparring sessions. So I’d say it's tougher, but I love it.”
Bowen is at the start of the journey, filled with ambition and enthusiasm. There are hopes of big fights and world titles, but he knows there is plenty to do.
“I’m just trying to work on myself more and more,” he told BoxingScene. “As an amateur, it’s get as fit as you can and just win. Whereas now I’m trying to develop myself as a boxer, as an athlete and more of a perfectionist.”
In his pursuit of improvement, he is logging his training, performance and watching his sleep and recovery levels, too.
“Yeah, massively,” he added. “And as an amateur, I didn’t really do that. I was eating well, sleeping well, but now it's sort of my main focus. I’m only 26, I’m still young, but I feel a lot more mature in myself. I’m stretching, I’m sleeping well, I’m recovering well, but not just that side of it. In terms of the boxing, I’m really working on things that I'm not so good at, and asking the right questions, I believe. So it’s all sort of merging nicely, and I’m just looking forward to showing it on fight night and over the next few years, hopefully.”
Bowen was part of the GB set-up for a couple of years and now works with Shiney Singh out of the Box Smart Elite Gym in Walsall. The experienced Errol Johnson is his manager.
While Bowen boxed on the previous Donovan-Crocker bill, on March 1 at the Odyssey Arena, he appeared early on in the card and the crowd was sparse.
Now, promoted up the bill, he will likely experience a livelier setting as around 20,000 start to take their seats. His excitement for that is unbridled.
“Massive, it’s fucking massive,” he said. “I’m so excited because of these fights that I’m on – I was on [Mauricio] Lara-[Leigh] Wood, I was on [Galal] Yafai [vs. Francisco Rodriguez], these are all fighters I grew up watching. So now I’m on an all-Irish world title fight at Windsor Park. It’s massive. My plan was to look good and box well, but if there’s a few thousand I’m going to look to have a little tear up, because I want a few more fans. The plan is to win, but listen, you also want to gain attention and if they’ve had a drink and they’re saying, ‘Oh, who’s this ginger lad? He can have a little scrap, let’s follow him on Instagram or watch him down the line,’ you know what I mean?”
Bowen winds down away from boxing by taking his American Pitbull, Floyd, for walks. He and his partner decided on Floyd because she’s a Pink Floyd fan and Bowen appreciates Floyd Mayweather.
The dog is four, and a running partner for the fighter.
As a kid, Bowen was shy and quiet, but he felt an inner rage and that he had a point to prove. A couple of his friends went to the boxing gym, and he thought he could do what they were doing – and do it better – and he followed suit.
“Then I never looked back,” he said. “I fell in love with the fact that I did not have to raise my voice to people, but I could go in and spar a bigger lad or an older lad and give it to them and beat them up without having to. So, that was my sort of reasoning and here we are now.”
On his way up, he sparred champions like James DeGale and Callum Smith, holding both in exceptionally high regard.
“I was probably 17, 18,” he said of mixing it up with Olympic gold medal winner and world champion DeGale. “That was humbling. I’d never sparred anything like that. He was just elusive and fast with it, and southpaw, and he was really good at moving. If I landed a punch, I don’t remember the punch. I’d like to obviously have been a bit older and tried now, but at the time it was unbelievable. I’d never seen anything like it.”
DeGale had his great domestic rival in George Groves. They boxed as amateurs and pros, and Bowen is, it would seem, a future opponent for his old amateur rival and GB teammate the highly-regarded Taylor Bevan.
But there was downright hostility between Groves and DeGale. There is not between Bowen and Bevan.
“We’re respectful,” said Bowen. “I wouldn’t say we’d go for a drink together.”
Then, he corrects himself, “No, we would. We’re nice to each other and there’s no bad blood, but we’re also competitors in and around the same weight. I’m keeping a faraway eye [on Bevan’s progress] because I know that fight is coming. Do you know what I mean? “That’s coming in my career, I think. And it’d be silly not to because of the past and the build-up.”
They have sparred often, and Bevan outpointed him a couple of times in the amateurs, including in the Commonwealth Games semi-finals.
“Almost every interview, it’s his name [that is mentioned]. But it’s exciting… the build-up and the rivalries, that’s what you want. And I’d love it to be like a sold-out venue for 20,000 people there. You know, like a British title or even a world title one day, that’d be massive. This is what we’re in it for. It’s good. But we’ve got respect for each other and we’re nice to each other. We spar a lot, but I think we both know it's probably going to happen one day.”
Bowen is modest but has a warm confidence about his future. It starts with Carlos Miguel Ronner on Saturday, and he hopes it will end with a championship belt.
“I definitely believe I can win a world title and I believe I can beat anyone on the way and I see myself boxing for a world title in front of all my people,” he said, with the dream to box at the Building Society Arena in Coventry. There are longer-term hopes of Madison Square Garden, and Las Vegas, too, but the moment he covets is at home.
“That’s something that sits with me daily. It’s just five minutes down the road. I do believe that [he will win a world title], but at the same time, you have to be a realist and realize things can happen. But I’d say I definitely can win a world title and that’s the goal. Anything less and I’ll be a bit shocked or surprised, but I’m just going to take it step by step. I’m not assuming that I’m going to. I’ve got the Midlands [Area title fight] in November. I can’t just think that’s easy. That’s my world title, but I do believe I can win a world title.”
