Bradley Skeete says being on the edge of the action has replaced the buzz he felt when he was in the thick of it.
A former junior middleweight contender, Skeete is now a trainer and works with, among others, Skye Nicolson and Fran Hennessy.
He retired in 2019 after a controversial ninth-round stoppage loss to the fast-rising Hamzah Sheeraz.
There is clearly no love lost, but Skeete was fuming and hung up his gloves for good.
Sheeraz nailed him several times when Skeete was floored in the eighth round of their fight, and he finished the job a round later. Skeete, and many others, claimed Sheeraz should have been disqualified.
“I’m still part of it,” Skeete said of his involvement in boxing. “I’m here, I’m at press conferences, I’m at weigh-ins, I’m at face-offs, I’m at the fights. But I just don’t get punched in my head no more.”
Of course, the feeling of not being in the fight is different. He is, comparatively, a peripheral figure, and he admits the highs can never be as good as they were during his 29-4 (14 KOs) career.
“Of course not, but I just live it through Fran now and the other fighters I work with. But I still get that buzz,” Skeete said. “I still get that tingle and I just can get out now, I don’t have to get punched, so yeah, it’s all good. I do miss it, but I’m still around it. I’m in the gym every day, I still keep fit myself, and like I say, I’m at all the events and I’m lucky enough to travel around the world doing what I’m doing now, so I love it.”
Skeete boxed a lot of good fighters, like Colin Lynes, Frankie Gavin, Mark Thompson, Sam Eggington and John Thain. But he felt burnt by boxing’s politics.
“Everyone knows what went on, and it’s a long time ago now, but it’s still fresh and everyone’s there. … It’s still there, everyone knows what happened and what went,” he said. “I could be bitter with it. I could be done with boxing, but I’d be a lonely, sad old man if I was. So I just put it aside and I enjoy it. I enjoy what I’m doing. I love it. It’s like a new journey for me now, and I’m loving it, so yeah, I just put that to the side and crack on.”
Skeete has seen Sheeraz’s subsequent progression, with his most recent performance being a dominant win over Edgar Berlanga last July in New York.
“He’s doing his thing, he’s doing well, ain’t he?” Skeete said with a shrug. “I can’t knock him. He’s doing really well, so fair play to him. He’s up there [with the world’s leading 168-pounders]. He’s doing his thing. He’s winning. He’s doing everything right. He’s beating who he needs to beat, but him and everyone knows in boxing, he knows that night with me wasn’t his night, so he’d always have to live with that. But fair play to him. He probably will go on and win a world title, and like I said, fair play to him if he does.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
