Two years after Lawrence Okolie went to visit Joe Gallagher in Manchester in the hope of reviving his stuttering professional career, another former Team GB amateur star has had the same idea and followed the same path.
This time it’s the turn of Frazer Clarke, the Burton heavyweight who won a bronze medal at the 2020 Olympic Games. He, like Okolie, started his pro career well, winning eight fights in a row, only to later hit a bit of rough patch. This came in the form of a shocking first-round stoppage defeat by Fabio Wardley, the current WBO heavyweight champion, and then, more recently, a decision loss to Jeamie “TKV” Tshikeva.
The first of those setbacks, although painful and tough to take, could be shrugged off as an anomaly; a freak occurrence; one of those things. However, the second defeat, by Tshikeva, was the one that started to ring alarm bells. It left Clarke with a pro record of 9-2-1 (7 KOs) and had most observers suggesting that if he continued he might need a change. A change of fortune. A change of approach. A change of team.
“Frazer has been coming to the gym for the two or three weeks now,” said Joe Gallagher, the coach Clarke contacted when deciding he wanted a change. “We’re doing a bit of a trial and we’ll see how it goes.
“It’s going alright so far. He’s a determined individual who wants to put things right. He didn’t think things were right in his last fight [against Tshikeva]. He asked me what I thought of his fight, but I said to him, ‘Frazer, I’ve not really seen any of your fights. You’re not on my radar’. That’s just how I operate. But I will start watching now.
“Last time out people were saying he should retire and stuff like that, but I can only go on what I see in the gymnasium, and the work that he is putting in and the effort he is showing doesn’t suggest that. We’ll see what he’s like when we start sparring.”
At 34, Clarke is neither a heavyweight prospect nor a fighter who has to worry about time running out. Not yet anyway. After all, at heavyweight fighters tend to go on longer and have the luxury of bypassing the things that cut short the careers of boxers in the lower weight classes (chiefly, cutting weight).
That said, Clarke is an ambitious and talented man. He will have set himself certain goals when turning pro back in 2022 and those goals will have likely included the winning of major titles. To therefore fall short in not one, not two, but three British and Commonwealth title fights will no doubt sting. It could also be just the motivation he requires to keep going until he gets it right.
“I said to him when he was in the gym, ‘This gym’s DNA is that everyone is written off before they come here’,” said Gallagher. “[Matthew] Macklin came to me written off before his fight with Wayne Elcock, and [Anthony] Crolla had just lost to an ice-cream man [Youssef Al Hamidi]. People were writing Paul Smith off as well. A lot of people were saying the same about Lawrence Okolie after he lost to Chris Billam-Smith and came to work with us. Natasha Jonas, too. She is someone else who was written off after getting knocked out. It’s just in the DNA of the gymnasium to prove the doubters wrong.”
Before that, the fighters in Gallagher’s Gym must prove something to him, the coach. That’s why each of them is put through a trial period ahead of him making a decision and that’s why so many tend to look to Gallagher when their career is in need of a jump start. Some fighters, it seems, like to be humbled and built back up again. Some of them need it.
“As coaches, you put a lot of time and effort into these fighters and we can’t have that time and effort wasted,” said Gallagher. “Our time is valuable and you only work with fighters who make it worthwhile. I want to put everything into it. I’ve got a gym full of fighters and you’ve got to show me something.
“We call our gym the ‘Apollo Gym’. We call it that because when Rocky [Balboa] loses to Mr T [Clubber Lang] in Rocky III, he goes to Apollo [Creed]’s gym and has to prove himself. That’s what Frazer and anyone else who comes here has to do. No one gives two fucks who Frazer is. We don’t care. You’ve got to do the work like everybody else. That’s how I like it.”
