Listen to enough boxers and trainers and you will soon be able to detect the difference between an excuse and a dose of honesty. The excuse, which sometimes comes before a fight but mostly after one, is usually an attempt to save face rather than explain why a fight played out the way it did. Honesty, on the other hand, deals more in the latter and is in boxing not only seldom heard but almost a radical act these days. 

This is never truer than when a boxer or trainer demonstrates honesty before a fight as opposed to after one, particularly when doing so publicly. After all, before a fight is when a boxer and their trainer are interested only in positivity, with honesty sometimes in opposition to this and therefore a scary thing to confront. There will be honesty between them in the gym, that goes without saying, but anywhere else, not so much. Anywhere else you tend to see a fighter and trainer discuss matters strategically and with a certain caginess, careful not to give too much away. 

Then again, not all fighters are the same; nor are all trainers. Someone like Manchester’s Joe Gallagher, for instance, displays an honesty most try to contain, if not ignore altogether, and rarely does he ever sugarcoat a situation for his fighters or the media. Often animated, and always passionate, Gallagher prefers to wear his heart on his sleeve and is by now experienced enough, having trained countless world champions, for his honesty to carry weight. 

His next job, which arrives on Friday at London’s Royal Albert Hall, will see him in the corner of Natasha Jonas when she fights Wales’ Lauren Price in defence of her WBC and IBF women’s welterweight titles. It is a position with which he is familiar, of course, yet Gallagher knows that its requirements have changed year on year. 

Now, with Jonas into her 41st year, the trainer sees things differently from his position in the corner. He looks with narrower eyes; still admiring, just narrower, that’s all. 

“Everyone knows I wanted Tasha to retire last year,” Gallagher told BoxingScene. “I thought she was too long out of the ring and I’ve always been a nervous coach. I’ve been there with a few fighters – [Matthew] Macklin, [Scott] Quigg, [Anthony] Crolla – where they’ve done great in the gym and then they’ve got in the ring on the night and not been able to pull the trigger. I’m just a bit worried that on the night, against someone she would beat hands down a couple of years ago, the same thing could happen. That’s always in the back of your head as a coach. 

“I wanted her to retire, but Natasha, being the person she is, never wants to back away from a challenge. She has always fought the best. Obviously, she wanted that [Mikaela] Mayer rematch, or the Katie [Taylor] gig, but the name Lauren Price was put to us instead. I don’t know why Lauren Price didn’t fight Mayer and the winner got Tasha, but that’s another story for another day. 

“Everybody can see what they are trying to do here, in terms of having it as a changing of the guard, but as Natasha said, ‘It’s going to be the slaying of the dragon.’ That’s Natasha’s mindset and we’re both fully locked in and ready to go. Natasha has got the experience on the big stage and I don’t think Lauren Price has fought anybody like her.”

Although it is perhaps unusual for a coach to express total honesty, even concern, ahead of cornering a fighter, from a coach like Joe Gallagher one would expect nothing less. He is, after all, a realist, and the same can be said for his fighters. They can handle the truth, in other words, and they know that it is far better to have honesty than dishonesty when the latter is so readily available in a sport like boxing. 

Here, in the case of Jonas, 16-2-1 (9), Gallagher is merely taking what he knows about boxing and what he knows about Jonas and trying to explore every possible eventuality. This he would have done with many of his former champions, too, and the only difference on this occasion is that everything he knows is for once outweighed by everything he doesn’t know – at least when it comes to women’s boxing. 

“I thought, honestly, she would retire after beating [Ivana] Habazin [in December],” said Gallagher, “but she [Jonas] said, ‘No, I’m doing this.’ I just said, ‘Okay, fine.’ 

“I’m only worried in the respect that I’ve got a woman turning 41 [in June] and she’s still fighting. There’s no medical evidence to show me how a woman of 41 still fighting is going to be at the age of 55 or 60. That’s my only concern at the moment. 

“It would be very easy for people to say, if Tasha gets beat, ‘What’s he letting her fight for? She’s almost 41. That’s terrible.’ So, I can’t win either way. But this is what she wants and I’ve got to back her.”