Everything changed in a few weeks for Steven Ward.

The amiable Irishman won a significant all-Belfast battle against his friend and former European cruiserweight champion Tommy McCarthy in Belfast in March, but a couple of months later found himself retired, having lost to Cuban Mike Perez in Ipswich.

The 35-year-old runs Fight2Thrive, something that encapsulates so much of what is good about boxing, empowering those he works with.

The program is designed to improve focus, positivity, discipline and control in a supportive environment through coaching, helping youngsters who have ADHD, anxiety, trauma or sensory challenges. 

“I have to look after myself mentally all the time,” Ward tells BoxingScene.

“Like my brain is the worst thing all the time. I need purpose all the time. And when I don’t, I get dead low. I get pissed off and I get cranky. And obviously boxing was like my supplement for all them years.”

Without that crutch, Ward faces his own anxieties. He knows the lure of fighting will remain for a while, and based on the ninth-round loss to Perez, there will likely be some offers, too.

But starting Fight2Thrive a couple of years ago means he is instantly busy.

He is not kicking his heels wondering or dreading about what comes next.

“It’s going in and working with kids and helping them learn,” he explains. “I was in a school and all these kids kept throwing names about, like depression and anxiety, which are strong words, but they knew nothing about them. And I came home and I said to my wife about it and she was like, ‘Well, do something about it.’”

So Ward did.

He goes in, teaches kids boxing, discipline, helps at-risk groups and he is changing lives.

“It’s emotional regulation,” Ward adds. “It’s a safe place to get all frustrations out. But also we have positive conversations around it. What is anxiety? What is primary, secondary emotions? You don’t have a goal. You know, what we eat, does it affect how we feel? But we do it in a real fun way. And I actually fought sometimes on the Saturday night and then, on the Monday night, with five stitches in my eyebrow and two black eyes, I took a women’s self-defense class with a group of young women who were 10, 11 years old… young girls. They’re like, ‘What’s up with your face?’ And you talk to them and then they go home and they’re on YouTube, they look you up and then they go, ‘Ah, you were fighting, and now you’re teaching us to defend ourselves.’”

It is not just the routine Ward will miss from boxing, but the high of fight night. He is accepting that it’s part of retirement and an irreplaceable drug that he will not be able to replicate.

“I don’t think I’ll ever not want to fight,” he admits. “Like, I love it. I genuinely do love it. I’ve done it from when I was 11 years old and it’s not just the boxing. It’s the whole accountability of it. It’s the boxing. It’s the routine. It’s the goal-setting every time of a fight.

“It’s the purpose. For me, the main word is ‘purpose’ there. It was the purpose all the time.

“And when I went to boxing, it was like my counsellor. It was my best friend. It was my therapist. It was my best mate. It was my safe place. This sport gave me a lot and I owed a lot for it. And over all these years, it’s given me these constant goals, constant things to strive for. But in reference to a boxing career, I was nearing the end and I’m sort of happy that I took a Perez fight because if I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have been as content with my career.”

Perez was a bridge too far, but Ward – who leaves with a 15-4 (5 KOs) record – was fighting in the knowledge that victory over the world-ranked Cuban could have unlocked a purse for life-changing money having kept his career alive with that vital win over McCarthy.

He and Tommy boxed three times in the amateurs and sparred hundreds of professional rounds.

McCarthy was stopped and subsequently retired.

Ward says that had he lost “that would have been the end of the road for me” but it earned him the roll of the dice he wanted before bowing out.

Ward actually pushed for the fight with McCarthy, knowing he had more to gain than his old friend, and having little to lose meant he went into the bout at the Odyssey both confident and motivated; so much so that he visited the bookmakers to lump £500 on himself only to be declined because he was an active participant in the fight. He was 10/1 to stop McCarthy.

While Ward thought he had the measure of his countryman on the track and in the gym, he felt McCarthy always had the edge with fighting, as demonstrated by his three amateur wins over Ward.

“In the ring, he was just always that wee bit ahead,” says Ward.

They were doing their post-fight urine tests when McCarthy turned to him and said: “Ah, Ward, you finally got me.”

“It only took me fucking 24 years, but I got there.”

It was a long time ago when Ward actually sparred Perez after the Cuban fled his native country and landed in Ireland. 

Perez – who arrived with countryman Luis Garcia – travelled the UK bashing up good fighters in gyms but the lure of the Western world became too strong and he developed a drink problem.

At 39, and with a reputation for enjoying the good life, Ward felt the time might be right to make the Cuban pay. He was wrong.

Ward had turned down a WBO European title fight in Italy, and a lucrative offer to box in Russia, but the Perez fight was the one he wanted.

Perez was not the diminished fighter Ward felt he might have been.

“I mean, he’s obviously got something left,” Ward smiles.

“He was on it, he was good. I really fancied him to slow down and tire in the fight and that’s what I was banking on. And he didn’t. And it was after the fight that I was talking to Packie [Collins, the Irishman who trains Perez] and he was saying that Perez’s been living like a monk. He’s been really dedicated. And fair play to him.”

The Cuban is also five years sober.

“He’s turned his life around. Listen, I’m under no illusion; I was a big underdog going into that fight, but I really fancied it. And it didn’t go as planned, you know, but I was going to take the biggest opportunities I can get. And that was it.”

Ward still keeps fit. He’s recently completed a Hyrox Doubles race in an hour and two minutes, which is good going, but it’s a long way from the buzz of fighting.

Ward was a good amateur, and he acknowledges that with his background and turning over, the thought of making enough money to live off from boxing was in his mind.

As it was, he had to sell tickets, he worked on building sites throughout his career and now he has his own business to run.

“I thought it would give me a real comfortable living,” he nods. “Especially if you had a bit of a decent amateur background. [But] it’s a tough sport when you’re trying to sell tickets for ticket shows and ticket deals. And then you’re working full time and I would have been coming home, having a fight, working flat out to get money to go back in the camp over in Manchester when I was at Oliver Harrison’s. Me and [Carl] Frampton and Conrad [Cummings] had a talk about what the start of my career was like. And it was grim. It was. I was living in Manchester, bouncing in and out of B&Bs [bed and breakfast accommodation] all about the place. I invented a thing called the ‘kettle diet’ because I was skint. And everywhere you went, like a hotel or B&B, there was always a kettle and I’d boil my broccoli and boil my eggs in the kettle. You just hold my finger on the button, and boil the veg.

“It was difficult. I never achieved what I wanted to achieve, to be honest. I think that’s where it gets harder. You can never achieve what you want. You always want to achieve something else.

“And people say, ‘Oh, you know, you’ve done well.’ I didn’t do what I wanted to do. I think that’s where you need to replace that with something else… I probably thought I’d have a big massive house and a lot of money in the bank. Yeah, probably. But I wouldn’t change it now. It’s still the way it’s went. Yeah. You know what? I would take a bit more money, actually.”

Ward is also helping his 10-year-old son find his feet at the Midlands Boxing Club, teaching him confidence and structure and discipline.

That leads us back to Fight2Thrive, and the fulfilment Ward gets from that. It’s more than a job.

He often hears from detractors who contend he shouldn’t be teaching vulnerable people how to fight, but argues back: “No, this is the polar opposite. We should be teaching them because, from this, they start to learn how to manage these emotions and they start to learn respect. They start to learn that they control the switch that flicks on and off inside them. And they have that safe space to express their emotions. I love it. I really love it.  

“You don’t really see it as work, as cheesy as that sounds,” he continues. “If you’re going in and working with that young person and giving them aspirations and that bit of confidence, and that bit of hope, you come away and you feel amazing. You genuinely do. You feel like a good person and that you’re making the world a better place.”