Sunny Edwards has already started to forge a successful career for himself beyond the ropes.
The former IBF flyweight champion decided to retire after defeat by Galal Yafai in November, and has since taken up a role with the broadcaster DAZN. Edwards instead spends his time as a commentator or pundit during fight nights.
Sitting so close to the action might have had the potential to ignite something inside Edwards to return. However Edwards, whose brother Charlie fights Andrew Cain for the British and Commonwealth titles on Saturday, revealed to BoxingScene that the opposite is true.
“I'm out watching boxing every weekend and every time I get there I think, ‘Oh fucking hell that looks hard,’” he said. “It just looks hard. I just watch a fight and it makes me never want to box again. I don't know how people watch a fight and it makes them want to box.
“I've spent 20 years boxing. I've spent 20 years boxing at a consistent rate that probably most people have never done anything in a row. I trained harder as a 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 year old kid than I do now, and have done, and I'm talking as a pro.
“I'm talking about how my career started like a Chinese gymnast. My dad had us running six miles, then going to school all day and then training and sparring all the rounds and then on the way back running an extra 25 minutes home, so the sauna is ready by the time we get home. I've been doing this for so long. I'm enjoying not having to do it anymore.”
Fighters have been vocal over the years about how nothing ever comes close to the feeling of rendering your opponent unconscious or having your hand raised after battle. Edwards, however, does not miss the feeling of victory.
Edwards admitted that he gets much more of a buzz from watching his friends and the fighters he manages achieve their dreams, rather than his own.
“I know it sounds good to say, and it makes me seem like such a nice person, but I genuinely mean this from the bottom of my heart: at not one point during my career did I allow myself to feel the happiness that maybe I should have deserved myself to,” he said.
“When I'm stood there and we're away and we're live on BBC and I'm in the corner and [Brandon Daord] gets, “And The New from Liverpool…” That feeling there, that feeling there when Lyndon [Arthur] beat [Anthony] Yarde in the first fight, my brother [Charlie Edwards] winning a world title, those feelings there when Dalton [Smith] knocked out [Jose] Zepeda with that out of the blue shot. Those feelings there I have never been able to feel not close to in my career.
“The feeling I get being part of the team and getting all nervous because it's not my effort going in there and it's someone else's… That feeling is more of a rush and more of an adrenaline kick than anything boxing has ever given me myself.”
Edwards achieved what most fighters can only dream of in 2021, defeating Moruti Mthalane for the IBF flyweight title. Edwards revealed that the feeling of achieving something he had set out to achieve since he was a child never lived up to expectations.
“A world title never means as much after you've won it than before you've won it,” Edwards said. “It's just like that car that you wanted to drive and that car that you really wanted to get. After a month it's a bit, you know… I mean that's it, that's the reality. You don't understand what it brings. I understand all the hoo-ha about it and being the best in the world for a period of time; it was nice for my ego if anything. But it never really made me feel that special. That belt has stayed in the same spot for the last, I don't know… the only time it came out was when I defended it.”