Tony Bellew admits the volume of TV work he has done post-boxing has helped him transition from one career to the next.
Bellew infamously said that when he left boxing, he would disappear. But a number of lucrative opportunities arose and Bellew is just as famous in the UK from his post-boxing career – if not more so – than he was as a fighter who won the cruiserweight title and twice battled David Haye.
And, had it not been for the TV work, Bellew knows he might have struggled in life after boxing as so many have.
“Yeah, massively,” he told BoxingScene.
“It’s hard, what can I say? It's difficult. It's very hard. All I’ve ever known is fighting. All I want to do is fight. I’d still love to fight now, but I can’t do it no more. So it’s just one of them things, you’ve just got to learn to adapt. I’ve thrown myself into other things that I thought that I’d be able to be okay at, which I suppose has worked out. So, silly TV shows, stuff like that. I mean, I’m known more by women now than I’ve ever been known before. I don’t know. I’m a pretty straight individual and that’s very hard to come by in my world. I had an exit strategy, a property portfolio, sitting there to build a future to build for my kids. That’s all I thought about, that’s all I fought for. Well, after I won the world title, that’s all it became about, just providing a perfect life for my children and my kids. But the exit strategy was, you know what… I speak about boxing well on TV. Well, I think I do. There’s not much I don’t know. I’m pretty good with the side of boxing. So, I thought I’d fit in there, but did I know I was definitely going to go in? No. I don’t know. It’s just difficult.
“It [retirement]’s really hard. It’s still hard every day now.”
You would not think so to see Bellew on TV. He crossed over to a different audience with guest spots on the sports panel quiz show A League of the Own, and his popularity sky-rocketed on a celebrity version of SAS: Who Dares Wins and on I’m a Celebrity.
Bellew doesn’t mind being on the wrong end of jokes, and that – in part – has seen him win over viewers. For someone who lived boxing and took the business side of it so seriously, he now has a hilarious highlight reel of doing crazy stuff of TV shows.
“It’s just mad. It’s just, you know, these shows get me on and I just be myself,” he said.
“I don't know, what can you do? I suppose I kind of crossed over to a different kind of demographic when I was fighting. You know, I won the [cruiserweight] world title at Goodison Park [against Ilunga Makubu]. I lived my dream situation and scenario. My wildest dreams were achieved. And then I bump into David Haye and then it puts me into a different stratosphere. I beat him and you just become a household name. And then I retire and then I do a few other little bits and bobs. I do the shows that I always looked at and wanted to do. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll have a go with that. You know, the SAS show comes, [I’m a] Celebrity comes. I’ve been asked to do all of them and I’ve said no to most of them.”
Bellew actually credits the SAS show with helping him adapt to life after boxing. As well as physical tests, there were plenty of psychological examinations, too. He saw things differently after that.
“Maybe it just helped me figure out the problems I was going through in my life. Retirement, the loss of my brother-in-law,” he admitted. “They really helped me. Them lads, Jase [Jason Fox], Billy [Bingham] and Ollie [Ollerton], they all helped me. They helped me massively.
“I spoke to the doc[tor] at the end of it because he was worried about me. But it was just with the mindset that I had, what I came out with, because I was in such a bad place, I was on the verge of either doing something really bad to someone because I was just at a point in my life where I couldn’t make sense of anything and my wife was just in a really bad place. I guess we figured out a way to get through it together, but it was really, really hard. “There were some really dark moments.”
It is such a common theme, about how the darkness descends when the crowds stop cheering and the phone stops ringing and fighters are faced with a void.
“I still go through shit every day,” Bellew adds. “It is what it is. You go through all kinds of things. Day-to-day things. I’ve got stuff going on now, that personal stuff that’s going on, but what can you do?”
Bellew is 43 now. He was a good amateur, known even back then for his heavy hands, and he had an unwavering passion for the sport.
He doesn’t think he would have achieved what he went on to do had he not been so invested.
“No, I couldn't have achieved what I did if I wasn’t,” he added.
“I used to have fighters call me up and ask me for tips on their opponents about the styles, ‘who would you get in for sparring?’ I used to have fighters call me up, professionals... I gave my life to boxing, that’s all I know. It’s the thing I’m the best at. It's the only thing I’m the best at. I love fighting, I love talking about boxing because it’s the only space I feel safe in. When I’m in boxing, when I’m in and around the community and the people in boxing, I feel safe because no one knows more than me. No one can trip me up, no one can catch me out, no one can do anything to me, I just feel at ease and I don’t feel like that in any other place in the world.”
You can understand where Bellew is coming from, although there is no safe space in boxing punditry given the weekly reaction to experts on social media on a regular basis. But Bellew doesn’t mind.
“It's a very tough job being an analyst and a pundit,” Bellew said. “But the fact is, I know more because I’ve experienced it. Now, I don’t want to go down that at all ‘because I've done it, I know’ but when you’ve been there, seen it and done it and know what’s going on, it’s like, unless you've been in a boxing ring and you’ve fought, you can’t call a fighter a quitter. I'm sorry, you can't. You just can’t, because you don’t know what he’s going through. You don’t know what's going on. You can’t envision that. Now, I can come out and say that because I’ve been where he's been. I've felt what he's felt. And I know for a fact, he spewed it. I can categorically say he didn’t want to fight no more because I’ve been there and I’ve felt it and I’ve done it. So it’s things like that. But I’m careful and I hate using that word quitter because I don’t think any fighter’s really a quitter. I just think he’s reached his threshold and he can’t take no more. Does that mean he’s quit? No, because he goes back to gym next week and he goes again. The man who never quits is the man who never gets truly defeated. It’s hard. But I just try and say it just as I see it. I’m loyal. I’m loyal beyond belief. And I’ve got a lot of love for certain people in the game. People will say, ‘Yeah, I’m up Eddie Hearn’s arse.’ I’ve got a lot of love for Eddie because he’s my friend and I got on great with him. Didn’t always get on great, but we had a common ground and what we shook hands on, what we agreed, got dealt with and got done.
“So our agreements or anything that we signed or anything that we don’t, all our agreements were just done correctly. And, you know, we shook hands and that was the deal done. When we shook hands, me and Eddie, that was it. And I have respect for that.”
Yes, it’s the ability to laugh at Bellew that has attracted a wider fanbase, it’s the ability to relate to him, too. But more than anything people like Bellew – who retired after 30 wins, three losses and a draw – because if there were not many spaces in a foxhole next to you and you needed someone’s support, you’d want him in there with you.
