Troy Williamson goes into his next fight knowing that he might have been done with boxing had he lost his last fight.

Instead, against Mark Dickinson, the 34-year-old from Darlington sprang one of the upsets of the year, regenerating a career that had hit the rocks with three consecutive losses.

“I feel like I've revived my career after my last win and yeah, up a weight class and I feel like a different man,” Williamson, 21-4-1 (15 KOs), told BoxingScene. “Obviously a lot of things I've changed. I'm not killing myself to make weight, so my training's changed. I don't need to do plenty of long runs where before I was doing a lot of running just to get the weight off.

“So I can train 100 per cent now, I can be a lot more explosive in training and just enjoy life really. I was in an unhappy place before. I wasn’t enjoying life and I wasn’t enjoying boxing. “That was basically all linked to the weight. I was just a very unhappy person outside of boxing. Well, outside of the boxing ring, like I had no social life, I couldn't really do nothing. I had no sex drive, let's put it that way. Just everything down to making weight. I was just a very unhappy man.”

Taking the losses he suffered, to Jahi Tucker, Ishmael Davis, and Caoimhin Agyarko, made Williamson realise who had his back, and who did not. He has learned some harsh realities along the way.

“Obviously, I've lived with losing friends I've had for a very long time, just off taking a couple of losses,” he added.

“I've lost a lot of sponsorship after taking losses. I've realized that everybody wants to be your friend when you're winning, but as soon as you lose, then you realize the proper people who really matter and who really back you… I can count on one hand how many people come back to the dressing room after a loss and it's the same people each time I've lost. I keep my circle small anyways, but obviously I know who really backs me and who doesn't and the clingers-on when you're winning and things like that. I'm a changed man. I'm looking forward to what the future holds.”

That would not have been the case had he actually read the script and succumbed to Dickinson. Those three losses came on the heels of defeat to Josh Kelly, and a fifth might have spelled the end of the line.

“I love boxing, but yeah, I was very, very close to stepping away,” Williamson admitted.

“I've taken three losses. I just thought like, what opportunities am I going to get now? “Where do I go? I wasn't really arsed about boxing on these small hall shows and going back and fighting journeymen over four, six rounds. So, it did cross my mind to think, ‘where I'm going to go?’ I had a deep think. I spoke to a couple of close people and I knew deep down that I wasn't finished and there was a lot left to give. I know that I was at the wrong weight for a long time and I knew that if I'd moved up a weight, then people would see the best of me. So, I give it a chance and it paid off.”

Even walking to the ring for the Dickinson fight, Williamson knew that the weight would help him. No longer boiled down to a vascular skeleton, Williamson was strong, fueled and hydrated.

“I knew for sure it was going to pay off,” he said.

“I felt, the way I was training and the way I was performing in sparring, I just knew that all I needed to do was execute that fight night and I'd be victorious. But yeah, it was a bit of a roll of the dice. Mark's a quality fighter, so I knew I was up against it. I was in his backyard. I was the away fighter and again, if I lost, if I took another loss, that would have been four losses off the bounce. There's no chance in hell that I was coming back. There was a lot of pressure on my shoulders, but I knew deep down that what I could do at that weight and I went into that fight supremely confident. I wouldn't have stayed around just to be a gatekeeper. I've got aspirations and I've got goals and my goal is to become a two-time British champion and push on. So if I lost that, which I knew I wasn't going to, but if I did then I'd have stepped away one million per cent.”