DOWN BUT NOT OUT

I was two weeks out from a world title fight when I got the news. It took a lot of energy, a lot of focus, but I just tried to completely switch it off, take it out of my mind completely like it never even happened.”

Back in 2017, in his Miami training camp, Olympic gold-medal-winning boxer Luke Campbell was in the last two weeks of preparation for his WBA lightweight title bout with tough Venezuelan fighter Jorge Linares when he saw a call coming through from his older brother.

It was the early hours of the morning back home in Yorkshire, so Campbell knew it wasn’t good, but he wasn’t prepared to hear the devastating news that he and his whole family had been dreading: that his beloved dad had died.

Bernard Campbell had been ill with cancer for a long time before his death, and had already survived several scares, so Luke had felt confident about