When you see that Scottish middleweight contender Aston Brown is 9-0, you would be forgiven for thinking he is a bright up-and-comer.
When you scratch the surface, however, the story is different.
Brown, a good amateur, is now 35 and turned professional 11 years ago.
He had one fight in 2015, didn’t box in 2016, fought once each in 2017 and 2018 and then did not fight at all from 2018 to 2023.
He’s unbeaten in six since his return to the sport, and in his last two he’s scored notable victories over 5-0 Reece Porter and 19-4 Paul Kean, dismissing them in rounds one and two respectively.
The Glasgow hope is finally on his way but it’s been a journey.
“It was an injury to start with,” Brown told BoxingScene when reflecting on how things went wrong. “It was an injury in my hand and I think that I was young at the time, and I just thought ‘you turn professional and then you get all these fights and then you become a champion and you become a world champion.’ I thought that all happened without any distractions or anything in your life.
“And then I get injured and really, once you get injured and you’re not boxing – [and] this is what I felt at the time – nobody’s speaking about you, nobody knows you, you’re just on the sidelines and boxing keeps going. The world keeps going. And I struggled to deal with that.
“At a young age, I struggled to deal with that. And obviously then I turned to drink and drugs. I have no shame in saying that today.
“And I just really went down the wrong path. I went to prison for a while as well. And my life just spiralled out of control.”
Brown said the lowest ebbs were twofold, living with an active addiction and going to jail.
But, he says, without the latter, he might not be where he is now.
There have been times when he didn’t want to live any longer and he considered taking his own life, but prison gave him a wakeup call.
“Prison was, this is going to sound strange, a saviour to me,” he said. “Me going to prison saved me. Because my dad always says, ‘I reckon if you didn't go to prison at that time in your life, you’d either be dead or doing life in prison.’ So it sort of saved us a bit. I went in there and it gave me a bit of structure again. It gave me routine again. It gave me certain things that I needed. As much as it’s not a nice place to be, it changed my mindset a wee bit and then I came out and started chipping away and trying to do the right things.”
As an amateur, Brown had boxed in Ukraine, Finland, India (where he lost in the Commonwealth Games quarter-finals to Callum Smith), Russia and other far-flung places from his home in Scotland.
And having turned pro, good things were expected from him.
Unlike some fighters, who once they discover boxing, have their discipline moulded and routines shaped, when Brown lost the sport to injury, he lost the motivation to keep his life structured.
“I was trying drugs, you know what I mean? Definitely,” he added. “I was trying substances. [I] just wish I just didn't do that. But again, that is, it’s well gone [in the past] now. It’s well gone. It’s a number of years [since he’s done anything like that] now. But again, it’s probably part of the story. I hope I end up writing a book one day. It’s part of the story. And my wrongdoing through doing that, I can pass on and help others make their decisions with trying not to go down the wrong road. I believe everything happens for a reason today. And I believe that happened to me for a reason now. But again, I’m so grateful to be back involved in boxing, back speaking to you guys, back doing what I love, and back having good people around me, supporting me.”
Brown’s story is unique in the sense that he stepped off the wrong path in time to make amends. Sure, he’s not got youth on his side any longer, and a slip up against Sam Gilley on Friday night at Glasgow’s Hydra Arena could be costly, but he has at least given himself the chance to turn things around. For that, he is grateful, and deserves credit. It is something he is also thankful for; not leaving things too late.
“It’s a blessing, mate, isn’t it? It really is,” Brown said. “Because, give it a few years more, going through active addiction and doing the wrong things, and I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. It would have been too late, I reckon. It would have been too late. Because boxing is a short career that comes to an end at one point. Nobody goes on forever. But I believe I just got it at the right time. And I believe that me coming back into the game, I didn’t have a lot of miles on the clock because I hadn’t been sparring every day, I hadn’t been fighting, because that puts miles on the old clock. I came back fresh. And I came back, more importantly, fresh minded. So I’m fully grateful that I managed to get back and back doing what I love.”
Had Brown not gone down the alternate route, things could have been different, and he understands that. When he turned professional, he felt he was destined for success before the obstacles started to mount against him.
“When I turned over, I fully expected to be at this level, even higher, winning world titles, I fully believed that,” he said. “And a lot of people in the boxing scene believed I was going to do big things when I just turned over. But again, life came into play, and things went in the wrong direction for me. I was out of the game for a long time. But I’m back, and I believe that I’m more mature now and things are going in the right direction, especially my boxing. My performances speak for themselves.”
The bout with the heavy-handed Porter was supposed to be a 50-50 fight between two unbeatens, but Brown dazzled again, and he did so again in his next outing.
“Me and my team fully believed that I would just take care of business, and we believed we’d do it quick, which we did,” Brown said. “Because as I said, I just thought I was on a different level to the boy, especially with my amateur pedigree and stuff like that… WSB [World Series of Boxing], Europeans, Worlds, Commonwealth Games, the list goes on. You don’t do that stuff for no reason. He hadn’t done any of that, and so, again, I took care of business very quickly.”
It is the amateur grounding that now, in part, gives Brown so much confidence in the professionals, having boxed the likes of Oleksandr Khyzhniak, whom he rates as the best he faced. The Ukrainian stopped him in round two of their 2015 WSB clash.
“The boy who’s won the Olympics a couple of times and stuff like that,” Brown said of the best he boxed. “I faced a boxer in WSB at light heavyweight, which I should have been nowhere near around at light heavyweight, but I did. I went in, I jumped in, and he was only young at the time, but he was a bit of a monster. He stopped me in the second round. That’s the only time I’ve ever been stopped in boxing. There was a few Russians I boxed as well who were fantastic.
“Maxim Gazizov, he was brilliant. There’s been loads. I could go through my book and write them off, but there’s been some fantastic fighters.”
Brown also fought future Terence Crawford foe Egidijus Kavaliauskas, whom he recalled as “a phenomenal fighter” on his way to a narrow 4-3 loss in Moscow.
This Friday, Gilley is in the gatekeeper role in that if Brown is successful – in a bout that is for a minor WBA belt – he will be in the mix for bigger titles and opportunities.
“That’s what I'm in this game for, especially since I recently turned 35, so I want to go now,” Brown said. “I want it now and I want it all now and I want to just push on. But again, I don’t overlook anybody. I’m too old and too wise for that. Sam Gilley has got my full focus for April 17th.”
Already Brown’s fans are clamouring for a fight with British and Commonwealth middleweight champion George Liddard, who is also on the Scot’s radar. They have exchanged hostilities on social media, and it would be England v. Scotland, which is never a hard sell. Liddard is popular, of course, and Brown is clearly a huge sentimental favourite in Scotland, too.
“I think a lot of it has to do with my background story as well, what I’ve come back from,” Brown admitted. “People are obviously hearing about it and seeing it, and maybe people realise, maybe people who are involved with stuff like [addiction etc] that realise how hard it is to get back to some sort of level of just normality, never mind boxing professionally on massive shows and performing. And again, I’ve always had a big following, but I went away for the game and stuff like that, so that goes. But I’ve got everybody back behind me now and supporting me, and the fans are amazing and you’ll see that on the 17th. The Scottish crowd are fantastic.”
For that, too, Brown is grateful to boxing.
“I managed to get it back and I managed to do the right things today, get involved in the Fellowship [Cocaine Anonymous] and the 12-step program, go clean and sober,” he said. “And I’m living a fantastic life today, a better life than I’ve ever lived, to be honest with you. I’m grateful and today is good. I still go to meetings all the time. I’ve done the 12 steps. I sponsor people as well, take them through the steps. But I still attend meetings every week, basically. I still stay connected because as I always say, if you’re an addict, you’ll always be an addict.
“That doesn’t mean you're actively drinking or using drugs. But I always still live with that disease of addiction. So I need to treat it every single day, which I do. I stay connected, I get tuned in, and I connect with my Fellowship and my sponsor every single day. And I’ve lived clean and sober for a number of years now. And I live an amazing life for it.”
With that, there are only five words he uses to describe his hopes for the future.
“Aston Brown, world champion. Done,” he said.
