“I would like to correct you there,” says Bilal Fawaz, stopping his interviewer for a moment. “You’ve got to balance reality with dreams.”
As someone who has battled deportation from the UK, he had been asked whether he ever thought he would be in the position he finds himself in, having recently been signed by Matchroom, a few weeks shy of his 38th birthday.
“Your dreams manifest your reality,” he adds. “And if you believe it and you dream it and you work hard, it will happen. So I knew I was going to get here a long time ago. There is no ‘not to get here’ because I knew I worked harder than anyone. I knew that my dreams are me seeing the vision that has already happened. I just needed to go and get it. I believe in things before I get it. I don’t think my dream is too big. If your dream is not big enough to scare you, then you’re not dreaming it big enough.”
The dream doesn’t end this weekend, with victory over Ishmael Davis in Nottingham. No. Fawaz believes it continues and will take him all the way to a world title fight with newly-minted 154lbs IBF champion Josh Kelly.
“You know, Josh Kelly is the next stepping stone. And then we bring it on. I’m signed to Matchroom,” Fawaz, 10-1-1 (3 KOs), adds proudly.
“So whatever they say will happen will happen [is next]. Everyone is beatable. No one is a machine except me.”
And even though Fawaz was on the brink of tears, he anticipates more success coming his way.
That said, he credits Hearn’s faith in him as something that indicates he might be near the top.
“The highest high [of his career to date] is Eddie noticing me, right?” he explains. “Because you can beat this person, you can beat that person. What matters is if somebody notices you that it’s a king in the sector, then you know that you are doing something right. And I am equipped. I am now positioned and poised in a situation where I am being protected and I’m being managed in a way where I can achieve greatness.
“I just need to keep on winning.”
Ishmael Davis also knows an impressive victory puts him back on course having lost a few last-minute assignments.
With that in mind, Fawaz knows Davis cannot be overlooked.
“I agree. You can’t look ahead too far,” Fawaz admits. “Ishmael first and foremost. However, if you prepared so much that you know that Ishmael is not a threat… Look, the only time I can start feeling threatened by any person is when I’m fighting world champions. I know what I’m capable of. I know what I can do. Ishmael is powerful, but for his power to hit me, I have to stand in one place, right? Ishmael is powerful. He can swing, swing, swing. If he doesn’t hit me, what happens to that power?”
Davis has been heaped with praise for taking late notice fights against the likes of Kelly and Serhii Bohachuk. He’s had plenty of notice for this. Similarly, Fawaz has earned his respect in two fights with touted Junaid Boston, drawing the first time and winning a majority in the return.
But Fawaz is not quite so quick to look only at the positives or Davis’ bravery.
“Well, he's going about business because probably everyone needs money, right?” Fawaz adds. “And he needs the money and he’s taking the fights. He probably doesn’t care or worry about losing. He just wanted to shoot a shot and hope he wins, because sometimes you might take a fight that you know you don’t deserve, but then you win. That kind of mentality warps and shapes a man into becoming a champion. And he’s done it. Fair play to him. He shouldn’t have taken this fight, my fight with him.”
There is no doubt that Fawaz’s past has shaped him and provided him with a bulletproof mindset.
Born to an immigrant mother in Nigeria, and a father from Lebanon, who was also not a Nigerian citizen, Fawaz has been displaced almost his whole life. His mother was abusive, his father took him to Lagos when he was 11 and left him with someone thought to be an uncle. At 14, they moved to England, but Fawaz fell into a foster system where he experienced further abuse and, having escaped aged 15, the authorities spent years trying to have him deported.
That is why his fight with Davis, for the British and Commonwealth 154lbs titles no less, is so meaningful for him. He could be the reigning champion in a country that didn’t want him.
Whether he is the A-side of a fight or not, his mentality remains the same.
“The B-side is the people that they don’t believe could do it,” he says. “But look what we did. Look what we were doing. Look what we have done. The thing is, right, I saw what I could do before I did it. And that’s why I did it. And I know what I can do before I’ll do it. And that’s why I will do it.
“This is it. It’s a sense of pride, but not pride out of nothing. Pride from hard work. Pride from knowing that you are great. You’re grounded. Nothing can move you. You’re unstoppable. You are relentless. You are powerful. You have the ability to withstand any storm. And I am that.”
That mindset has been moulded by the hard road he has travelled through his 37 years to this point.
“It’s like I was alone. I was left alone,” he says of his childhood. “I didn’t have a mum or father so I had to fend for myself so quickly. And there is this little kid inside of me that I wish I can surrender to someone and look up to someone, get advice from, like my father, like my mother. But I don’t have that person. So that kind of aspect of a man’s mentality has been carved out. It makes a man an iron. If you have no one that you look up to, no one that you take advice from, no one that gives you advice, no one that you listen to in terms of, ‘Oh, he knows better.’
“I don’t have that. So for me not to have that, I am the man that I have become from myself. “And I believe that if I can do it, I will do it.
“And I believe if I can endure a lot more pain than you can, then I am victorious.”
He is his first and only line of defense.
“That’s me,” he smiles. “I’m the defender. I’m the captain. I’m the soldier. I’m the pawn. And I’m also the king and the queen and the bishop and everything.”
