Don’t let Gavin Gwynne’s foresight about being ready for life after boxing fool you.
The Welshman has been drafted in as the opponent for unbeaten Khaleel Majeed in Manchester on Saturday but the veteran former European lightweight champion, now 36, has his eyes solely on his opponent.
Gwynne is 18-4-2 (5 KOs) while Majid is a sparkling 16-0 (4 KOs) but Gwynne, trained by former world middleweight contender Gary Lockett, has seen it all before.
Gwynne didn’t travel to Malta with the rest of the stable on a recent training camp, instead opting to stay home and continue working on the house extension that has occupied his time away from boxing since Christmas.
Gwynne admits he doesn’t know much about Majid, he just knows it’s a big fight for himself and has even called it a “must-win” on “the biggest card of the year.”
“Obviously, I’m coming off a loss and the draw against Cameron Vuong, but in my eyes, I thought I won both fights,” Gwynne said. “It’s just, on my record, it don’t look very good, but I think it’s a must-win fight for myself. It’s a fight that me and Gary think I can win and win quite well as well.”
Gwynne didn’t even think the first Vuong fight was close, but he lost a decision.
“Going into the last round, Gary said, ‘Look, we’ve just got to get through this and we’re winning quite comfortable.’ I took my foot off the gas a bit. Then, obviously, when the scorecards got read out, I thought, ‘Ah, lovely, I’ve got this quite wide as well.’ Then it was in his favour, but obviously, we know how boxing goes. We’ve seen mad scorecards, [that’s] the way it is. They spent a lot of money on Cameron Vuong. I’m an old head boxing-wise, so they probably just gifted him that win. Then, obviously, in the second fight, there was a lot of eyes on us. The both of us, I think, improved massively as well. I thought I just nicked it by one or maybe two rounds. Then, after watching it back, I thought that was the case. I thought I won it by two rounds. I don’t know what it is in me. I just never get disheartened with the sport, no matter what happens.”
Gwynne is fuelled by a desire to prove people wrong.
After each setback, he’s not been able to get back in the gym fast enough to try and rectify what has happened, whether it’s a legit defeat or a bad decision.
“People thought I’d never win the British title,” the Welshman smiled. “I went and done that. I won the Commonwealth title. The European title was never on my radar. I thought I would never get to that level. I went and proved people wrong that I could go and do that.
“I think that's one thing that I hold over a lot of people. I got that fight in me that I think you can’t train it either. You can’t train it. You either got it or you ain’t. Just without that, I don’t know what it is, just to keep getting up in the early mornings and I’m putting the work in. Even though I’m 36 now, I feel like I’m 26 in the gym. Gary’s saying the improvements I’m making is not right and I shouldn’t be doing it [making such improvements at his age]. It’s down to my hard work. I want to improve. I want to get better. Even though I’m 36, I’m still thriving to be better.”
Gwynne is also surrounded by capable and hungry fighters. In Lockett’s gym, there are the likes of former two-time champion Joe Cordina, contender Rhys Edwards and the returning Liam Williams.
“That’s a massive thing,” he said of the comradery.
“I think when you’re around fighters that are on a different level, you’re pushing each other daily. We always have a crack in the gym but it’s always hard work being done first and then we have a crack after. I think it’s a massive thing especially in fighting because it’s a very lonely sport. People don’t understand how lonely it is being a fighter and having them around you to feed off you. I can’t thank them all enough for welcoming me in with open arms as well. Obviously, I’m learning off them and they’re learning off me and it’s brilliant.”
Gwynne, to this day, remains a gym rat. Lockett never has to ask for Gavin to show up but sometimes has to tell him when to slow down or rest.
For years, Gwynne often felt he’d not done enough work before his fights, he had not sparred enough, but Lockett told him that was all in his mind and he’s had to “pull back” on Gwynne at times from doing too much.
In a typical week, Gwynne do his boxing training at the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday around 10am and run in the afternoon with strength and conditioning sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He’s learned to love the spin bike, too, and likes a swim, to the point that post boxing there’s a likelihood of him at least dabbling with an Ironman. He will do one session over the weekend but take the rest of the time off.
Lockett has also paired him with a nutritionist, Sean Aspinall.
These are things Gwynne has not always benefited from. He said that, with his loss in Saudi to Mark Chamberlain, things went on behind the scenes but he refuses to explain what because he doesn’t want to take credit away from the Portsmouth southpaw.
All Gwynne will really say is: “I am still gutted because that was a massive stage for me to perform, but I think it done my career good in ways because then I got fights because people thought I was old, I was over the hill, because the last couple of performances from that, I didn't perform and then going into that fight, I sort of fell out of love with boxing. But then after it obviously changed teams and things like that, some sort of fire just lit inside me. It was just like I started boxing all over again. I started loving training again.”
Gwynne, modest as ever, calls himself an overachiever without hesitation.
And that he has been astute out of boxing allows him to illustrate the point well.
“People always say to me, ‘oh, when are you going to retire?’ It’s not in my mindset at the moment. The way I’m performing in the gym and the way I’m feeling, I feel like I can go until I’m 50. I live a good life. I’m not out partying, eating crap and ballooning up in weight.
I’m always fit, healthy, keep my weight always reasonably down. I think that’s a massive thing in boxing, whereas some of these fighters, they have four rounders, six rounders and they’re out partying like they’ve just won a world title. I think after a couple of years you just get into the program, but you’ve got to be constantly on it. You’ve got to be living the life. This is your life now until you retire. And I think keeping myself in shape and obviously my former gym mate, Lee Selby, he always instilled that in me. As long as you’re always fit, healthy and in shape, you can always take short notice fights and give yourself that opportunity. But as long as I keep winning and keep winning titles, I'm just going to keep going until my wife says I can't do it anymore.”
Gavin has been married to Louise for three years. She’s been keeping him on top of the extension work, but Gwynne is a carpenter by trade, and even though he has no desire to return to the tools after work, he knows boxing won’t financially sustain him in retirement.
He’s invested his money into property.
“I’m not stupid in that way,” Gwynne said. “Boxing is never going to last forever. I think I’m going to go into buying and selling properties, doing them up and things like that. I don’t want to be working for someone and going out hard slogging on site every day. I’ve been a full-time athlete for the past five, six years now, so I think going back and working for someone now will be a massive kick in the teeth after all that hard work. I don’t want to be going out and working for someone else. And to be fair, I have thought about it, like what I’m going to do. You've got to think about it because I’m not going to be able to box forever. And I think I will struggle. I think I'm going to massively struggle with not getting up and training and sparring with the boys. But I am going to stay in the sport… I don't know if it's going to be on the amateur side or pro side. Just see how it goes when I do finally hang the gloves up.”
