As a kid, Liam Wilson wouldn’t stop shadow boxing. And if there were any lingering doubts he was chasing the wrong caper, they were answered on a trip to Russia as a 14-year-old.
“They asked, ‘Why do you box?’. And he said, ‘I like hitting people’,” Ann Tindall recalls of a development trip that included would-be world champions Jeff Horn and George Kambosos.
“I said, ‘Why did you say that? You can’t say that!’ But he was just being honest.”
Tindall runs Caboolture Boxing Club with husband and coach Don and is a long-time Boxing Queensland administrator.
Wilson will get the chance to prove he is the champ he always wanted to be in Phoenix next Friday night (Saturday AEDT).
A series of fortunate events means the 26-year-old will fight Emanuel Navarrete for the vacant WBC super featherweight world title.
Ann Tindall remembers the day Wilson walked into the gym as a 12-year-old.
“You could see it immediately,” she told AAP. “Donny would say, ‘I’m sure this kid, everything I tell him, he must just go home and practise’.
“He’d come in the next day and nail it.
‘He knows he’s good’
“He’d walk around, everywhere he’d go, shadow sparring and was like that right from the get go.
“Liam’s very deceptive. His ability, you can’t see it when you’re talking to him.
“Shy about it, but he knows he’s good – and that’s great.
“He realised pretty early on what he could do with that power, but it was never like he walked in with this natural ability.
“He walked in the door wanting to work at whatever he had to do to be the best.”
Wilson, who will weigh in at less than 59kg at Desert Diamond Arena, won more than 100 amateur fights under Tindall before turning professional in 2018 and appearing destined for this moment.
A brutal knockout defeat in 2021 halted his run though, Wilson quickly seeking a rematch and battling some internal demons before inflicting a knockout of his own to right the ship.
He was preparing for a world title eliminator on Tim Tsyzu’s title fight undercard in Las Vegas this week.
That bout has since been postponed but Wilson had already been offered a shot at the crown when Oscar Valdez, who was originally slated to fight Navarrete for the title vacated by Shakur Stevenson, was injured.
Promise to a dying dad
But Wilson, who as a 15-year-old promised his dying father he’d be a world champion, feels like he’s been ready for years.
“I would, I would,” Wilson smiled when told of Tindall’s shadow boxing memories.
“I just lived and breathed boxing, loved it.
“I’d come from Kingaroy and moved from two days of training a week to four (at Caboolture) and thought ‘this is the real deal’.
“For me, it was the pinnacle and people who came to that gym knew it’d be a war in every sparring session.
“I saw myself as world champion material. It was just a matter of time … fast forward 17 years later and that’s where I am.”
Trainer Ben Harrington says his charge has no weaknesses.
“Boxers like him are like unicorns, they don’t exist,” he said before the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
“He’s a freak, there is no other way to put it. The complete package.
‘Fastest, strongest, most explosive’
“The fastest, strongest and most explosive. He’s the hungriest and the most determined.
“He can box orthodox, he can box southpaw, there is nothing he can’t do.”
Father of two Wilson is modest, palming off the praise to Don Tindall.
“He moulded me into the person I am today and also my fighting style,” Wilson, seeking to become only the second current Australian male world champion, told AAP.
“I had about 100 fights under Don; as a young kid I was fighting tough men, big guys and they didn’t take it easy.
“He’d always tell us sparring is like a 12-round world title fight and that’s how we’d treat it.”
His Phoenix chance may not go the distance as Navarrete is unbeaten in 11 years and 31 fights, 30 of his 36 wins coming via knockout.
A knockout merchant in his own right, Wilson has rifled through sparring partners during an eight-week US fight camp – often switching at the end of each round – to prepare for the Mexican’s unorthadox style.
“I’m going in with a boxing mindset, but I’m coming to try and knock him out,” he said.
“It could end up in a real fire fight.”
-AAP
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