PROSPECT WATCH: GEORGE LIDDARD
leave boxing altogether. “For me, it all started when I was 8 or 9 years old. My dad took me to a gym in Billericay. I just did it for confidence at first, and to learn how to look after myself,” he said, retracing a familiar tale for a fighter’s first steps. “My dad always loved boxing. He did it when he was young. My granddad boxed in the army, so boxing has always been something in my family.” Liddard remained a committed and high-achieving boxer through his school days, winning four national titles at youth level. Those performances earned him a selection for the 2020 European Youth Championships, at which point everything stopped. The coronavirus pandemic impacted boxing at every level, across professional and amateur codes, from the elite level to novices. Gyms closed, crowds were kept away and careers were put on hold. For a teenager enraptured by the sport and excited about the prospect of representing his country in continental competition, it proved a blow too heavy to absorb. “I turned 18 in lockdown, and I fell into a bit of a thing where I got myself a job,” Liddard explained, having worked as a windshield fitter before becoming an accounts manager with the same company. “When lockdown was lifted, I started going out with my friends and into the world of drinking and partying.” In an attempt to boost the flagging hospitality sector, the U.K. government granted customers a 50% discount on food and drink at pubs and restaurants registered with their “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme in August 2020. “Me and my mates kind of took it as ‘drink out to help out,’ I think, because we was in the pubs all the time,” Liddard said with a rueful chuckle. “I fell off the boxing for a bit. It just seemed like everything had gone. I’d gone from being picked for the Europeans, then lockdown hit, and then picked for the world championships because lockdown was being lifted. Then the second wave came, and I’m at home watching other countries in Europe and around the world going out and fighting, and I’m sitting here frustrated. “I fell into the wrong path for a while. I made some bad decisions. You make mistakes when you’re young, at the end of the day, and we found boxing again.” Liddard credits the devout Christian faith he began to practice around the same time for bringing him back to the sport. “I just felt like I lacked that purpose in my life that boxing gave me. I fell into a bit of a dark place for a time. Then I found God, and then we found boxing again. As soon as I got back into that routine of training, I found my purpose again.
Yet he feels it was his spell away, when the darkness threatened to consume him, that unlocked the grit and nastiness that Sims spotted. “When you love a tear-up, you love a tear-up. It’s something that’s just instilled into you,” Liddard said. “When I was straying down the wrong path, it brought out a different side to me that I never really had as a kid. I was quite a soft kid. I wanted to win, but I never really liked fighting, if that makes sense. “When I got to 17, 18, the life that I had brought out this spiteful side in me, this other side. Now I’ve learned to kind of tame it and control it; I can bring it out at certain times. When we get rough and tough inside – we work a lot on inside work in our gym – having that grit, having that spitefulness, I think that’s what Ricky Hatton and some of the former great fighters inside always had.” Liddard had to go to that well in the first defense of his titles against former European champion Tyler Denny in March. The youngster won a deserved unanimous decision by margins of 116-112 on all three scorecards but had to endure some deep waters after a fast start did not blow Denny away. “Denny was the first proper southpaw he’d fought,” Sims acknowledged. “He fought one southpaw, but he blew him away after about one minute (Italy’s Omar Nguale Ilunga in December 2024), so you couldn’t really take that into consideration. “He’s always learning to mix up his inside work with his boxing ability. That comes with experience and what different fighters are like on the inside. If you watched what Tyler was doing, he might have had one arm tied up and he was working a lot with the other arm. Tyler was also pretty smart with his head on the inside. He was getting his head underneath George’s a lot. Stuff like that, which you can’t always do in sparring, he needed to learn about that.”
In the maiden defense of his British and Commonwealth titles, Liddard battled through stern resistance to outpoint Tyler Denny in London.
“When I was going through that dark time, it was scary. You don’t know what’s gonna get you out of it. You end up going out and making bad decisions. You feel lost in your life. Boxing’s always been me, my whole life; all I’ve ever been known for is boxing. Then, all of a sudden, I didn’t really have that. I feel like I lacked an identity. “I don’t really know how I found God. I just needed something to get me out of this rut. I ended up just praying a few times a day, and I remember having this conversation with God in my head. It was like, ‘If you get me out of this, I’ll forever thank you, and I’ll forever try and spread your word to others.’ And then it felt like I got pushed back towards boxing again. I believe God has a plan for me.” Sims instantly liked what he saw and felt Liddard would be more suited to the professional game than the amateurs.
However, this has probably been said at one time or another about most promising amateurs who aren’t Cuban slicksters. So what was it specifically that stood out about Liddard? “He’s someone who likes mixing on the inside,” the coach said. “A lot of amateurs, they like keeping everything on the outside. When they get close, they only like to hold. You can see from the way they fight that if they like mixing and trading on the inside, and they can pack a little bit of power with their shots, they’re gonna be better suited to the pros.” Liddard has the capacity to work with such ferocity, as evidenced by eight stoppages in the unblemished 14-fight record that chimes with his “Billericay Bomber” nickname. The crisp combination punches, immaculate shot selection and assured distance control on display against Conway showed technical mastery honed by a lifetime in the gym.
There was a full-circle moment in preparation for Denny when, four years on from that life-altering text message and with southpaw sparring hard to come by, the now-retired Ryder dusted off his kit to help out. “We had to get John off the couch, getting him in there for two rounds at the end,” Liddard chuckled. “The last time I sparred him was for his Canelo training camp. It’s been a while, but desperate times call for desperate measures.” These are anything but for Liddard, who is ranked inside the top 15 by the four main sanctioning bodies and has eyes on a tilt at Bilel Jkitou’s European title before the end of this year. In 2027, he wants a world title. “Anyone at 160 that wants it can get it,” Liddard added, having now left the desperate times behind under Sims’ expert guidance. “That’s just how it is.”
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