Billy Dib By Anson Wainwright
have a good night out with my cousins. “The next day, I must have put on three kilos, nearly six pounds, and my brother rang me and goes, ‘I’ve got some bad news.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘The fight’s back on.’ I go, ‘Are you joking!?! I’ve just put on stacks of weight.’ I was 10 kilos overweight, close to 23 pounds over the weight. He said, ‘If you don’t take the fight, Golden Boy are going to tear your contract up.’ I was sort of forced into the fight with Steve Luevano.” That left Dib in a very difficult position. Ultimately, he did something that he wouldn’t have gotten away with today.
taken it a lot more serious. But the truth is, I didn’t want to be there.” Things didn’t improve at the weigh-in the day before the fight. “I remember getting on the scale and I had to make weight, which was 126 pounds,” said Dib. “And then Steven Luevano got on the scale, and he was like 126-something. And I was like, ‘No, the weight limit is 126.’ And everyone around me is like, ‘No, if he takes his underwear off, he’ll make the weight.’ And I was like, ‘Well, take them off.’ He didn’t end up taking them off, and I sort of felt a little hard done by at the time – he got away with it.”
B illy Dib had been a professional for four years and had remained unbeaten through 21 fights when he got his first world title shot. It happened on HBO Pay-Per-View, no less. “I was given like six weeks’ notice for the fight,” Dib told The Ring. “I’d made featherweight twice since I was an amateur. I was the current IBO junior lightweight champion and I’d be moving down to featherweight to fight Steven Luevano [even though] I hadn’t made that weight in such a long time. But my brother, Imad, had discussed with Golden Boy Promotions and they really wanted to do the fight, and it would be on the undercard of Kelly Pavlik-Bernard Hopkins as the main support.” The 23-year-old Australian decided the opportunity and career-high payday were too good to pass up. However, things quickly took an unexpected twist. “Literally five weeks out from the fight, my brother rang me and said, ‘The fight’s off.’ He’s like, ‘Go get some pizza. We’ll work it out – no problem. Go enjoy yourself for a while,’” said Dib. “I’m in Australia at that time. I break from camp, I go out, eat some pizza, I get food and drinks and chocolates and
Opponent: Steven Luevano October 18, 2008, Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City Title: WBO featherweight Note: This story contains references to a drug called clenbuterol, which is currently classified as a banned substance by anti- doping organizations. “ I didn ’ t realize what I was taking and was reckless, ” said Dib. “ I want fighters to know that you need to be responsible for what you put in your body, because it could have cost me my career. But more importantly, I could have lost my life. ”
“A friend of mine rings me up and says, ‘What are you going to do about making weight?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘I can help you.’ I said, ‘What have you got?’ He said, ‘I can give you some clenbuterol.’ I said, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘Something they give horses to lose weight.’ I was like, ‘I’ll do whatever I have to do.’ I was five weeks out. My friend comes to the gym and gives me clenbuterol, and I trained like a man possessed that day. “Once the high was over and I was crashing – it was a diuretic drug – I started to hallucinate, see and hear things, and the next thing you know I started throwing up. I couldn’t stop myself from throwing up. I ended up at the doctor’s, and the doctor gave me a needle to bring me back to life. I was on the brink of death.” That harrowing experience played a significant part in him making weight, but it came at a cost.
Dib remembers that Luevano’s trainer, Robert Garcia, then disrupted his flow just prior to the fight. “He would come into the changing rooms and go, ‘Nah, take your gloves off. Wrap your hands again. I want to see you wrap. I didn’t get to see you wrap,’” said Dib. “Robert Garcia is a very smart man. He knew how to get into your head to upset you. He did what he had to do for the benefit of his fighter. He wasn’t at the time the superstar trainer, like he is today. Steven was his first world champion, and Robert was a former world champion, and he knew his way around the boxing ring.” The fight played out as a rather tame, tepid affair in which the defending titleholder recorded a 12-round unanimous decision. “We got in the ring and it was a tactical, boring battle. There wasn’t a lot of action,” said Dib. “He won a lackluster decision that he deserved. I
Facing Luevano was not a good experience for Dib (left), but it had a positive effect on him.
Luevano retained his 126-pound title.
“When I eventually got on the scale the following day, I had lost close to six kilos, something like 15 pounds, in six hours from vomiting and everything,” he explained. “I never really recovered. I was extremely sick throughout the prep. It wasn’t about preparing for the fight; it was just about making weight. We never put a game plan together.” Just seven days before the fight, Dib and his team – including head trainer Harry Hammond, legendary Australian coach Johnny Lewis and cutman Brian Wilmot – flew from Sydney to Los Angeles into Atlantic City, which is 16 hours behind Dib’s homeland. “I was flying economy; I wasn’t flying business class,” he said. “It’s like when it’s morning in Atlantic City, it’s nighttime in Australia. I was extremely jet lagged, but that’s something you have to overcome as a challenger. That’s what makes it so much sweeter when you win on the road. “As a professional, you need to make the right decisions. For me, I should have traveled a lot earlier. I should have
didn’t push to win the fight. I was very disheartened about the way things were in the lead-up to the fight. I was disheartened with Golden Boy pushing me into that situation. I was disheartened with the way I made weight. I was disheartened by the way he made weight. I was a little bit bitter with boxing at that time.” The defeat galvanized Dib’s commitment, however, and it proved to be the catalyst that kick-started his career. “What I can say is that loss was the transformation in my life. It was when I decided to actually take the sport of boxing seriously and start to really bite down and work extremely hard,” he said. “I left no stone unturned to make sure I became a world champion. That’s when I went on a winning streak of 10 fights before I won the IBF world title.” Questions and/or comments can be sent to Anson at elraincoat@live.co.uk and you can follow him on X @AnsonWainwright.
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