Huck: You had safety and you had love, which is what we all need when we’re growing up.
Frazer: I’ve got a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. They’ve got their own bedrooms. The three-year-old has got an ensuite! He doesn’t understand. When I first got my gaff, I stood in the shower, and I was just buzzing to have a shower in my yard. I’d never had a shower in the bathroom in my whole life, mate. We had one bath between the six of us.
Huck: What do you remember about walking into a boxing gym for the first time?
Frazer: I was an eleven-year-old fat kid who went in there, probably low on confidence, just wanting to make my dad proud of me. I can remember walking in, the smell, the noise, the people. I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a big heavy bag near the entrance, and a lad was smashing that. It was one of those sandbags, and it was going “boom, boom, boom” every time he hit it. There were a few old boys in there – coaches and trainers. There were young lads, good fighters. Black. White. Asian. Irish travellers. It’s mad now thinking, that was my favourite thing. I felt like I’d gone from my normal life to being around kids who all were a bit naughty and a bit game. I loved it because they were smashing the hell out of each other in sparring and then getting out the ring and shaking hands. I thought: “This is crazy!” We’d go on runs together through parks and if any of the so-called bad boys gave us any shit, they’d get filled in [taught a lesson] really quick. They were proper people who I still connect with and see to this day. People that were there the first day I walked into the gym. I fell in love with the sport and the people.
Huck: Tell me a bit about your first bout. What were you feeling?
Frazer: I was shitting myself. Newdigate ABC in Coventry was the club we were boxing against. We got an eighteen-seater minibus from the pub, The Loaf and Cheese, in Burton-on-Trent. My dad, my brother, a couple of my uncles, dads from the pub.
I was a little fat thing. We couldn’t even find a groin protector to go around my waist, so I had a little cup instead. I get there and I’ve seen this kid, and he’s got an army of brothers and cousins with him, all in their white vests. I’m thinking: “Ah, shit!” Anyway, I got in there and smoked him in about 45 seconds.
Huck: When I look back at footage of my first bout, I’m taken back to how terrified I felt just before the opening bell. And how I was putting everything into every single punch I threw.
Frazer: It’s like nothing else you can ever do in your life. It’s such an experience – such a hard thing to channel your nerves, to try and do what you’ve learnt, to be fit enough. It’s almost impossible in your first fight to look anything like a boxer. But it was the best experience of my life. I’m so glad I did it. It was the best decision I ever made.
Huck: Boxing is a brilliant tool to help steer people away from serious violence. But even as an elite boxer, you had the horrible experience of being stabbed in 2016. How did you overcome what must’ve been a very real feeling of wanting retribution for what happened to you?
Frazer: The stabbing happened, and then the dust settled a little bit. I was so angry. My daughter was two weeks old. I was literally out celebrating that. I got one in the neck and two in the leg. I’m very lucky to be alive. I was 25, but not really mature. So, I’m thinking: “You know what? When I see these guys again, it’s on.” And I went to where I knew I’d bump into them. I remember seeing one of them. I wasn’t looking to wet him up [stab him]. I just wanted to fight him, knuckle to knuckle. I swear to God, I got to him. I said, “it’s on.” He said to me: “I’m just telling you now, big man, we ain’t fighting with fists. If it’s on, then I’m gonna fucking shank you again.” I probably got called a pussy about this. But I said: “You know what? Allow it, fuck that. You win, man.” And I walked off. I probably got laughed at for it. The only way they were gonna get one over on me was to shank me, so I’ll take that loss. It takes a lot to lose like that, you know?
