Season 2: #42 Spencer Oliver
Boxing Life Stories
Tris Dixon
5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2020
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
'The Omen', Spencer Oliver is perhaps now best-known for his media work on Sky Sports, talkSPORT and through his own Pound for Pound podcast, which he co-hosts with Jake Wood. But don't be fooled, Spencer was a terrific fighter, a European bantamweight champion who was on the verge of world title fights and possibly big money when his entire world was flipped upside down. He was badly injured in a 1998 fight with Sergey Devakov and would never box again. Not only that, he had a life to rebuild. He emerged from a two-week coma and had to learn the basics again, including how to walk and how to eat. Soon, a life of good health rather than world titles was his goal and a different kind of fight, one which featured acceptance, denial and depression, was at hand.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I realized then that listen what what do you want to do you want to go out with your mates |
| 0:03.6 | or do you want to fight so anyway he ended up winning on points and that was a turning point for me it was like it was at that age and |
| 0:09.7 | at that stage where I was like right you either want to go out partying with your mates or you want to |
| 0:14.1 | box your career decision now you know 16 years of age or whatever it was and and I made that |
| 0:19.3 | decision and it worked out. He went over and I thought I'm never going to throw a better right hand and that in my life |
| 0:26.1 | because it was just like hitting a golf ball when you hit it sweet and you don't feel it but it goes miles. |
| 0:31.5 | It was like that and I hit it when it his right hand and he hit the floor and he was gone. |
| 0:35.5 | When I say God I mean like I walked back to the corner thinking that was it. |
| 0:38.8 | As I turned round from the corner he was climbing up. Like I say I don't remember the I don't remember |
| 0:46.8 | the ring entrance don't remember the fight all I remember he's like vaguely traveling |
| 0:50.0 | to the Royal Albert Hall made a second 1998 and I was defending this and it was like |
| 0:54.7 | you can get your world title shot after this I was number two and three by all the governing |
| 0:58.0 | bodies of WBC, WBA and so it was a fight I thought right this is this is out of all my fight is probably my easiest |
| 1:03.7 | one but he was mandatory we was talking about fighting Wayne McCulloch or we was talking |
| 1:08.4 | about fighting one of the world champions at the time Varnibungu or something like that and I thought right let me just |
| 1:14.4 | get rid of this guy. So I watched a fight back and I remember sitting on the floor |
| 1:20.0 | in front of the Teletrist I wanted to to do it because I had to do it and yeah it was a hard thing I ever done. |
| 1:26.9 | I just fucking cried from the moment of the ringwalk to when I was stretching out of the ring because |
| 1:32.3 | I knew that I was watching the end of my career |
| 1:34.4 | basically and it was something I was still so passionate about. |
| 1:36.7 | Hello and welcome to boxing life stories with me Tristics. |
| 1:40.7 | What happened in the ring after Totonenolica was Charles Blake compared to that one? |
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