Ryan Rosicky: Boxing saved me. I didn’t realize how punched I was until it was almost too late Boxing news

Ryan Rosicky coming in to hit Chris Billam-Smith. It’s not personal. It’s just his craft.

Rosicky comes to Billam-Smith’s hometown to take on the former world champion at the Bournemouth International Center on Saturday, live Sky Sports.

The Canadian has never lost at cruiserweight and every one of his wins, bar one, has come inside the distance. To him that point decision doesn’t feel like a victory.

“For me it’s not about winning or losing. I love to fight,” Rosicky said. Sky Sports. “And I like knocking people out. To me, winning a fight is when the opponent is on the floor and he can’t fight anymore. When a judge declares you the winner of the fight, I’ll take it, I’ve got it, but I don’t think I’ve won.

“I think I’ve won the battle when the guy can’t fight anymore.”

Billam-Smith worked at the highest level of the sport, defeating Lawrence Okolie and Richard Riakpore in WBO world title fights and losing to Gilberto Ramirez in a championship unification.

Rosicky, by contrast, has yet to fight for a major title and this will be his first competition outside of Canada. But the viewer identified a fundamental flaw in Belam-Smith and one that he would naturally exploit.

“He gets hit. It’s a weakness. You can’t hit against me,” he said. “This is a fight I’ve always wanted.”

But he added: “To be honest I don’t think about my power that way. I think everyone else does. I don’t think about how much I’m hitting them. When I’m hitting them I think about what I’m breaking and what damage I’m doing.

“The shots he had in his previous fight, I think I hit him with the same shots, I’m going to break stuff. I’m probably going to break parts of his head. Parts of his face, his arms, things like that.”

The Canadian believes his strength was honed in his youth, working as a woodcutter with his grandfather. From a remote island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton.

“Once I started working with my grandfather, I lost interest in fighting and I just became about chopping wood. From about seven to 11 years old, I was just fighting. I was just a kid, fighting other kids, even teenagers. But when I got to 11, my life was just forest, farm, hunting, logging, logging, logging. Work, work,” he recalled.

“Once I was maybe 15, actually my grandfather – to this day he says it’s his biggest regret – he said to me: ‘Ryan I think it’s time you got some friends.’ Because I was just hanging out with him. All I wanted to do was be in the woods and cut trees.”

Rosicky added of Cape Breton: “It’s a very tough place. There’s a lot of fighting. When I was growing up, nobody cared about who had the most money, who had the nicest house. If you’re flashing your money, where I’m from, nobody cares. When you come and you’ve got a reputation as a fighter, well, they’re all going to notice.

“Except for those brief four years of labor in the woods and on the farm, everything else was a struggle.”

It was a while before Rosicky found his way into the sport of boxing.

“Everybody was looking for a fight, all there was to do around there was drinking and fighting. It didn’t take long for me to start fighting,” he said.

“After the first one, I knocked the guy out in a street fight and my friend was like: ‘Nobody’s ever done that to that guy!’ Because that man was a warrior.

“I didn’t realize how hard I got punched until it was almost too late. Street fighters, these guys don’t know how to parry a jab or take a step back. It’s a couple of guys hitting each other until someone goes down. If you’re lucky, they go,” Rosicky continued.

“It was only a matter of time until I hit someone and they went the wrong way.”

Boxing initially did not appeal to him, he did not want to fight with gloves. But taking up the sport, as it did for many others, proved to be his salvation.

“It saved me and it probably saved someone or more people,” Rosicky reflected.

He received a harsh education when he first attended a local boxing gym, run by the area’s corrections officer.

“He was on the Canadian national team, he was a provincial champion,” Rosicky noted. “He was a really good amateur.

“He was the first person to put gloves on me.

“I went to the gym, black eyes, stitches, just wanted to hit the bag all I wanted to do was hit the bag and spar.”

Looking at this boxer-coach, Rosicky thought to himself: “I’ve fought 300lb men on the street and knocked them out, what’s this guy going to do?”

It didn’t work that way. “I couldn’t put a glove on him, he turned around,” the fighter remembers. “Boom, he hit me with a left hook on the lever. I didn’t go down, but I turned. I was finished. I tried to fight but that was it, the lever shot. And I got out of the ring, I was calm, it was over and he said: ‘It’s not what you thought.’ I said no.”

“You need to learn how to box,” came his new partner’s reply.

This prompted Rozicki to do his research. He found grainy footage of Jack Dempsey online. The boxing legend remains his inspiration. He vividly recalls seeing Dempsey hammer Jess Willard in their 1919 clash, considered the most brutal heavyweight championship fight in boxing history.

“I saw a boxing match for the first time,” Rozicki said. “Watching this guy who was 187 pounds, six foot one, six foot two, absolutely brutally beat this giant, who was the heavyweight champion of the world.

“His teeth were knocked out, his jaw was broken, his eye sockets were broken, ribs were broken, this guy was basically a punching bag. But the way he was punching, the way he was rolling — I’ve never seen that before.

“Remember I’m coming from street fights where people throw ham makers, headlocks to the ground. So I’m fascinated by this boxing. To this day.”

He carries with him a book written by Dempsey for his fights. He uses it for inspiration. He has an orange hardback, given to him at a boxing show. “It was like a mystery man on a fight card. It was a really weird moment so it meant something,” Rosicky said. “He knew I was a Dempsey fan.

“I even have a Dempsey coin in the book, I have all kinds of memorabilia, I have things that his family sent me, a whole bunch of Jack Dempsey stuff. This book in particular, the way I got it, I got it at the time, so I took it to the ring. It’s like my Bible.”

He wants to emulate his hero, even if it means becoming a villain in Billam-Smith’s hometown.

“Jack was the villain. He was the villain in most of his fights. That’s my way. That’s what it’s supposed to be. But at the end of the day, the crowd can’t fight for Chris. The crowd can’t fight for me. It doesn’t make a difference,” Rosicky said.

“I think they’ll end up cheering for both of us. I believe.”

Rosicky has the mentality that he is a hunter. “When I’m on a bear, when I’m on a deer, a moose and I’m on a certain animal, I can’t train, I can’t fight, I can’t even think about boxing because I’m so focused on getting that kill, that animal. Which I eat all the meat for those animal rescuers out there — but I’m not going to waste it if I’m not sleeping for the animal at all. Night, day and night until I get it,” Rozicki said.

“I won’t give up until I get it. And I got them all. Every single creature.”

Billam-Smith is now his quarry. “I just think about him. Every day. I dream about it. I think about it. I think about him 24/7,” she said.

“The faster I can get this done, the faster I can move on to the next fight.

“It’s about getting it done now.”

Watch Chris Billam-Smith vs Ryan Rosicky live this Saturday Sky Sports.