Ryan Rozicki: Boxing saved me. I didn’t understand how hard I punched until it was almost too late | Boxing News

Ryan Rozicki is coming to hurt Chris Billam-Smith. It’s not personal. It’s simply his craft.

Rozicki comes to Billam-Smith’s hometown to fight the former world champion at the Bournemouth International Centre on Saturday, live on Sky Sports.

The Canadian has never lost at cruiserweight and every win he’s had, bar one, has come inside the distance. To him that points decision doesn’t feel like a victory.

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

“I feel like I’ve won the fight when the man is unable to fight anymore.”

Billam-Smith has operated at the highest level of the sport, beating Lawrence Okolie and Richard Riakporhe among others in WBO world title fights and losing to Gilberto Ramirez in a championship unification.

Rozicki in contrast is yet to fight for a major title and this will be his first contest outside of Canada. But the visitor has identified a fundamental flaw in Billam-Smith and one which he will naturally exploit.

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

But he added: “Honestly I don’t think about my power like that. It seems like everybody else does. I don’t think about how hard I’m hitting them. I think about what I’m breaking and the damage I’m doing when I’m hitting them.

“His previous fights the shots he got hit with, I just think I hit him with those same shots, I’m going to break stuff. I’m going to probably break parts of his head. Parts of his face, his arms, things like that.”

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

“Once I started working with my grandfather I kind of lost interest in fighting and I just became all about cutting wood. From the age of about seven to 11 I was just fighting. I was just a kid fighting other kids, even I would fight teenagers. But once I got to about 11 years old, my life was just the woods, the farm, hunting, planting potatoes, cutting trees, that’s all I cared about just work, work, work,” he recalled.

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

Rozicki added of Cape Breton: “It’s a very tough place. Fighting is huge there. When I was growing up nobody cared about who had the most money, who had the nicest house. If you’re coming flashing your money, where I’m from, nobody cares. When you come and you’ve got a reputation as a fighter, well, you’re going to be taken care of. That’s all they care about.

“Other than that brief four years of labour in the woods and on the farm, everything else was fighting.”

It was a while though before Rozicki found his way to the sport of boxing.

“Everybody was looking for fights, that’s all there was to do around there, was drink and fight. It didn’t take me long to start getting into fights,” he said.

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

“I didn’t understand how hard I punched until it was almost too late. Streetfighters, 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 walk away,” Rozicki continued.

“It was only a matter of time until I hit somebody and they go down the wrong way.”

Initially boxing didn’t appeal to him, he didn’t want to fight with gloves. But taking up the sport, as it has for many others, proved to be his salvation.

“It saved me and it probably saved somebody or multiple other people,” Rozicki reflected.

He got a harsh lesson when he first went to a local boxing gym, which was run by the correctional officer in the area.

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

“He ended up being the first one to spar me with gloves on.

“I walked into the gym, black eyes, stitches, just wanted to hit the bag that’s all I wanted to do, hit the bag and spar.”

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

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

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

That prompted Rozicki to do his research. He found grainy footage of Jack Dempsey online. The boxing legend remains his inspiration. He vividly recalls watching Dempsey hammer Jess Willard in their 1919 clash, widely regarded as the most savage heavyweight championship fight in boxing history.

“That was the first time I ever watched a boxing match,” Rozicki said. “It was watching this man who 187lbs, six foot one, six foot two, just absolutely brutally beat this giant, who was the heavyweight champion of the world.

“His teeth were knocked out, his jaw was broken, his eye socket was broken, ribs were broken, this guy’s basically a punching bag. But the way he was delivering the punches, the way he was rolling – I’d never seen anything like it before.

“Remember I’m coming from streetfighting where people throw haymakers, headlocks, on the ground rolling around. So watching this boxing, I’m mesmerised. To this day.”

He carries a book written by Dempsey with him to his fights. He uses it for inspiration. The copy he has, an orange hardback, was given to him at a boxing show. “It was like a mysterious guy on a fight card. It was a really weird moment so it means something,” Rozicki said. “He knew I was Dempsey fan.

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

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

“Jack was the villain too. He was the villain in most of his fights. That’s my path. That’s the way 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,” Rozicki said.

“I think they’ll be cheering for both of us at the end. I believe that.”

Rozicki has the mindset of the hunter he is. “When I’m on a bear, when I’m on a deer, a moose and I’m on one particular 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, getting that animal. Which I eat all the meat by the way for those animal protectors out there – I don’t waste nothing. But if I’m on an animal I will not sleep. I’m on it day and night, day and night until I get it,” Rozicki said.

“I will not let up until I get it. And I’ve got them all. Every single animal.”

Billam-Smith is now his quarry. “He’s all I think about. Every day. I dream about it. I think about it. I’m thinking about him 24/7,” he said.

“The quicker I can get it done the quicker I can get to the next fight.

“Right now it’s about getting it done.”

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