After Maxi Hughes lost to Liam Walsh in a fight for the WBO European Lightweight title in November 2019, he left York Hall in Bethnal Green contemplating whether he’d ever box again.

Hughes had already tried retiring eighteen months earlier, after fighting Sam Bowen for the British Super-Featherweight title. He never became a professional boxer dreaming of winning world titles or earning millions. For his first 31 fights as a pro, he still worked in the building trade. Hughes craved, one day, becoming a British champion. His bout against Bowen was his second chance to fulfil that ambition, but training to make the 9st 4lbs weight limit had been too punishing both physically and mentally. Hughes was dropped twice in the seventh round by body shots before a doctor ruled he was unable to continue due to his right eye swelling shut. His wife was pregnant at the time, and he decided enough was enough. If he was going to support his family it would be on building sites, rather than inside boxing rings.

After six months, Hughes convinced himself he could win again. He stepped up to lightweight, allowing his body an extra 5lbs of leeway. But two fights later he lost by unanimous decision to Walsh, the fifth defeat of his career, and as he set off back to Yorkshire he thought his career was over. Alongside him in the car were fellow boxers Josh Warrington and Reece Mould, and Sean O’Hagan, Warrington’s dad and the trainer of all three fighters.

“Bloody hell, lads. I can’t believe it. I’m done, aren’t I?” Hughes said. “All I wanted to do was win a British title. I’m done.”

That car journey has stuck with Warrington. “It was a sad moment,” he told me last year. “It was only a few minutes of silence, but it felt like fucking hours. It was like, ‘Someone say something, quickly.’ Nobody knew what to say. Then my dad made a bit of a joke and it kind of got swept under the carpet. Maxi came back into the gym and said, ‘I’m going to give it one more go, my grandad would have wanted me to do so.'”

Four years later, Hughes is known as The Cinderella Man. Following the loss to Walsh, he won his next seven fights, from a four rounder in his hometown Doncaster to topping a bill at the Nottingham Arena. He claimed upset after upset, winning the British title by stopping Paul Hyland Jr in March 2021, and could finally quit his day job after beating Jovanni Straffon to win the IBO Lightweight title on Warrington’s undercard at Headingley Stadium.

“His career has turned around massively,” Warrington says. “He’s an inspiration. How he’s conducted himself, he’s just shown it’s not over until it’s over. If there’s an opportunity to keep on fighting, keep on fighting, and within a few years you can have turned your career right around and go from there” – Warrington holds his hand by his waist before raising it above his head – “to fucking up there.”

Boxing is littered with titles from different organisations and sanctioning bodies. The IBO belt is a world title in name more than status – it is not one of the four major titles. Lightweight is currently one of boxing’s premier divisions, stacked with some of the best talents and biggest names, so while Hughes’ face might not have fit in a sport that rewards fighters beating lesser opponents to preserve their zero in the losses column rather than risking a few defeats while testing themselves, holding the belt was – in theory – a useful bargaining tool in proving he deserved a chance in more illustrious bouts.

Recognition has still been hard to come by. At the public workout in Kirkgate Market ahead of Warrington’s world title challenge against Kiko Martinez in February 2022, I watched Hughes, who was defending his IBO title on the undercard, take his turn in the ring before walking off by himself past the fishmongers and butchers, carrying his own holdall, without anyone paying attention or disturbing him – an everyman leaving to get on with his everyday life.

After successfully defending his title twice, opportunities were still slow to present themself. As ever, Hughes took the future of his career into his own hands. He has regularly fought on Warrington’s undercards promoted by Matchroom, but acted on his own in making a fight with George Kambosos Jr in what would be the first of a new multi-fight deal the Australian had signed with American promoters Top Rank and Lou Di Bella. Kambosos, a former sparring partner for the legendary Manny Pacquiao, provided the upset of 2021 when beating Teofimo Lopez in Madison Square Garden to become the undisputed lightweight champion of the world. He lost the belts to Devin Haney in his first defence, and failed to regain them in an immediate rematch, both held in Australia, but a fight against Hughes was billed as Kambosos’ route back to world title contention. The bout was scheduled for the end of July in Oklahoma; the winner would fight for the IBF belt – one of the big four – and, at least for 33-year-old Hughes, a potentially life-changing purse.

Since his brief reign as champion, Kambosos has revelled in presenting himself as a brooding, intimidating figure. After initially failing to make the weight for his defence against Haney, he said it was the “art of war, deception”. His Instagram feed is a scroll of moody photos and videos, often referencing one of the many tattoos covering his body from his ankles to his neck: ‘Never retreat. Never surrender.’ Before his fight with Hughes, he spoke like a boxer who was already looking ahead to the title shot his promoters had promised. How was he going to beat a crafty, experienced campaigner like Maxi? “Take his head off.” When Top Rank published a graphic on fight day advertising the ESPN broadcast of Kambosos’ return, they didn’t even bother including Hughes on the image.

Hughes has proved he should be respected, but he’s never lost his sense of humour from the building sites. ‘When your opponent is serious as hell, I sometimes like a less serious approach,’ he posted on Instagram, accompanying a video of him trying on a new pair of boxing gloves at home, his body flailing around his living room struggling to keep up with punches seemingly out of his control. “Fucking hell, fast these,” he says laughing at his own dad jokes. “I’m going to have to learn to keep up with these.” He is, essentially, a loveable goofball. He paid his own money to travel to Oklahoma earlier than the promoters offered, allowing him to train, acclimatise, and pose for a photo sitting on the John Deere lawn tractor of his building trade dreams.

“I was always the quiet kid,” Hughes told the Doncaster Free press. “I remember being at school and there was always that gobby kid, a bit of a bully, and I’d be waiting quietly in the background ready to show him I’m better. It’s a bit like that with George, he’s got a very, very high opinion of himself. He doesn’t believe I’m in his league. Come fight night, I’m going to turn it on. I don’t have to be brash and overconfident with my words. When it’s time to go, I’ll be on it and I’ll shock you.”

Warrington accompanied Hughes on his ring walk, following behind him and holding his friend’s IBO belt above his head. Maxi was wearing a cowboy hat he had bought in Oklahoma and a smile on his face. Once the opening bell sounded, his expression was one of inscrutable concentration. It never changed throughout the fight. Kambosos was true to his word and tried to “take his head off”, but every time he swung wildly Hughes slipped out of the way and countered with his own clean punch. It wasn’t flashy, or eye-catchingly explosive. It was the sweet science.

Sean O’Hagan could be heard bellowing from the corner, constant instruction and praise. “And again, Maxi! Beautiful! Make him miss then make him pay. Don’t go to him, he’ll come to you. There you go, Maxi boy, there you go! Good work, Maxi Hughes!”

By the third round Kambosos was looking confused, skittish, like a bully being stood up to for the first time. He started twirling his gloves around as if trying to kid the judges, or himself, that he was a boxer in control, but every exchange revealed Hughes producing the slicker work. At the end of the round, O’Hagan told Hughes: “We’ll see who’s too fucking good for who, won’t we? Come on, son, let’s go again.” In between sips of water from a bottle emblazoned with the slogan, The Art Of Conflict, the expression on Maxi’s face remained the same.

Kambosos’ corner were starting to worry at the end of the fourth. “He can fight, this guy. He can fight. You’re not fighting him. You’ve got to go hit him. You’re watching him too much. Go get this guy.” Meanwhile, O’Hagan was telling Hughes not to chase Kambosos. Judging by the start of the fifth, neither fighter was listening. Hughes walked out of the corner, met Kambosos in the middle of the ring, and cracked him in the head with a left hand. Kambosos’ corner were getting as frustrated as their fighter. “Go get him! Hit him!” He tried to do what he was told, and was rocked by another left hand to the jaw that stiffened his legs and sent him staggering backwards. It was the best punch of the fight, and Hughes followed it with two more, opening up a cut above his opponent’s right eye. In 34 fights as a pro, he might never have boxed more brilliantly, more graceful and vicious, than those three minutes in the fifth round. Kambosos’ corner went quiet, as if it had dawned on them their shouts weren’t much use to Kambosos because they were realising the same thing as everyone else: fucking hell, Maxi Hughes is world class!

They were finally given some encouragement in the sixth, when the two fighters’ heads banged together, cutting Hughes on the forehead and sending blood trickling into his left eye. “He’s cut! He’s cut! Take him out!” Hughes responded with another left hand to the nose, but his groove had been visibly disrupted by the claret clouding his vision and he was fighting to keep Kambosos away from him. “Just because you’re cut doesn’t mean you have to go to war,” O’Hagan told Hughes. “We’re still doing it round by round. He’s got to chase it.” It took Hughes another round to regain his composure, and for the blood to be stemmed from his cut. “The cut’s not any worse,” O’Hagan told him before the eighth. “In fact, it’s nowt really to be honest with you.”

The final third of the fight returned to a similar pattern. It became scrappier, as Kambosos tried imposing desperate pressure, but Hughes remained too elusive, content to hold onto his opponent in between his usual moments of punishing craft. Kambosos failed to take Hughes’ head off, and the fight went to the judges’ scorecards.

It’s never a good sign when there is a delay in announcing the result. Waiting to hear the scorecards, Hughes asked Warrington: “What do you reckon? Did George do enough for them to rob me?” He was wearing the cowboy hat he had worn on his walk to the ring before producing the best performance of his career. The first scorecard was eventually read out: 114-114. If the judge had given all the tighter, messier rounds to Kambosos, a draw was harsh, but perhaps not incomprehensible. The remaining two scorecards were announced: 115-113, and 117-111. Both in the favour of Kambosos. According to the latter judge, Kambosos had won nine rounds, Hughes only three. Bollocks.

Hughes immediately began to leave the ring, but decided against it. He ducked back under the ropes to congratulate the grinning Kambosos while holding back tears. Due to his association with Josh Warrington, he has become an adopted Loiner; in Oklahoma, he had stepped into his own version of the 1975 European Cup final in Paris. “It was a bit of a kick in the bollocks, to be honest,” he told ESPN in the ring. “Now I feel pretty stupid standing here in a cowboy hat. I’m absolutely devastated. Nobody knew who I was. I wasn’t supposed to be in George’s league. I came and showed, I should have had my hand raised. But I don’t want to take George’s moment.”

The journalist Steve Bunce declared Hughes had been ‘robbed’: ‘It is obvious to everybody that a good man was treated very badly.’ A Boxing News editorial noted: ‘He lost a fight simply because it was a fight he wasn’t ever meant to win. That he ultimately lost it could be due to any number of reasons: for instance, pure incompetence on the part of the judges, or, alas, something a tad more sinister and predetermined.’

The former two-weight world champion Timothy Bradley was the analyst for ESPN. Broadcasters are often criticised for favouring the promotor’s boxer, but Bradley couldn’t justify what he had seen. “Something needs to happen,” he said. “Somebody needs to protect the fighter because, trust me, we go through too much through the training to get to these positions. And then it gets taken away like that, stolen from a fighter like that. It’s unbelievable to me. I’m sick to my stomach.”

The result was sickening, but it wasn’t surprising. Boxing is full of the same shitty stories, which makes each new instalment even shittier. “The 117-111, fuck me, whatever he’s on I wish I had a little bit of it,” O’Hagan told Boxing Social afterwards. For all his disgust, he didn’t lose the streak of defiance he has helped cultivate in his fighters. “We’ll go home now with our tails between our legs for a few days, but I’ll tell you what we will do – we’ll be fucking right back and do it again.”

Billy Bremner once said, “Every goal Leeds concede is like a bullet to my heart.” Bremner knew as well as anyone what it felt like to be cheated. But without those robberies, or the pain in his heart every time Leeds conceded a goal, then the goals he did score, or the games he won, or the trophies he lifted wouldn’t have felt so valiant. Just like how the previous defeats, the car journeys considering retirement, and the incompetence of three judges only made each punch Hughes slipped and each counter he cracked more heroic.

The day after the fight Hughes returned to Yorkshire, dealing with the denial of his wildest dreams with the same sense of humour and humility he showed while he was striving to make them his reality. He posted a video to Instagram of him being reunited with his two children, holding them in his arms and chasing them around his kitchen. ‘Let’s hope they never check BoxRec,’ he joked, ‘because I told them I’d won.’ We know all too well at Elland Road that sometimes records don’t tell the whole story. There’s a reason we still sing We Are The Champions, Champions Of Europe: because sometimes the history books lie. And the glory will always belong to those who know the truth. ⬢