Charlie Edwards: ‘The past could have broken me, but it’s the thing that made me’ | Boxing News
Charlie Edwards is on the comeback trail, and he hopes he is finally on a path that will lead him back to world title glory.
On an emotional night in 2018, Edwards won the WBC flyweight title, a world championship victory that he dedicated to his gravely-ill mother.
But he struggled in subsequent years. Julio Cesar Martinez laid him out with an illegal blow, a result that went down as a no contest. Afflicted by inactivity, between 2020-2023 he only boxed three times.
Edwards is adamant he can become a world champion again
But now with a new promoter, Wasserman Boxing, and a new trainer in former fighter Stephen Smith, Edwards is determined to get back on track.
On Friday he will box Georges Ory at York Hall.
“I’m going to jump straight back into the frying pan,” Edwards told Sky Sports. “I’ve got a good opponent in front of me who’s never been stopped, a former European champion who’s coming off the back of six wins.
“My dreams and goals and aspirations are to become world champion again. [I would fight] any world champion. I do believe I’m mixing it at the very highest of levels now and I do believe if you want to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. That was the idea of getting a proper, formidable opponent.
“I know the level that I operate. Now I’ve got maturity mentally, I’ve got the experience. I’ve stuck at it in the gym, I’ve developed into a bantamweight and I’m firing on all cylinders and very strong and hitting hard now.
Edwards lands a right on Angel Moreno during his WBC flyweight title defence
“I know I haven’t gone anywhere. It’s just I’ve been off the scene.
“I look forward to going out there and putting on a dominant display of masterclass boxing, world-class boxing and [showing] a more spiteful, destructive side of me.”
He has come back from a dark place mentally. But he believes what he has been through will shape him.
“That time could have broke me, but it’s the thing that made me,” he said. “We’re all human beings. We all suffer with the same thoughts, feelings and emotions and things and past experiences.
Julio Cesar Martinez took out Edwards on the deck
“The fighting game’s hard because your pride and your ego take over and you have to have that to fight and when things don’t go your way, it’s hard. In this day and age as well with social media that plays a factor into it,” he continued.
“That’s just the way life is. We’re all suffering our own thoughts and demons and pressures and we’ve just got to deal with it. It’s just we [boxers] are put on the public stage where people can really have an opinion on it.
“However I feel like them battles and them struggles, once you get through them and once you’re on the other side of them and you’ve worked yourself out, figured yourself out, you’re in a dangerous position.
“The people who do battle the adversity and come through on the other side are the ones that get paid the fruits of their labour and that’s the way it is. You reap what you sow.”
