Martin Hillman: “I might not always win, but I never turn down an opportunity.”

Martin Hillman: “I might not always win, but I never turn down an opportunity.”

By Garry White

This weekend, Martin Hillman will wake up at home in Orpington and go to bed some 3,000 miles away in Accra. The Ghanian capital has long since established itself as the mecca for boxing in Africa, having given rise to champions of the calibre of Azumah Nelson, Ike Quartey, and Isaac Dogboe. 

For Hillman, who has spent all of his 33 years living in and around the London Borough of Bromley, this will not surprisingly mark his first visit to Africa. In fact, in a 23-fight professional boxing career that has so far yielded sixteen wins [two inside the distance], he has never ventured further afield than Bristol. His usual stomping grounds are accompanied by the twin aromas of chlorine and bleach as befits the provincial leisure centres in Maidstone and elsewhere where he has typically operated. These low-key venues have been interspersed with bigger nights at London’s modest yet iconic York Hall. 

Hillman, who has been on the pro circuit for more than a decade, has so far fought unsuccessfully for the Southern Area title on four occasions and at four different weights. You could forgive the man, who spends his weekdays working as a car mechanic, for giving up on a sport that appears to have short-changed him in terms of both success and money earned. “Boxing doesn’t pay a living,” he says resignedly. “It’s a hard game, and it is extra tough at this time of year to get up and get motivated to hit the gym. Obviously, I need to do it ahead of a day’s work, and then I have to find time to train and spar in the evening. It’s not easy, but you have to prepare properly if you don’t want to get beat up in front of hundreds of people!”

So why does he put himself through it? “My dad and all his brothers boxed to a high level and won multiple amateur titles,” he reveals. “My Uncle Albert [Hillman] was Southern Area champion and fought for the British title [losing to Jimmy Batten at London’s Albert Hall]. Even my grandad was a services champion in his Army days. Boxing is just in the blood; I love it, and I just can’t shake it off.”

Hillman has in the past said that securing an Area belt would for him feel akin to winning a world title. There is something immensely appealing about such a level-headed mindset and its honest assessment of his limitations. It is something that appears increasingly rare in a sport typically overflowing with unrestrained hyperbole. You get the feeling that even after eleven years in the pro game, and having headlined in a title fight at York Hall, he is desperate to lay down a marker to prove he was ever there at all. At 33 years old, his record on the BoxRec website [Boxing’s official record keeper] contains no evidence of title victories or belts won, and he knows that time is no longer on his side.

It is this determination to leave something permanent in boxing’s wet sand that drove him to sweat down to 115 lbs in his last fight for the Southern Area prize against Somerset’s Paul Roberts last November. Not surprisingly, with his 5”8″ dimensions, Hillman left plenty on the scales on his way to fading to an eighth-round stoppage reverse. “I might not always win, but I never turn down an opportunity,” he says with admirable defiance.

Yet, despite these unsuccessful domestic forays, Hillman does currently possess a championship belt, albeit one not officially recognised in Britain. Some might scoff at his lightly-regarded black and gold Universal Boxing Organization (UBO) Intercontinental strap, and in moments of reflection Hillman also refers to it as a “trinket… but it’s something”, yet it is still, in the absence of anything else an achievement that he extracts obvious pride from. 

A clue to how Hillman came to be challenging Julias Thomas Kisarawe for it last April at Tolworth Recreation Centre might be found in his long-standing friendship with the enigmatic Prince Patel. The London fighter has made a career out of travelling to far-flung places to win a rainbow array of fringe belts, before last year using that platform to progress onto winning a more mainstream IBO [International Boxing Organisation] world title. “ Yeah, it’s a strategy that has ultimately worked for him [Patel]. He was good enough to give me the UBO contacts and all that stuff. I’d had a run of five wins, and I wanted a title fight. There were just no UK opponents about, and the Southern Area belts were all tied up at that time, so we thought we’d try for something international,” he explains. “But the top five sanctioning bodies were just too expensive for us to fight for any of their belts. That’s why we went with the UBO. 

“I had to get the British Boxing Board’s permission to do the fight due to them not recognising the [German-based] sanctioning body. Although I am recognised as the champion on the UBO website because it took place on a board-officiated show in Britain, it isn’t eligible to appear on BoxRec.”

It is this reluctance to surrender the belt, won via a ten-round points decision, that has led to Hillman undertaking his upcoming trip to Ghana. He has also recently discovered that because the Ghanaian authorities do recognise his belt should he make a successful defence, it will later appear on his BoxRec page. This may sound like a small thing, but “It would be great to make it official,” admits Hillman enthusiastically. 

Opposing him next Tuesday evening at the open-air Bukom Boxing Arena will be 27-year-old Baraka Mchongi. The Tanzanian may have an unprepossessing record, but he will enter the ring on the back of five straight knockout victories. Hillman reveals that the pair have met before, “He [Mchongi] was in Kisarawe’s corner when I won the belt. Apparently, he really fancies he can beat me,” he says. “Since then, he has got himself made mandatory, so I was told that I either had to arrange a defence or lose the belt.”

The easy thing to do given the logistical challenges would have been for the Joe Elfidh-managed fighter to relinquish the title and refocus on domestic challenges. However, in conjunction with Box Office Promotions in Ghana and Platinum Punch Promotions closer to home, he has the relevant financial backing to make his way to West Africa. When he enters the Bukom Arena on the Eve of Ghana’s Independence Day Bank Holiday, he will be surrounded not only by a 4,000 crowd that is unlikely to be rooting for him but also by the names of all the nation’s boxing legends who are chiselled respectfully into the walls of the stadium. 

If it feels like a tall order, then it perhaps is, “I know I am rolling the dice a bit with this one,” he says. “But without anything much happening in the UK, what else could I do? I’ve done all my training; I’ve been layering up in the gym and cranking up the heating to prepare for the temperature rise. Yes, I am going into the unknown, and maybe it won’t be easy to get the decision away from home, but I’m confident that I’m ready and I feel really good. Without discrediting my opponent, I am confident that I can beat him.

 “Anyway, whatever happens, one day I’ll have a great story to tell.” And not for the first time he poses the question: “That’s something, isn’t it?”

Yet Hilman provides one final twist seemingly plucked again straight from the Prince Patel playbook. “I am going to be fighting for the Tanzanian International title as well,” he says with a smile. “I noticed it was vacant and that you don’t have to be Tanzanian to fight for it, so I contacted the sanctioning body and applied for it. It was very cheap, absolute peanuts. It’s a nice-looking belt and another one to go on BoxRec.” Purists and detractors of boxing’s seemingly endless stream of titles will be crying into their spit bucket at such a proclamation, but it would take a hardened heart to deny Hillman his moment in the Ghanian sun.