Will Crolla: “I thought my world had ended. I was tired. I was flat. But there are no excuses, and I will be back.”

Will Crolla: “I thought my world had ended. I was tired. I was flat. But there are no excuses, and I will be back.”

The AO Arena in Manchester was virtually deserted when Will Crolla was scouting his surroundings last month. Crolla looked confident. He shadowboxed a little, a fighter seemingly on the rise. An unbeaten resume. Eight wins, six of those opponents didn’t see hear the final bell. Five of them didn’t make it out of the opening round. Opponent number nine was less than two hours away. Fraser Wilkinson was expected to offer at least some resistance. But nothing more. Wilkinson didn’t read the script.

“I sulked for two weeks, but I am back in the gym now,” Crolla told me over Zoom. Just a few weeks removed from the night, Wilkinson took away the unbeaten record of the super-welterweight hopeful. Crolla was stopped in the 6th round of their scheduled eight-rounder. “I thought my world had ended. I was tired. I was flat. But there are no excuses, and I will be back.”

“I thought it was quite a soft stoppage to be fair. But I didn’t turn up, I just didn’t get going,” Crolla added. “There were points in the fight where I knew what he was going to do, where he was going to counter my shot, but I still threw it. It was like a robotic type thing, but I can’t afford to do that on the platform that I am on.”

Crolla understandably struggled in the immediate aftermath. “It was probably just the shock. It just didn’t sink in for a few days. It was the worst feeling ever. I haven’t had that since I was a kid.”

Will Crolla was a fighter who was getting considerable hype. A big-punching prospect that was moving his way quite nicely into the title picture. But that upset loss to Wilkinson has stopped all that momentum. At least for now. “I had other stuff riding on that fight,” Crolla told me. “We had good plans set out, and losing has halted those plans. I might have got some kind of renewal, but that’s probably gone now. I am at the back of the line again. I was flying, and I fucked it up. But now I have to get back and climb that ladder again.”

“It might have been a bit of complacency,” Crolla added. A fighter still trying to process what had gone wrong in July. “It was the best I had been sparring. It was the best I had felt. But I just couldn’t do it in there. I have great timing, but I couldn’t time anything. I felt sluggish, but the better man won on the night, and congratulations to him. But I genuinely don’t think I could box any worse. I just think it was an off night. I have never boxed like that before.”

“It’s not really what I learn,” Crolla answered when I asked him what he could learn from his first professional setback. “It’s where we will see my true character in how I come back from it. But I am not a loser. I hate it. Even now, talking to you, it’s still going through my mind. It winds me up. It’s not like football, where you can just play better next week. You have to wait months. It’s just a hard one to take, but I’ll be back.”

At 27, Crolla has time to regroup and rebuild, and he can draw inspiration from his older brother and trainer, Anthony Crolla, who suffered some early career reversals before recovering to win a world title. “Anthony is the perfect example that a loss isn’t everything. It’s how I come back from it and how I put it right. What I will feed off now is that people will be doubting me. I just have to climb that ladder again. I have to make the doubters into believers again.

“Winning is the best feeling. But losing is the worst, and I don’t ever want to feel like that again. I train very hard anyway, but it will make me train even harder. You will definitely see me come back from this.”

Time heals many things. One defeat shouldn’t define a career, and Crolla can come again. He wants a rematch with Wilkinson. A chance to put the record straight. But if that doesn’t come his way, Crolla wants to return in a tough 50/50 fight. He doesn’t want any easy nights. “I want to come back on a big show and in a big fight. I want the rematch, and I would love that next.” 

Photo Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing