Meet Bilal Fawaz – a child refugee who escaped abusive traffickers who fights like a combination of Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather and Muhammad Ali
Despite being abused, beaten and held captive as a teenager, Bilal Fawaz despairs when he sees the children of today.
The 33-year-old, who was taken to London from his native Nigeria at the age of 14, says the current generation are deprived of ‘the hustle of life’.
Fawaz knows all too well about the grafting, having endured almost every possible form of abuse a human being can withstand in his primitive, punishing years.
He tells talkSPORT: “I was being beaten, but that wasn’t the first time I’ve been beaten so it wasn’t new to me. I adapted to it, it became the norm for people to beat me.
“At times, I had bruises on my back that stayed for weeks. I had blood on my back because I was being hit by wires from the back of TV sets that goes to the VHS. They would take it off and then whip me with it.”
Born in 1988 to a mother from Benin and a father from Lebanon, Fawaz lived a relatively normal life before being kept as a slave and beaten mercilessly.
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The boxer, who finally makes his professional debut at the iconic York Hall on Friday night, fondly remembers renting out the GameBoy he owned to his friends.
Yet his upbringing is tinged with sadness, by the age of eight he was separated from his mother and made to live with his uncle.
“You know when you’re in a warm environment? You really don’t feel that it is warm until you move away from it and then you go to a cold environment and you realise, ‘This is cold.’
“It didn’t feel any different because I am used to it; I was used to being ripped apart, I was used to being taken from one place to another.
“So not having the family around was the norm for me. Although at times I sit down and look at people with a father, a son and a mother in a park and I just burst out in tears.
“I wish I had that, but sometimes life is brutal. Life is indifferent, so I think this is my trajectory in life and who knows, maybe if I was given all those attributes and all those good things in life I wouldn’t be as tenacious and strong as I am.
“To get something, you have to sacrifice something.”
Sacrifice is something which Fawaz knows all too well about. After six years of living with his uncle, he was told he was going to London to meet his father and was dropped outside of a house and told to wait.
Fawaz himself says he was an adult long before adulthood arrived for him. The cruel swing of life’s pendulum has taken him on a journey few could have survived.
For several months, he was kept locked inside the London house with no chance of escaping and forced to perform menial tasks, under the threat of violence or worse.
It became evident that his father was never coming for him and he was in fact a victim of child trafficking.
“I was just a kid, I didn’t know about the viciousness of life or the deep end of life,” he explains.
“I was just still on the surface, but I was thrown into the deep end before I could even swim. It hurts.”
He finally plucked the courage to leave and he ran so far away, he cannot even remember where it was to this day. After the help of a charitable stranger, he was handed to child services.
“I didn’t find boxing, it came to me subconsciously,” he says. An open day at the Brunel University saw him spot a gentlemen carrying a set of gloves and enquired about fighting.
Whilst living with his uncle, he lifted weights and hit a bag made out of rice sacks to vent his frustrations, but he was cut down before the love affair could truly begin.
“I had no idea what boxing was. I used to watch Jackie Chan movies and I wanted to be an actor at that time, so I tied up some rice sacks and I started punching it.”
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Fawaz joined the All Stars club in Kilburn in 2012 and became national light middleweight amateur champion the same year, before captaining the England boxing team in international competitions.
With 80 wins from 90 amateur fights, it seemed his career would flourish and blossom. He even defeated Ted Cheeseman in the unpaid ranks, the man who would go on to lift the British super-welterweight title.
“I beat all the top boxers, I even beat the GB squad boxers and I beat Ted Cheeseman – but there are so many other people I have beaten.
“I’ve done sparring with huge professional fighters and what I did to them is unspeakable. I can’t say because then it would look like I am blowing my own trumpet.”
Yet under the 'hostile environment' regime, introduced in 2012, the UK Home Office has tried twice to deport him to Nigeria, but thwarted as his birth was not registered there.
A lucrative pro contract with Frank Warren was offered, but he could not accept it as his status did not allow paid employment. Yet the worst was yet to come as he missed out on going to the Olympics.
“I was chosen for the Olympics, they even wrote a letter to the Home Office and asked for a travel document. They refused it, categorically speaking.
“They ruined my life man, I got the equivalent of three A’s in my A-levels as part of a National Diploma in Sport Science. I was meant to go to one of the best universities, I applied for UCAS, but they turned around and said I couldn’t go because I didn’t have a status in the country.
“They took my career and my education away, they took my future away from me. I was married once, my wife left me because I could not provide. They ruined my marriage, they ruined my future and yet I am still praising them and begging for a helping hand.
“I’m not saying they are bad because they have worked hard to make this country a beautiful place and I don’t want to leech or tag along. I’m saying I want to work.”
Fawaz was given government respite, in the form of a temporary work permit in 2020, but this expires at the end of the year and his situation remains unclear, even after being arrested twice.
“They [the Home Office] released me and they acknowledged that I am a trafficked individual, but still they will not give me permission to travel. I applied for travel documents and they refused it.
“I just want to survive, I want a fair and even playing field. I don’t want more advantages than any other person, I want at a fair playing field where, in every way, you and I fundamentally equal.
“What I do, from that fundamental position, dictates my future. At the moment, I am not as equal as anyone, no matter how hard I try. There is always going to be a barrier in front of me.
“I can’t travel, so I beg them, I’m pleading with you. I fought for them, I fought for Great Britain. Why can’t they show me a bit of leniency, a bit of sympathy?”
As well as taking part in salsa classes, Fawaz finds relief inside the squared circle and for the first time in the interview, a beaming smile breaks out across his face as he describes his fighting style.
“I have some tricks up my sleeves because I am a very cheeky person by nature, life made me that way,” he says. “I’m a bit ostentatious, I’m a bit flamboyant, I’m a bit of a character. You know when you cook food and the food has no sizzling in it?
“I’m the sizzle in it, I have a bit of juice and sauce. I can be an aggressive fighter, I can be a relaxed fighter on the back foot. I can be a counter puncher, I can be a very tactical fighter.
“I took a bit of Mike Tyson, I took a bit of Mayweather, I took a bit of Lomachenko, I took a bit of Tyson Fury, I too a bit of Muhammad Ali – the flamboyant, the elusive.
“I conjured them all up together and what came out of it, I can’t explain. I don’t even know my style, I adapt.”
Fawaz has the chance to exorcise his demons and showcase his undoubted talents to the world in his professional debut against Vladimir Fleischhauer, which will be broadcast live in the US on ESPN+ in association with Top Rank, and worldwide on IFL TV.
Within five years he is adamant he will become a world champion to make up for the time snatched away from his career, yet his dreams are far bigger than that.
The talented signer (who will enter the ring at York Hall to his latest single) also wants security, stability and, above all, a family.
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He said: “The Home Office giving me a passport, having a house, having a family where I can see my little kids running around and my wife looks at me and says, ‘look at the trouble you have made.’
“That’s heart-warming stuff, I never had that. The future looks bright, it’s brighter than it was yesterday and I can tell you that for sure.”
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