Buatsi vows to look after Lonsdale Belt after losing his Olympic medal
Bronze medallist and WBA International champ aims to add the British title to his collection on March 23 and he vows to keep a closer eye on the golden Lonsdale strap
JOSHUA BUATSI will never be found flaunting his wealth and success - the light-heavyweight Olympic ace can barely find his medal and belt.
The 2016 bronze medalist and WBA International champ aims to add the British title to his collection on March 23 and he vows to keep a closer eye on the golden Lonsdale strap.
But life in Croydon and the church, via Ghana, has made the 25-year-old painfully modest and a decade of sporting dedication seems to have made him a little forgetful.
Hurtling back to London from his Sheffield training base on the train with SunSport, Buatsi said: “My trophies and medals are under my bed, my Olympic medal went missing for ages and then I found it in a draw.
“I even forgot my WBA belt when I boxed in Newcastle last year. I got all the way there and they told me I should have brought it but I had no idea.
“Luckily a friend of mine was still in London so he went to my house, picked it up and came up.”
Beating Liam Conroy to the British belt will guarantee world title offers, as well as life-changing money.
But the only way we’ll know if the Accra-born ace has finally been seduced by designer labels is if we see plastic bags around his fleet feet.
Buatsi said: “Fashion Is not my cup of tea, most of the things I wear aren’t even a brand plus I have no clue how to dress or what looks good, so I always wear black as apparently you can’t go wrong.
“Growing up I only knew sports brands so when it comes to Louis Vuitton and Gucci I don’t know anything about it.
“When people spend £500 on shoes, I cannot even process it. I would end up putting plastic bags over them to protect them.”
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In boxing’s era of diluted titles and Ista-fame, Croydon’s 9-0 starlet is a throwback to the no-nonsense glory days.
As soon as a fight is announced he cancels his barber visits tells his inundated PR team to cancel all appointments.
The afro and beard add a decade to his boyish good looks and his utter dedication to his craft has probably cost him a few thousand more followers.
But it has helped make him a brutal boxing animal, caged by his commitment to being a world champion.
Just moments after kindly paying for the taxi from the English Sport Institute to the train station and offering us his last Wine Gum, he explains his last sparring session.
Honouring the boxing code and refusing to name names, he said: “One guy’s nose went in the first round, after three rounds he was bloodied up.
“And the second guy had to stop because I split his top lip and there was blood everywhere.
“When sparring partners start bleeding, I say I want to stop because there is nothing at stake. But the reality is; it is them or you.”
Buatsi is no bully, though. When a female member of his team reveals she was recently threatened in Lewisham, close to the home he shares with his auntie, he makes sure she was not harmed.
Since childhood he has had an instinct to guard the vulnerable, despite teachers back in Ghana regularly taking the cane to him when he was not always such a good boy.
He said: “I have always been fighting and not always in a boxing ring.
"Growing up I always felt I should defend and other people. I always fought for anything I felt was right.
“If a small geezer was getting bullied I would fight the bully for him, just to sort out the right and wrong.
“In Ghana we would get caned in school, I used to get it all the time. When I got to England I learned the biggest punishment is detention, sitting inside in the warm with my friends.
“Boxing has only ever seen this side of me, only my friends from childhood know what I was like before I started boxing.
“They will testify to how boxing changed me and made me cool and polite.
"Maybe, to fight the way I fight, you cannot have been a polite geezer from birth.”
This weekend in South London was spent in bed, recharging his mind and muscles and playing with young cousins before returning to tortuous training.
But he somehow says it is easier than hurtling to Yorkshire and back to bend the ear of one of the country’s brightest stars.
He said: “Everyone is grinding in their own way, you travelled to Sheffield just to talk to me.
“If I did your job I would never go all the way to Sheffield just for an interview. I’d say ‘we’re meeting in London and that’s it’.”
Thankfully it was well worth it.