Ojay Abrahams, the man behind the record. by Paul Concannon Oct 26th 2006

Watford's Ojay Abrahams will, for me, always represent a sentimental era in boxing. As a youngster back in 1991, I had a problem; as a boxing fan, terrestrial TV provided merely a trickle of my desired quantity of the noble art, when what I really needed was a tsunami. So, taking a portion of my meagre earnings, I bit the bullet and opted for a monthly subscription to Cable TV. In 1991, things were so very different, almost innocent. SKY's Ringside show was very much in it's infancy. Gary Mason and the long-forgotten Gary Davies presenting the cardboard studio low-budget version of the tuxedo-clad bells and whistles output we see today. Ironically though, the quality of the action was almost constantly high; one could see James Toney and Mike McCallum lambaste each other with right hand counters in their epic first bout or watch the likes of Tony Lopez and Brian Mitchell beat the holy shit out of each other in two classic super-featherweight encounters. Eurosport, it gives me great pleasure to report, has been unchanged by the ravages of time; even way back then it was still good old Steve Holdsworth at the helm commentating on their weekly mix of the old, new and black & blue from the continent. Then came the now defunct Screensport, and their Probox offering, which had Davey Bremner at the helm, and old boxing rivals Jim McDonnell & Barry McGuigan providing their own version of expert commentary as his sidekick. Screensport's shows ranged from live coverage of Benn Vs Eubank 1, to obscure small hall and dinner-shows. It was back then that Ojay Abrahams first appeared on the professional boxing radar. Already billing himself as Watford's greatest ever fighter, the novice welterweight prospect always entered the ring to a self-proclaiming hyperbolic fanfare, colourful, confident and articulate, he stood out as someone who could fight a bit as well. Whether he was flattening the likes of Marty Duke, or winning and losing with Ricky Mabbett, Abrahams was rarely in a bad fight. As a single parent nick-named, ‘Me, Myself & I' the driving force in boxing for Ojay was the upkeep of his then infant son Cassius, making an irresistible story for local news stations and press in Hertfordshire; from zero beginnings, the young fighter quickly became a local celebrity in his beloved hometown of Watford. Over a decade and a half later, Ojay remains one of the game's most charismatic characters, and is currently just five fights away from joining the ranks of the UK's fabled centurions. We caught up with Ojay just ahead of his 96th professional fight, and he is, I'm pleased to say, every inch the colourful fighter that caught the attention all those years back. After all, who else do you know that answers the phone like this? “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, children of all ages… "I am not Cassius Clay, I am not even Sugar Ray, my name is only Ojay, Watford's number 1 – extrovert and larger than life, undisputed, undoubtedly, unquestionably, one of the most exciting fighters to come out of W-A-T-FO-R-D – the man, the main man, the genuine article, one of Watford's famous sons, often imitated, but never intimidated - me, myself & I, in a class of his own – remember - O-J-A-Y. O is for outrageous, J is for juice, A is for my sign-Aquarius and Y is for yes – I lur've myself... Listen up, stay clean and don't be seen, hang loose, I will see you in a goose, If you can't be good be bad, like me myself and I – Watford's undisputed King of the ring, Watford's first professional boxing champion in nearly fifty years and former British Masters Champion, a career spanning since 1991 to 2006 with 95 professional Fights and only five to go to the 100 – over and out, end of a living legend, it can only be, me myself and I…” BB.Net: Hi Ojay, thanks for the lyrics… How would you describe a typical day in the life of Ojay Abrahams? OA: A typical day starts with a run and then a shower, then I make sure my boy is up and ready to go to college – then it's off to work. After work, it's then back home and I make sure the boy's okay first and foremost, then head down the local gym – South Oxhey Boxing Club, the very same place where I started out 30 years back. BB.Net: Tell us how you got into boxing. OA: Like a lot of people I expect; I was very small and I used to get bullied a lot at my school, the Central Primary in Watford, so I went down the gym, started training and never looked back. BB.Net: What sort of amateur career did you have? OA: Not too bad, I had a win over Danny Porter who went on to be a good pro, then won Home Counties titles in Hertfordshire. I had a good rep in the local papers, but didn't go as far as I could have done as an amateur. BB.Net: You started off your career as a colourful prospect, winning fights on Screensport in the early nineties. Back then you were scoring some impressive stoppages and looked like you had the tools to be a decent prospect. Under no circumstances did I think I would be talking with you a decade and a half later with a record of 20-71-4. It seems you have very much made your peace with being a quality trial horse rather than a winning fighter – at which point did your mindset shift? OA: When you come into boxing, you don't know much, and I came in very naïve, as well as being a single parent with a nine-month old boy. I had a promoter that I looked up to, I thought he was my mentor – but I quickly found out that he was more interested in the likes of Herbie Hide, the Delaney brothers, Eubank, and some of the other names in the stable. As a consequence, I feel my career suffered. I had all the tools but feel I wasn't given the right build-up. So after a point, I had to look at boxing not so much about the winning, it was more a case of survival. After about 20-22 fights, the most important thing was to put food on my boy's plate. My son's mother went to Miami for a holiday when he was three weeks old, and all these years later, she's still in Miami. So there I am, raising my son single-handed. It was history repeating itself, my parents left me, and my son's mother abandoned him. I will say this though, I always believed I was a fighter, when the doctor spanked me when I was a baby; I got off the bed and chinned him! BB.Net: You made your pro debut on the undercard of the epic and tragic Eubank-Watson rematch, what was that like? OA: First of all, I was over the moon on to be making my debut on a stage that big, what a way to break into boxing! I actually was sparring Watson at the New Enterprise Gym in North London ahead of our respective fights; Mike Watson employed me as his chief sparring partner. So I had my fight, and I was over the moon, I beat my opponent Gordon Webster in the third round of a scheduled 6-rounder, I was ecstatic, and what was going to be a great evening quickly turned to sorrow when Watson was injured in his fight with Eubank. BB: Net: That must have been bittersweet; Watson was a hell of a fighter… OA: Watson was a great fighter, a gentleman and a great craftsman; a man I thought of as a mentor, if it wasn't for Mike Watson I would not have got the start I had in boxing, he provided a great launch-pad for the start of my career. BB.Net: You differ from the likes of Howard Clarke and Peter Buckley, in that as well as being a cagey veteran who knows your way around the ring, you also have a bit of a dig, being dangerous with the left hook, right hand and the uppercut – that must be a useful tool to keep the upstarts honest? OA: When people talk about Ojay, they talk about the whole package, character, charismatic, intelligence, experience - when Ojay is in town, that is all you are going to see and that will continue to the 100 – I'm a showman, a character, an extrovert and that's what you always get, the boxer the puncher – the lot. On my way up and even now I am respected, certain people still do not want to fight me at 40 ish – they say a boxer never loses that punch. The way I look at it I am an opponent not a just a journeyman, I still look to win and perform at any cost. These so called glamour boys, the likes of Ryan Rhodes, Anthony Farnell, Wayne Alexander, Howard Eastman, David Starie, they all have 6-8 weeks to get ready (for a fight), the way my career had gone, I would have a phone call to be ready for a fight in a week. But I go in with the mentality these guys are not going to slap me about. I never fought negatively, I wanted to make it hard for them, I made up a game plan – if you see my fights with these glamour boys, I made it hard for them. The one fight where I admit I let myself down was the first Alexander fight, I admit, I lost it, my head went and I deserved to be disqualified and suspended. I had a case of ring-rage – that moment is the one shadow over my career, the lowest point when my leg and head slipped – and it cost me £1500. BB.Net: Back in the days you were still winning a few, I watched you take prospects like Anthony Farnell and Ruben Groenewald to school, and also give Ryan Rhodes a very uncomfortable night's work – only to come up on the short end. Each time you took the defeats very sportingly, but did it rankle you coming out on the wrong end of some of those decisions? OA: I am always sporting, always happy and friendly – when you have a signed photo of me, look inside the O there's always a smile! I look at it like this, this is how it is; I was always the winner, because whatever happens in a fight, I get paid. I looked at the way my career had gone and decided I was going to have to make the most of it, I had got to continue to put food on my boy's plate and pay the bills. The way I look at it may be a bit cocky, obviously there have been times when I have been stopped, thrown-out, retired through injury, but the way I look at it, every other time, the ref made a mistake! I don't mention the word l-o-s-e-r; I was still getting food on the plate whatever the outcome. I enjoyed the Farnell fight; I got to him at the weigh-in, got inside his head. I had him beat at the weigh-in, but I was never going to get it, he was the promoter's boy. I said to him, ‘You saw what happened to Alexander and McCreesh – that's going to happen to you.' BB.Net: You have some great wins on your record, including stoppage victories over good men like Darren Dyer, Errol McDonald, Lee Murtagh and Don Smillie. Which would you say is your most satisfying victory to date? OA: Well, I would always say walking into the lion's den to fight Darren Dyer on the undercard of a Baby Jake Bill, when Dyer took half an hour to get into the ring. He was one of the hardest punchers in the game at that point and I wasn't given a chance. He strutted in and it seemed like it took forever to get him into the ring. When he did, I looked at him and said, ‘How dare you, how dare you keep Watford's number one waiting. I was hurt, I am proud of Watford and the colours and vowed to make him pay. So I hit him with the left hook and had him out on his feet. 13-14 punches more, later and it was all over in less than one minute BB.Net: Talk about your rematch with Wayne Alexander – a three round war that saw both men floored heavily more than once before Wayne eventually got the stoppage win. That must have been a brilliant fight to be part of. OA: The first thing I would point out is that he had 6 or 7 weeks to prepare, he came out victorious but I had so little preparation time, by round 3 I was struggling, but that shows you the talent of me, myself and I. I had him down twice and nearly beaten, a contender, who went on to be a world champion. Look what I did to Freeman Barr, a super-middleweight. I went 8 rounds with a man who was number 1 contender to Joe Calzaghe at the time and made him look like an ordinary fighter. BB.net: In your second fight with Geoff McCreesh, you floored your former opponent twice and appeared to have won that fight clearly behind the jab; the decision went to McCreesh – how did you feel about being denied revenge by a contentious decision? OA: Devastated. They way I see it, that defeat cost me so much, if I had got the decision, I could have been living in a 4-5 bedroom house with a comfy life, my son at a private school, I lost all of those things. Geoff was British champion at the time and that win would have got me a British title shot. I would have got that belt, and ultimately it was my son that lost out. His trainer said to me afterwards he was sorry, that he didn't know what happened in there, and he was embarrassed. SKY interviewed me, afterwards and I was in tears. After boxing for some 16 years, even 7-8 years after the event, I am still gutted, I watch it all the time, and I cannot think what Ian John-Lewis was watching – that's honestly how I feel. That ref had a nightmare that night – it's still, in my opinion, one of the worst decisions I have ever seen. BB.Net: Your record is the proverbial ‘who's who?' of the last decade – you have tangled with the likes of Andrew Facey, Scott Dann, Michael Jones, Gilbert Eastman and Howard Eastman, Delroy Leslie, Gary Logan, David Starie, Wayne Elcock, Sam Soliman, Paul Ryan, Carl Froch and Kofi Jantuah amongst others. Of them all who would you say has been your hardest opponent? OA: Firstly, I don't think about the record, records are for DJ's, I think about records, I focus on what I got out of the game, a nice house, a nice car, lovely holidays, and I am still healthy after 95 pro fights, not a mark on me. I am still very articulate too. The best compliment people can pay to a fighter is to tell him he doesn't look like a boxer. People tell me that all the time, this is a guy that's had nearly 100 fighters, that's something I put down to my head movement. BB.Net: So, who was the best you fought? OA: I would say the hardest man I fought was Howard Eastman, remember, I am a blown-up welter and he's a big middleweight. When I fought him, I will say this, I have gone out in the first, hit him with a right harder, exactly like the one that I hit Alexander, McCreesh, McDonald with, I touched him with that right – the man did not flinch – he touched me once and I went down, and he had me down 5 times in 2 rounds. I fiddled with lots of top guys; Howard was having none of it. I give people the run-around, with all my experience and all those tricks, that man was having none of it, he had me out of there. Afterwards, one of the nicest things that ever happened to me in boxing occurred, Howard came over to me straight away and cuddled me and said, “Are you okay?” He knew he was too big for me. I took these fights against the likes of him Froch, Barr, Starie - what was I doing in the ring with middleweights and super middleweights? But that's Ojay – names mean nothing, I will have a row with anyone, I have never feared anyone in the ring. Never. BB.Net: Ojay, you enjoy getting a kick out of winding up the hometown supporters of your opponents, but after the final bell you are always quick to acknowledge them and them back onside – is this a big part of what makes you such a colourful and popular figure amongst the fans? OA: I love it, that's what I am about, a showman, once the bell goes we commence fighting, but I am the guy pulling out all these tricks, whatever I need to do to get through the scheduled distance, I do what I have to. But for all that, I am sportsmanlike, okay in the Farnell fight he was cut, and we both got a bit dirty, heads, knees and everything else. Afterwards, I took him to his supporters and gave him a big round of applause. I am a sportsmanlike person…that's what I am like in life; I am just a happy person, one who will be remembered with a smile in my face. Nowadays, these guys that I am fighting now, they would not have lasted 20 years ago. If I really trained like I used to I would knock them out, but at this point, I don't have the same edge that I had in the past. But that punch will last to the 100th fight – you do get some guys, they get cocky, and I always have the right hand (to keep them in check). I could be 50 or 60, but I will always have that punch. Just look at what Foreman did to Moorer – behind on points, lands one right hand and finishes him, when he (Foreman) was about 45 years old. BB.Net: You are nick-named ‘Me Myself & I' as you were well known for raising your young son single-handedly during the early part of your career, he must have been a huge inspiration during your career's many highs and lows? OA: Well if you notice, when I get interviewed the only person I always mention is my boy, I tell him his dad's okay, I love him and I am coming home. He's the one that kept me going when I was living in a hostel with a baby son, he kept me going when I got my first flat, with no carpet and no money – and through all the low times in boxing. I was an Orphan and like me, my son was abandoned by his mother, ‘Me Myself and I' was the obvious choice for my nick-name. BB.Net: It seems fair to say that without him, you wouldn't have had the level of material success you have had out of boxing. OA: Definitely. Like I said, records are for DJ's, but the way I see it, we all have to pay bills, survive and get on in life, putting clothes on the back and food on the table. Boxing has had some bad publicity, but boxing saved me. People should know this. BB.Net: Ojay, you have five fights to go before the big 100 – fight 96 takes place this weekend in Scotland – what do you know about your opponent this weekend? OA: All I can say Frank Warren's man Andy Ayling has been looking after me for the last six years, I have had this career longevity because of the young kids I fight, I can live with them without a problem. Half of them, I am old enough to be their dad. They are not going to harm me – and if they get out of line, I touch them with the right! BB.Net: When we spoke in the past you said you definitely planned on retiring after your 100th fight – is that still the case? OA: That's it, in reality, though my career's been over for a long time – when I got to 90 or so I thought, oh well only 10 to go and obviously I wanted to get to the 100. BB.net: Ojay, you are a positive boxing story in that you have always held down a day job and you invest your ring earnings wisely – what's next for you after your boxing career comes to a close later this season? OA: I would like to take out a trainer and a manager's licence. I have been advised by the BBB of C to apply, and pass on some of knowledge to up and coming fighters. BB:Net: It strikes me that you will be able to pass on more than just boxing skills – you know this game inside-out. OA: That's absolutely right. Beyond that, the ultimate goal is to have my own show as a boxing commentator – I think I have the character and personality – and I have the expertise. Barry McGuigan once said that if Ojay was given the right treatment on the way up he have been something special, a great fighter. BB.Net: Ojay, look back at your 16 years or so in boxing, do you have any regrets and if so, what would you have done differently? OA: Not having met Frank Warren in the early part of my career is a regret. BB:Net: Ojay, we are just about done, do you have any message or final thoughts? OA: To the people who knock boxing, I look at it like this, boxing has given me security, peace and allowed me to do some amazing things and meet some great, some famous people. I have opened a hospice in Watford with a member of the royal family, got to go on the pitch at Watford FC with Graham Taylor and Elton John, I have been on the Kilroy-Silk show, made personal appearances with Danni & Kylie Minogue, I have met great fighters and champions like Calzaghe, Tyson, Eubank, Hagler, Foreman and many more, all this after coming from a homeless hostel, a nobody in my hometown. I was the first boxing champion from Watford in fifty years 50 years, a great achievement, it may have only been a British Master's belt but it was a professional title. The final thing I would say to young fighters is to be careful who you chose as your manager, and be dedicated – that's how you get the most out of boxing. BB.Net: Ojay, it's been a pleasure talking to a great servant of the game, good luck for the future. OA: Thanks Paul, make sure britishboxing.net is at fight 100!

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