This Saturday, live on Sky Sports, Olympic super-heavyweight bronze medalist Frazer Clarke will fight unbeaten Bulgarian Pencho Tsvetkov on the undercard of Liam Smith vs. Hassan Mwakinyo.
Being punched by an opponent who weighs more than 300lbs might seem intimidating, but for Frazer Clarke it was nothing compared to his daughter’s sports day.
Clarke is used to being under scrutiny. He was the GB Boxing team captain at the Olympic Games, won a super-heavyweight bronze medal in Tokyo and made his professional debut on the Amir Khan vs Kell Brook pay-per-view bill.
But the father’s day race was another order of pressure. “I’ve gone to the sports day, the whole school is there. I feel like there’s a lot of eyes on me thinking, ‘He’s an athlete, he’s got to do the race, he’s going to win it.’ That was pressure in itself. It was red hot,” Clarke said.
Given he had his second professional fight coming up, he couldn’t compromise his preparation for that. But nor could he resist his daughter’s entreaty to enter the race in front of her entire school.
“I’m saying I don’t want to do it, but at the same time I’ve got my running shoes just in case,” he laughed.
“I’ve ended up egged into it. With the faster group. There was a few dads I could have won the race quite comfortably against but I’ve ended up with my pals. We did the race, it was all going well, I was flying, in the lead, then bang, just a little twinge in the top of my leg. A stupid thing to do.”
It affected the amount of running he could do to prepare for his bout in July, against 300lb Argentine behemoth Ariel Esteban Bracamonte. But it was never going to stop him going through with the contest. Having recovered from a fracture in the thumb of his right hand, Clarke was determined to get active.
It did mean that he wasn’t as light on his feet as he could have been. “I’m one of the old school, running’s very important in a boxing camp,” Clarke told Sky Sports.
His performance against Bracamonte left him with a few things to iron out of his boxing. “You can stand just off the line, which wouldn’t enable him to jab straight down the pipe, it would have forced him to jab differently,” he reflected. “The basic things are always the things you seem to forget. I stood on the line too much for my liking. Got off the line, little tiny steps, maybe that jab wouldn’t have landed.
“He didn’t land that much,” Clarke added. “I parried a lot of it, or just took half a step away. These are just little tweaks that you just want to improve on every fight.”
Being punched by an opponent weighing so much isn’t something Clarke wants to get in the habit of doing.
“It hurts. It’s not something I want to get used to,” he said. “I’m happy with the performance [but] I’ve still got a lot to improve.”
The punch he ended the fight with was certainly quality. Clarke levelled Bracamonte with a well-placed left hook.
“The bit that I like about the finish is, if people watch again, is the shot I defended as I threw the hook,” he said. “On another day, that hits you but I caught it. Hand position is something which I’ve worked on my whole entire boxing career. And I’ve never got it right to be honest.”
Clarke will be boxing next on Saturday (September 3) against Pencho Tsvetkov, a tall, unbeaten 22-year-old Bulgarian – live on Sky Sports on the undercard of Liam Smith vs Hassan Mwakinyo at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool.
It’s something the heavyweight is relishing. “There’s something about boxing in that city,” Clarke said. “Liverpool’s one of my favourite fighting cities. It’s where I won my ABA title.
“Some great memories in that place.”
