Boxing, grief, and how the sport saves lost souls

It was John Green who once wrote that grief doesn’t change you, it reveals you.

Grief is a horrible emotion. We are all likely to feel it and experience it in some way. 

You are never envious of someone who is grieving. It is a form of suffering.

It hurts to even be associated with it. It hurts to see someone feeling it, for them to be experiencing it.

Sometimes the healing is where the pain really lies. The time you have to spend alone, searching for someone you can never find. 

There is no cure for grief; although if you talk to others, eat well and take care of yourself, have patience and maybe spend time in therapy or with a counsellor your chances of survival are likely to increase.

But for some, boxing has given them all of that. It has provided those with trauma with a nurturing and caring environment, with friends and role models they can share time with, with peers who they respect and who have respect for them, and who don’t judge based on what they have or haven’t got or where they are or are not from.

The non-discriminatory gym allows them to pulverize heavybags, to vent, to transmit their anguish in a safe space. It is therapy. 

It does not have to be in place of any of the aforementioned coping strategies, but used with them, fighters have found solace and companionship in a boxing gym and been able to rebuild with routine and discipline they have been able to find there, away from the internal pain and relentless torment they otherwise cannot escape.

Light heavyweight contender Jesse Hart uses boxing to harness such hurt.  

In 2010, Jesse’s well-liked older brother Robert – known to his friends as Damon (his middle name), because he preferred it – was out in Philadelphia when someone put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

As Jesse recalls: “Somebody blew his head off; blew his brains out.”

Hart, son of feared 1970s middleweight contender Eugene “Cyclone” Hart, said his brother was one of the good guys. 

Jesse was fighting as an amateur at the time. With his family in turmoil, he carried on boxing, making the Olympic trials and turning pro but the shadow that the tragedy cast over his life was all-consuming. There was no escape. There were no sunny days because the cloud of death hung gloomily.

Life carried on but Robert was gone. The killer was caught and sentenced to life, Jesse’s heart was broken beyond repair. 

“That type of trauma damages anybody – the kind of death that it was. It wasn’t a normal death; it wasn’t because my brother was sick. 

“Somebody took his life. Somebody took his life like that and you don’t know how to channel a certain energy. You don’t go to counselling, you’ve just got to move forward through life and you never fully recover from that. I think that’s worse than anything.” 

Fourteen years on, and ready to fight for the 35th time as a professional on November 22, in Philadelphia, Hart is still trapped and tormented by the grief.

As we talk, he stops for prolonged periods to weep.

“I’m still hurt. It still ain’t go away. I still mourn that death. I still mourn that loss. I still cry about it, talking about that situation,” Jesse says. “That situation is really a bad subject for myself. I try every day to get over that. I try every day to look on the bright side of things and that shit just doesn’t go away.”

But what Hart still has is boxing, the gym, the fight. He has those moments when he talks to the trainer wrapping his hands, to the sparring partner after an exhaustive battle and he has those comparatively magical three-minute spells when the agony subsides and is almost fully-quietened while someone tries to punch him in the face.

It is a little ironic that a sport where one’s job is to hurt someone can cause so much relief. 

“I’m not thinking about what’s inside,” Hart says of his time spent in between those surprisingly serene ropes. “It’s therapeutic for me to get away from my own thoughts. Like Mike Tyson said one time, his thoughts fuck with him and he wants to do something.

“And ‘Why can’t you do something to that guy?’ ‘Why don’t you go do this to that guy?’ I feel that. In my body. I know I understand what Mike is saying. Inflicting as much pain on others as you feel on yourself right now. 

“I threw my whole life into boxing, because I needed it. I needed boxing more than boxing needed me. I needed it as an outlet, to channel my energy and into something different because I was on a path of destruction. And boxing saved my life, at that particular time. Boxing saved me. It wasn’t the people around me, my mom sayin’ this, my dad sayin’ that, boxing saved me. My whole existence.”

It is still saving him. Jesse is now 35 and boxing is his safety net while he grieves from an open wound he cannot seal.

“There were many times when I wanted to just sit and cry, after the funeral, after the burial, there were many days when I’d just sit in the room and cry,” Jesse admits. “I never got therapy for that. Boxing was my only outlet for that and I should have got therapy, I should have got the proper help I needed to go through that. But I didn’t. Boxing was my therapy. Boxing was my savior. 

“There were times when I would hurt the guys in the gym and people would shout, ‘Time,’ and I’d think, ‘I ain’t stopping.’ Or I’d try to inflict as much pain on the heavybag as I felt inside myself. When I ran, I tried not to breathe, and I was gasping for air and still trying to run as fast as I can, because I wanted to get all that out there. Everything I wanted to get out there, that anguish.”

The rawness in Hart still seeps out. Sometimes he can talk about it without altering the tempo of his delivery. On other days, it might take him minutes to get out a few words from behind the tears.

“There used to be times where I would sit and I would cry, because I would wake up a lot. You know, my brother’s dead, and I wish that I could trade that place with my brother.    

“My thoughts would get the best of me if it wasn’t for boxing. 

“Every time I feel it, every time I talk about it, there’s still that thing in the basement, that hurt, that anguish, that larceny in your heart. You’ve lost something that you can never get back.”

While boxing gives Jesse some balance as he reluctantly addresses his family grief, boxing gave former IBF middleweight champion Darren Barker a purpose during his darkest days.

When Darren was just a young pro, his precociously talented younger brother, Gary, was coming up behind him.

It wasn’t uncommon to hear boxing people saying Gary was the more talented of the two, and Darren had always been very good. 

But one night in 2006, after they had attended a charity boxing event, Darren was left to sleep and Gary decided to drive to his girlfriend’s house.

A few hours later, in his brother’s slipstream, Darren was driving on the same route and the road was closed. A sickly feeling fell upon him and he knew life would never be the same again.

Gary’s car had hit the central reservation on the motorway, rolling over, and he died from multiple injuries.

Beset with grief, Darren could not face boxing. It had always been something he and Gary had done together. They shone brightly for Repton ABC and the unmistakable scent of the boxing gym, the sound of the speed bags and the whip of skipping ropes were salt in an open wound.

Darren’s life threatened to unravel. He lost himself in parties, drink and one night out fell into another.

It was around that point when his coach, Tony Sims, intervened. An open invitation for Barker to join him in church was eventually accepted, and then Barker started counselling with one of Sims’ friends. Then came the healing process and the return to boxing with a fresh incentive, to win a world title in Gary’s memory.

Being back in the gym saw structure and routine become normal once more.

“Sparring, hitting the bag, I didn’t ever become more aggressive, but I had a new sense of purpose,” Barker recalls. “I was fixated on succeeding for my brother, so in some ways it did drive me that bit harder. 

“It wasn’t the aggression or spite, but the motive.

“If things got hard in a fight, the [Daniel] Geale fight [for the title] being the obvious example, I was able to dig in because it was my main purpose. Everything I was doing it for myself was secondary, I was doing it to succeed for my brother, so mentally there was a big shift.”

Without the option of boxing, there is no telling where Barker would have found his rock bottom, but the lure of the family sport – in which his father had also been an excellent amateur – managed to entice him back.

Barker never lost his passion for boxing, but his focus was hampered by grief and his ambition stunted by the tragedy. But being surrounded by memories of his brother, rather than jarringly painful, suddenly strengthened his resolve.

“That was part of the process. I loved boxing and I do still love it, but I’d be lying if I said I loved training, because I always was under the impression, ‘How do you enjoy something that’s so fucking hard, that’s so hard?” Darren says. “My dad always told me as a kid, ‘You’ve got to imagine your opponent training harder than you, if you have that mindset, how can you ever take your foot off the gas?’ And if you’re not taking your foot off the gas, then you’re training to levels that are not healthy, and I used to feel ill after most sessions, because I pushed myself that hard.”

Barker fell short in his first bid for a world title, stopped in the 11th round by the brilliant Sergio Martinez, but that only showed he belonged at boxing’s top table and stiffened his resolve.

He pushed on. He was doing it for Gary. 

“It was more that desire, through boxing, to succeed for my brother so his name would live on,” he says.

Three fights later, and back in Atlantic City, Barker climbed off the floor from a crippling sixth-round bodyshot to edge Australian Daniel Geale by a split decision to capture the IBF middleweight title.

The cover of Boxing News that week read, “For Gary,” and as Michael Buffer announced Barker’s victory, the Englishman collapsed uncontrollably and fell apart in the middle of the ring. He had finally got closure and he could say goodbye to his brother.

“I think that is where the floods of tears come from after, because it was like closing the chapter, closing the book, moving on, and that was for me probably saying goodbye to boxing,” Barker says now. “That was it. I didn’t want to fight anymore. I fought [Felix] Sturm [with a hip injury four months later] for money, I fought Geale for titles, for honor, for memories, for Gary. The fight instantly left me.

“I was so tunnel visioned on the end goal and what I felt my life’s work was that. I wasn’t getting sidetracked, and yes the structure and daily routine was very very tough but it was part and parcel of getting to the top and I understood that was relevant for me to become successful. I stayed on the straight and narrow, I went out and socialised between fights, but it was very much watered down in comparison to directly after he died, I was very focused to boxing, an unstoppable approach. I’m not going to sit here and say I was the best thing ever, but I had some talent and an amateur background, but it was more my mindset and desire to not disappoint my brother. That was the drive.”

As John Green wrote, grief had not changed Barker but it had revealed his fighting character. He did not hide. Boxing was his vehicle.

“It’s hard sometimes to articulate the feelings,” Barker says years on. 

There was a time when, like Hart, he’d struggle with the very mention of Gary’s name and he’d draw breath and close his eyes before answering a question. Now he smiles at his brother’s memory.

“It’s in there somewhere, that real purpose, that shift in mindset where I was telling myself, ‘You’ve got a real opportunity to do something for your brother, yourself, your family and there was pressure with it, but I liked having that expectation and dealing with that.”

It also gave Barker the ability to control his destiny, in a way he had not been able to control what had happened to Gary.

Former light heavyweight contender Mark Prince sits in between Barker’s level of acceptance and Hart’s realm of turmoil. Even today, 18 years removed from the highly-publicized murder of his 15-year-old son, Kiyan, conversations can be raw.

Through grief, Prince ultimately made a comeback almost 15 years on from his last fight, and even though he has helped hundreds if not thousands of others with loss through his inspirational talks, the Kiyan Prince Foundation or anyone else his profound words have imprinted upon, speaking to Prince is like speaking to a man who still lives life one day at a time, walking the tightrope of tragedy.

It was on May 18, 2006, when Prince took a call from his 20-year-old daughter telling him Kiyan had been stabbed.

What followed was Prince racing to the hospital in a haze of panic, as Kiyan experienced his final moments.

Kiyan had been trying to break up a fight outside the school gates and in doing so, Hannad Hasan put him in a headlock and drove a penknife into his heart.

Mark was proud that Kiyan’s motives had been pure, but they have accounted for only fleeting solace through the years of subsequent devastation.

“That was Kiyan. That told me a lot about my son, because parents don’t know what their kids are like when they’re out,” Mark says.

Kiyan was airlifted to hospital but died three hours after the incident.

Mark has become a spokesman for grief and knife crime in a city, London, where it makes up part of the daily conversation.

Hasan, a Somalian refugee, was 16 when he murdered Prince. Known as “The Killer,” he was told he would have to serve a minimum of 13 years, but in May earlier this year he was denied parole again and has since had time added onto his sentence for inappropriate behavior in prison. He is now 33 years old, cannot be moved to an open prison and cannot be deported. 

Kiyan was a soccer whizzkid, tipped for big things both for his club, Queens Park Rangers, and his country. 

In 2019, Queens Park Rangers gave the naming rights of their Championship stadium, formerly Loftus Road, to the Kiyan Prince Foundation, so their home games were played at the Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium.

Prince’s battle with the aftermath of Kiyan’s death still rages today. He has been through all imaginable emotions, including a quivering rage that descended upon him in court when he was faced with Hasan each day until he was imprisoned.

“Revenge comes on quite early. Shock probably went on the longest,” Prince recalls of the journey. “I still can’t actually believe he’s not here. That went on for years. I could be looking at a picture and it just don’t make no sense. Can’t get with it. I think what’s been my saving grace through the grief process is having these thoughts that God is involved in this, too. He hasn’t left me on my own. I don’t how to deal with this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with it. I don’t know that I can deal with it, but I know if He’s got a say in it, I can ask him for his help.”

While Prince has a measure of peace in his voice, it wasn’t long ago that his sentences were marred with distress.

“I made sounds I didn’t know I could make. Grief, pain, coming out of your body. Grief has a sound, pain has a sound, but there’s levels and I knew nothing about this level.” 

He sighs, shakes his head and goes on. 

“I knew nothing about it. Prior to this, you might say I wasn’t scared of anything, I can handle things. Not that one, mate. Not that one. It can take you out.”

Part of the process has seen Prince switch from a grim denial and asking why him, to a grave acceptance of what has happened. It was going to that stage that helped him persist; having to accept it.

“If you don’t, you are screwed. You are finished,” Prince says. “There are so many people that have gone through trauma who find it hard to accept, embrace the fact that they’ve gone through that trauma. I knew I had to embrace it. Can’t run from it. People say, ‘I don’t want to bring that up.’ No, bring it up. Talk about it, because there’s nowhere to run from this, so I have to embrace it.” 

It has been an unimaginable burden.

Almost each time someone is murdered in London, Prince’s phone rings for comment from a family victim’s perspective. It is a gruelling association with death that never leaves.

“Someone’s died, let’s phone Mark Prince.”

He’s identified as the tragic father, and Prince also buried a stillborn son years before Kiyan passed away.

“Trust me, I have worn myself out. I’ve had days where I’ve gone from one news channel to another. One day, I did about 30 interviews back-to-back to back,” he continues. “I’d be breaking down in one interview, asking me about my son, go to another, recover, go to another, breaking down again, I was a mess. I’ve never ran from any of it. For me, I’ve never been out of the ring. I’ve always been in fights. My biggest fight came after my career in boxing ended.”

Prince, initially, wanted to find out everything about the day Kiyan lost his life. 

He had a desperate need for knowledge and discovered so much grisly detail, mostly from Kiyan’s best friend who was with him at the time, that it haunts him.

“I’m glad I did,” Prince adds, giving the matter some thought. “It affected me badly…. I thought I was alright, but I wasn’t. It enabled me to face things I thought I was alright with and it showed me more things I needed to handle.”

As a consequence, the nightmares are heavy but the overall burden feels lighter and freer as he has used Kiyan’s name for good, to help others and make a positive difference. 

“It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my life, let go,” Prince sadly continues. “It’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever learned. To let go. You don’t have control. Don’t try to take control. Just show how you want to show up. 

“It was my thoughts that created my pain.

“It was empowering for me to realize, ‘You’re not in control, Mark.’

“You haven’t been in control of anything. You’ve just got control over your thoughts. “How you decide to deal with this.” 

Prince was recklessly empowered by the notion that whatever he faced in the ring, even if confronted with his own mortality, then the pain would not be as vast as what he had already experienced.

With that in mind, he returned to the ring in 2013, 15 years on from challenging Dariusz Michalczewski in Germany for the WBO light heavyweight title. 

Prince won all four bouts in his return, taking his record to 23-1 (18 KOs).

Boxing was a safe space. It also allowed him to put the Kiyan Prince Foundation in the spotlight, helped drive revenue for the charity and make more of an impact. 

For Prince, the act of fighting and training, was something that helped him deal with everything. The sport was a crutch.

When he returned, he wore shorts with white and blue of Queens Park Rangers and he had Kiyan’s name on his waistband.

“It’s a powerful part of my life, that comeback,” he says. 

Boxing saves more lives than it takes. When you count the cost of the neurological issues that come later and the heavy toll of dementia-related illnesses, it is easy to underestimate how many it negatively affects.

But amongst the polluted waters of organized crime, disorganized chaos, PEDs use, endless controversy, boxing provides shelter and refuge.

It opens its arms when some doors remain shut. The welcoming environs of a boxing community are drastically underrated. There is respect in a gym – for yourself and for others – and it is a place where key behavioral components and skills can be incorporated into daily life.

It is salvation for some, opportunity for others. It is peace for some, relief for others. 

For all of boxing’s many ills and for all of its shady politics, what it does do and how it helps people – whether they knew they needed it or not – can never be underestimated.

Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a Board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and The Ring of Brotherhood. He is a former boxing broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular Boxing Life Stories podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and the author of five boxing books, including Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing, Warrior: A Champion’s Search For His Identity and The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxings’ Wastelands.