Breakfast in Bournemouth with Chris Billam-Smith: Zurdo, the fight to improve and living the dream

Chris Billam-Smith smiles at a question, then proceeds to shovel some scrambled egg and halloumi into his mouth.

We are in a trendy brunch spot around 20 minutes from his home, near Bournemouth, and “The Gentleman” is living up to his name.

The WBO cruiserweight champion has said “hello” to everyone who has made eye contact with him, and he’s entertained several with small talk.

He knows the manager of the establishment and the staff by name, too, and he can discuss the soccer teams they support and, in some cases, their family members or recent events unique to each person.

On the black chalkboard of today’s specials, there are soups served with sourdough, a Cuban pork baguette, and a curried cauliflower flatbread. 

In conversation, Billam-Smith is inquisitive and asks others about themselves but we have met so that I can bother him with questions ahead of the biggest fight of his career.

The popular star from Bournemouth is patient and accommodating, responding to enquiries he has surely faced a multitude of times, and doing so following a comparatively tumultuous week that has included a battle to stay on UK time during a flying visit to California for the press conference to announce the show on November 16.

Billam-Smith is top of the bill in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday, and in a unification fight against the WBA incumbent Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez.

He left for Los Angeles on Tuesday and was back early on Thursday. It was a whirlwind, and as far as focusing on the job at hand was concerned, not a welcome one. But having time to pause – away from training camp and away from his wife Mia and young son Frank, who join us for breakfast – also allowed Billam-Smith the chance to realize how far he has come.

The champ takes a long slurp of his coffee. Frank is playing in a high chair and Mia is overseeing his excitement at the proposition of occupying himself with the plastic toys that came free on the cover of a comic.

“I thought about it on the way over there, flying over to LA for a press conference, on a Golden Boy show, for a show in Riyadh,” Billam-Smith says. “We’ve seen these Riyadh shows and they’re phenomenal. To be headlining one of them, flying over to the presser, it’s not ideal but you have to look at it like when I was an amateur – I’d have dreamt of doing things like that.”

Pinch-yourself stuff.

“I have to look at it in the right way,” he goes on. “Deal with the situation. And I was in a good place before I went, so I wasn’t necessarily in a bad place with training. If it was a shorter camp and you were relying on those extra training sessions, maybe, but I was already in a good place so it didn’t take too much out of training.”

Billam-Smith, however, left nothing to chance. His is a story of more than local-hero-made good – it is of making the best of everything he has and adding one per cent every day, the difference-makers that have taken him to his present standing.

Before leaving for Los Angeles, Billam-Smith sought counsel from the Formula 1 performance coach John Clarke, who specializes in helping elite athletes with sleep and jetlag. He gave Billam-Smith a schedule to steady his circadian rhythm so that usual service would not be interrupted.

In the space of 27 hours, Billam-Smith had landed and left LAX, having completed long and short-form interviews, taken part in the press conference, shaken hands with Oscar De La Hoya and Bernard Hopkins, and rounded off a couple more interviews for other outlets. 

The Golden Boy figureheads De La Hoya and Hopkins were an inspiration to the young Billam-Smith, and only added to the surreal nature of the whistlestop trip. 

“I really respected Bernard, because he kind of changed through the years, but it’s hard to say,” he responds when asked to pick between them as his preferred fighter. “I think Bernard because I admired his longevity and the way he adapted from the ‘Executioner’ to the ‘Alien’. Probably Bernard over Oscar, but not by much. They’re both legends; hall of fame fighters; absolutely phenomenal careers; just so great to watch. But Bernard and Evander Holyfield are two of my favorite fighters.”

Billam-Smith had actually been in California a couple of months earlier, but back then it was a family vacation with Mia and Frank and he mostly enjoyed a far more relaxed experience.  

There was that one time, however, with the bears in Yosemite…

He went for a run early one morning, with his young family still asleep; he’d been ticking over with his fitness, but no more than that. The run was hard. There was altitude and hills to contend with. Then he saw the bears.

“And the pace naturally picked up,” he smiles. “And also, my adrenaline was going. They’re my favorite animals, bears, so I was buzzing to see them. A minute or two after I’d seen them, I had to run up this hill. I was still buzzing but also on the alert in case any of them were chasing me.”

Later in the day, he drove back down past the same spot and was astonished at how steep the climb had been.

There is an understated modesty with Billam-Smith. Sure, he’s known as “The Gentleman”, but there’s a quiet and resolute self-belief about him, and it’s something you can feel. He knows what he is made of, and he’s had to prove that by digging deep several times already in his 20-1 (13 KOs) career.

Despite being from the comparatively small English coastal town of Bournemouth, despite not being a glamorous Team GB amateur, and even though he had to persuade his trainer Shane McGuigan to take him on as an unfashionable addition to a stable that included stars and main eventers like David Haye, Luke Campbell and George Groves, he always felt he could be something.

“I’ve always had this feeling since I was a kid like, I don’t know what it is but being a champion,” he says. “I don’t know what it is – my drive; my dream – I felt I always had this inner thing, but I was never that good at any sport. I was okay at football when I was really young, and I always wanted to be captain and the man, in that sense. But I weirdly had this notion in me that I always wanted to be that, and when I was an amateur, I always thought I could be that but I never saw the journey how to get there. 

“When I was an amateur, I didn’t think I would [get this far] but I believed I could and I’ve always been driven by something, and I can’t explain it because it’s just a feeling inside that I can do it, and I’ll keep working towards it. I don’t know where it comes from, really. It’s how I’ve always been.

“Even in the worst moments, something was buried that it will always be okay and I will make it.”

And even now, he does not feel as though he has made it. Not really. He still has to tell himself that he belongs now. That he’s done it. And that he has come a long way.

“I remember having a conversation with Shane when I joined the gym, about [Oleksandr] Usyk,” Billam-Smith says, chowing down some more eggs but pausing to smile. “I hadn’t even had my pro debut, and I said, ‘You’re going to train me to beat him’, and he said something along the lines of, ‘I’m good, but I’m not that good!’ That wasn’t a dig at me or him, it was just the admiration of Usyk and how far we were from that. But I guess I’ve always had a weird inner belief, this dream in me… I don’t know if it’s because I watched a lot of Disney films as a kid or what, when you think anything is possible. But it’s almost like two personalities. There’s always been a logical side, ‘You can get there, but you’re miles off it’. I guess that would be the best way to describe it.

“And I still feel not miles off it, but I still feel there’s so much to learn and I’m still not good enough, in a weird way, which keeps me very driven. I know I’m good enough to beat everyone, but I’m very driven, like in terms of, ‘This isn’t good enough’; in terms of the way I’m performing in the gym. Not that I’m not good enough, but it could be better. That’s always been my mindset – that I could be better. I’ve never been completely happy with any of my performances but that’s what drives me on, keeps me improving, and I’ve got so much more to come still.”

He reckons he has boxed to around 70 per cent of his ability. One hundred per cent, he insists, will remain a unicorn, as there’s no such thing as perfection in this violent business. But the pursuit of achieving near that – of edging closer to 100 than 70 – is motivation enough.

There have been times when he’s fallen short, faced ridicule and had to upset odds, but the belief never wavered. Nor did his desire to better himself; to find incremental gains to be better; to have no excuse; to leave nothing to chance or to fate.

That studious approach involved him seeking knowledge in every possible avenue to make him better – at everything. He tracks his fitness data; understands about good sleep hygiene; the importance of breathwork; nutrition; strength and conditioning and recovery.

In his pursuit of both excellence and knowledge, Billam-Smith launched his own podcast, The Perfect Athlete, in which he hosted deep dives with sports stars and experts on hydration, breathing, nutrition, psychology and training. The goal wasn’t to be a podcaster, it was to make improvements, no matter how marginal.

“It was kind of me learning from other athletes and I thought some people might like to listen to it, and just chatting to people who are successful in their fields,” he says. “But because I have so much thirst for the knowledge of improvement like that, I’ve just enjoyed having them and I definitely learned a bit from them, as well.”

He has a full-time breathwork coach, Greg Meehan, to keep him accountable, and while Billam-Smith has the learned knowledge, members of his team can write plans for him and stay on him to execute them. 

It is just as well that his foundation is built on science rather than superstition as, despite leaving nothing to chance, he went down with a stomach upset the week he won the WBO title from Lawrence Okolie and maintained the focus and strength of character to ignore any signs of forbearing to see out the task at hand, despite the last-gasp problems of feeling unwell throughout fight week ahead of the biggest night of his life.

Now, Billam-Smith, 34 years old, is nearing another significant night – and this time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Watching him being dad to Frank – whom the fighter stops to encourage in the highchair after Frank pleads for him to acknowledge his scribbles on a blank sheet of paper – to talking about facing “Zurdo” Ramirez is a little jarring, almost to the point of being disconcerting.

He can coo over little Frank quite happily while discussing punching the best fighter he has faced – his words – in the face. 

“He’s got the most about him,” explains Billam-Smith, in conversation about his opponent. “I’ve boxed tough people; I’ve boxed more skilled people; I’ve boxed people with decent punch variety, but he’s got all of those. Nobody’s had as much as he has. He’s a southpaw for a start, as well. I’ve boxed one southpaw – in my fifth fight.

“I think he’s the most well-rounded; he’s the most experienced I’d say at that top level. Masternak I’d say was more experienced in terms of fights, but I feel like he’s probably had more experience and boxed better people throughout. Obviously Masternak had a very good resume but had a few losses at the top level, whereas Ramirez’s only loss is to [Dmitry] Bivol. There’s no shame in that. Against [Arsen] Goulamirian, he showed a lot in that fight.”

Asked if he could get used to fighting southpaws, given the IBF champion is Jai Opetaia, Billam-Smith said that he was prepared for a run of left handers.

“Opetaia first, then Usyk,” he half-jokes, in a call back to the story of his first chat with McGuigan.

The Riyadh Season-Golden Boy show, with Billam-Smith atop the bill, came together quickly. While there was talk of Billam-Smith-Ramirez happening, it had been far from locked in.

“It was on the cards, but probably wasn’t on the cards properly until Turki Alalshikh got involved to be honest,” the fighter says, taking another slug of coffee. “I don’t think the money was there in America for the cruiserweight scene, from my team’s point of view, so when they [the GEA] got involved, they made it more possible.”

Much of the talk at 200lbs has been around Billam-Smith facing Opetaia. The impressive Australian has repeatedly said he wants the WBO title, and that Billam-Smith is his top target. Opetaia claimed Billam-Smith turned down the fight, but Billam-Smith explains the situation in a slightly less partisan and more nuanced fashion.

“I obviously got offered the Opetaia fight, but I would have had about six-and-a-half, seven weeks training by the time I got back from America [on vacation] and got into camp and I said to him – he kind of called me out – I’ll be ready, November, December, so he could have waited five weeks and waited and boxed me on this show, or another show November, December time,” he says.

“But I wanted unification next against Ramirez or Opetaia. Ramirez is the one who was ready November; December. Opetaia wanted to fight in the meantime and he boxed against Jack Massey, hopefully after we’ve both fought, we can get that done. 

“It was one of those two – who I was going to fight next – and then here we are.”

Billam-Smith had no preference, either. He simply wanted the opportunity to add to his collection of belts. That is the goal. He took plenty of criticism, however – mostly from the Australian and his team, for not taking the Opetaia fight first.

“I never let things out of my control worry me,” he continues. “What I can control is my training and my schedule. I’m not going to cut my training schedule short for anyone or any amount of money. It doesn’t bother me. I’d rather get less money and a full camp than more money and a short camp. Money’s never been the driver. Yes, it matters – that’s why you have a management team, to make sure you’re paid what you’re worth. And that’s why I’ve got the best team in the business, because they’ve always produced talent and matched their careers perfectly. There’s no one they’ve managed and their careers haven’t been mapped perfectly, opportunity-wise and for whatever the fighter wants and needs. Opetaia seems much more fussed by it than I am, but that’s probably because he’s not getting unification fights. 

“He seems really frustrated and he’s kind of talking down on me and stuff; I don’t know whether he’s just an angry person or what. It doesn’t bother me. I know that fight will be there if he keeps winning and I keep winning. At the end of the day, I’ve got a unification fight and he hasn’t. It doesn’t bother me. My career’s gone perfect to this point, in terms of the fights and opportunities I’ve got ahead of me. I can only control what I can control.”

Mia joins in when we discuss something that is difficult to control in boxing, and that is damage to the brain that can have a cumulative effect – both in the short and long term.

She is not going out of her way to read up on it, but her social-media feeds are picking up on an algorithm and sending her links to reels on the links between sports, dementia and CTE. 

Now, with Frank bubbly and alert, does not feel like the time to discuss it with his dad, but we pivot to an equally serious subject and the matter of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport.

When Billam-Smith started boxing as an amateur, in 2006, watching highlight reels of Roy Jones Jnr and playing EA Sports Fight Night with Jones Jnr on the cover, he wanted to experience the adulation of a hometown crowd having seen one of his friends being cheered to victory in a contest inside a local nightclub. It was actually his dream to do that on a grand scale in Bournemouth that led to his split from Matchroom. He couldn’t sell them on his south coast dream, and he eventually went on his way to Boxxer, and has since fought four times in Bournemouth, becoming the town’s second sporting franchise behind the Premier League soccer team.

“That was the boost in my career,” he recalls. “That was the turning point; the moment where people were like, ‘Okay’. My profile went through the roof; good performance; good fight; got the fanbase; they’re the boxes you want ticked. Can they fight? Yes. Can they bring a crowd in? Yes. Are they entertaining? From that point, it’s gone from strength to strength.”

Billam-Smith’s was a very innocent story, supporting an amateur teammate and wanting to sample the cheers, but waters are often muddied in this murky business. Rarely a month goes by without a failed test being announced.

As you might imagine, Billam-Smith leaves nothing to chance. He buys supplements from Informed Sport; he even slows down gulping his eggs and halloumi when the topic of contamination arises.

“Someone asked me if I was worried about coming up against a drugs cheat, and my view is I’m not, because it’s a skill-based sport and it’s one of the only sports where you can still win and not be on something,” he explains. “Not saying it’s a dead cert. For me, you have to look at it as if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. 

“In those sports, like cycling and athletics, it seems you can’t win unless you’re on it. Obviously cycling seems plagued with it, but in boxing, drug cheats are often losing. We’ve seen drug cheats lose. 

“It’s the most dangerous sport to do it in, because of the repercussions it can have. But, if I looked at it in that way – as a fighter, you don’t – but it should have the worst bans. It should have all that, in boxing, because it’s the most dangerous – 100 per cent.

“I’ve had to sign up for VADA for this fight, even though I’m already on the whereabouts [list to be randomly tested]. So I’m doing two lots of testing now. We already had whereabouts, which is UKAD, tested regularly, and now the fighters have got to pay for VADA. It comes out of my purse.”

He reckons he has been tested at least six times this year and he has fought just once, defeating top contender Richard Riakporhe in June. It was another big win.

But with Frank growing impatient and Mia preparing to leave with him, husband and wife talk about their first date at the popular, nearby Chicken and Bules – who now sponsor the fighter – and they briefly reminisce on how they stayed up talking about music. 

Chris proposed at the scenic Kynance Cove in Cornwall years later, having spent an entire fight purse on an engagement ring. 

“I had no money, I had no right buying her an engagement ring,” he says wistfully, shaking his head.

With Mia and Frank departed, it is now just Chris and I talking. We’ve done this before, several times.

He has never been more well-known than he is now. Often people try to catch his attention – to nod towards him and wish him well. 

There’s a long queue out of the door, but it is for the pancakes, French toast and the eggs. They don’t know who is sat inside.

In that respect, it’s a little surreal, because most of them would know Billam-Smith to see him.

Saudi Arabia is a long way from Bournemouth, and world titles in boxing are a long way from everyone else in our vicinity. Billam-Smith is living a dream that would have felt so unlikely years ago, and would have remained so after the only defeat of his career to date, which came to the aforementioned Riakporhe earlier in their careers, in 2019.

“Yeah, and that’s how I look at it… going to LA,” he says, reflecting on rubbing shoulders with Oscar and Bernard. “It feels like you can look at it in different ways. Your reaction to it is how you shape your mind towards it, and I just think, what a privilege to be in the position I’m in. It’s the stuff I’ve dreamed of. Being in a unification fight; flying to LA for a press conference; sat on a table with Oscar and Bernard Hopkins; getting called out by other world champions. All that stuff is a dream from a career point of view. Then I’ve got a lovely beautiful family; we’re looking to move to a bigger house; I’m training with the team I always wanted. Everything. Everyone involved in my life is very special.” 

We wind down with some small talk about soccer, and I joke that his fantasy soccer team is likely filled with high-profile friends from local teams and, although he laughs at the suggestion, he soon admits that that is the case.

“I’m friendly with a few of the players, I’d probably see [Bournemouth’s] Lewis Cook the most,” he says. “He’s not in it, because he’s a defensive midfielder. I have got [goalkeeper] Aaron [Ramsdale, who plays at struggling Southampton] in it. Because he’s so busy he gets so many saves!” 

Then he says he doesn’t find the time to watch many games when he’s back on weekends. 

He trains with McGuigan Monday through Friday and goes home for the weekends. It is not lost on me that a precious hour has been spent with BoxingScene.

“Little man’s the priority,” he smiles. “I get 48 hours a week. I just try to spend as much time with him as possible.”

With that, Billam-Smith orders another coffee. This time decaf, and this time to go. We shake hands, I head home to write, and he strides off into a hard, unforgiving future in this most demanding of pursuits that includes Saudi Arabia, Zurdo and possibly Opetaia.