The grass was no greener for Craig ‘Spider’ Richards

The feeling that the grass is always greener is as much a symptom of winning as losing. Win and a boxer will still want more, believing they have outgrown their team, whereas a loss tends to become a catalyst for change. 

In other words, rather than triggered by victory or defeat, the idea of greener grass is something fundamentally human. It is a belief and desire in us all. It is something we all believe until it is disproved. 

When Craig Richards, a light-heavyweight from London, left Tony and Peter Sims and the Matchroom gym in 2024, he did so in pursuit of the thing they all pursue: greener grass. He found, however, that grass isn’t necessarily greener in one patch than any other and that it even changes colour depending on both the season and the weather. 

This naturally left Richards despondent. It left him despondent during training camp and it left him despondent when his second fight with Shane McGuigan, his new coach, led to defeat. By then he had realized what so many come to realize when making similar moves. He realized that change isn’t always the answer. 

“I think I got very complacent in terms of my last fight,” Richards said of last year’s decision loss to Willy Hutchinson. “I was going through the motions, camp wasn’t really that great, and I wasn’t really pushed in camp to the right degree. I just went out there and tried to tick the register. That’s never the best version of myself, as you will have seen throughout my career. 

“Now, with my back against the wall again, I know that I have to prepare properly and diligently to get the job done. Now I’m thriving and looking forward to it because I know I have been pushed 110 per cent in the gym.”

On Saturday, in Belfast, Richards is indeed back. He is not only back in the ring, eight months after that Hutchinson loss, but he is back too with Tony Sims and all those at the Matchroom gym. His spell with McGuigan, alas, ended up a short one and served only to open Richards’ eyes and awaken in him a newfound appreciation for all he had left. 

“For me, leaving the Matchroom gym and trying different methods and seeing them not work for me, as well as fighting below standard in my last fight, I feel like I’ve got a big point to prove,” he said. 

“I was really disappointed with my last fight. I turned up to fight at not even 50 per cent of myself. Sometimes I have come up short before in fights but I have been able to accept it because the guy was good on the night or I could have done this or that better. But when you just don’t turn up at all you are very disappointed in yourself. When you leave the ring knowing you have given your best and trained really hard, that’s something else. There’s not really much you can do [about the result]. But that wasn’t the case with me against Hutchinson. I was very disappointed. I let myself down. I let my team down. I let Matchroom down. I just want to rectify that wrong immediately.”

Before he could rectify things with another win, Richards first had to take stock. In the months to follow that Hutchinson loss he had to analyze why he had departed his old gym in the first place and he had to consider what he had lost in the process. 

“I needed to look at all the things that went wrong in that camp,” he said. “Being with a new team, and being with a new trainer, we knew there would be things we would find out along the way, but we were doing that before a big fight. Usually when you join a new trainer you might have a few warm-up fights. But the level I’m at now doesn’t give me those sorts of luxuries. You’ve just got to work it out on the job. 

“I realise now what the Matchroom gym did for me. It was vital for me as a person and a fighter to be there preparing for fights. That’s why I decided to go back. It was more that I needed to than just wanted to.”

Some eight months will have passed since that disappointing experience in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia by the time Richards fights Padraig McCrory, a Belfast man, in Belfast this weekend. In that time, Richards has done more soul-searching than at any other point in his professional career and in turn more growing. 

“I needed to take my head off of boxing, but at the same time I didn’t feel like I deserved to go on a holiday or anything like that,” he said of his eight-month break. “I didn’t feel I deserved any luxuries. I spent that time just sorting out my personal life really and putting things in place. I bought a new house, sorted everything out, and then I came back to boxing and really tried to lock in again. 

“Eventually I decided I had to leave that gym [the McGuigan gym] and go back to Tony and the Matchroom gym. I’ve been working there ever since and feel like I have found myself again. 

“Having been away from that gym, I now know what triggers me to be a better fighter and I also know what doesn’t work for me. It kind of helped me to go away and try something else. I found out a lot about myself as a person and as a fighter. I feel like that’s what I needed to become a more complete fighter.”

At 34, Richards accepts he does not have a lot of time to waste at this stage in his career. Which is why he is particularly happy to have a fight of significance and meaning against McCrory in a few days’ time. It is not, as is often the case in his situation, a tune-up fight booked to restore confidence or gently return a fighter to the win column. Instead, it is a fight with serious ramifications for both at light-heavyweight. 

“It’s good that I’ve got a fight against a good name and a good fighter because I didn’t want to come back and blow out a journeyman,” said Richards, known as ‘Spider’. “People would just say, ‘Okay. We knew you could do that. So what?’ I needed someone who is highly rated, has been in big fights, and I need to go out there and make a statement against them. That will show that I am back. 

“It’s exciting. These are the sorts of challenges you want. You know that when you get a good win in someone else’s home city, it’s a really nice feeling. You look through history and see all the great fighters who have done that in the past. You think about [Terence] Crawford when he came to Scotland to beat Ricky Burns. I’d like to go somewhere like Belfast and get a good win against a fighter from Belfast.”

The drive to get an opponent of McCrory’s ilk for early this year was very much instigated by Richards’ team. They knew more than anyone how important it was for the Croydon man to feel challenged and also how vital it was for him to correct the mistakes he had made against Hutchinson last summer.  

“We were trying to make fights with a lot of big names in Britain and the Lyndon Arthur one was the fight we were looking to do in January,” said Richards. “But he just kept pushing and pulling and making silly excuses. He hurt his back, couldn’t fight, and then he said he would fight when he was better. But I also saw him online saying he would fight [Anthony] Yarde. I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I knew he was just playing around. He had done this to me in the past. I think this is the third time in my career we were meant to fight and he has done this to me. So I realized yet again that he was going to end up wasting my time. Matchroom then tried to find relevant opponents for me and they came back and said, ‘Look, there’s an opportunity to fight in six weeks against McCrory on this Belfast card. Let us know ASAP if you’re interested.’ I just wanted to get out against a good name, so I said, ‘Yes, 100 per cent,’ within 24 hours. I took an hour or two to go online and look at him. I was like, ‘Yeah, great. Cool. Let’s go.’”

McCrory, 19-1 (9), is a 36-year-old former IBO belt-holder best known for fighting Edgar Berlanga 12 months ago. That was a fight McCrory lost inside six rounds, having been deemed by most observers to be out of his depth beforehand. Since then, however, he has responded with a 10-round decision against Leonard Carrillo and will, like Richards, be all the better for his recent trials and tribulations. 

“I think he’s a good fighter,” said Richards, 18-4 (11 KOs). “He’s game, he can box, and he can be a little bit tricky. He’s a good, established fighter, and that’s exactly what I need. Going out and doing a job on a fighter like him pushes me on to even bigger stuff. I needed a good fighter like him. 

“I just have to turn up as the best version of myself. All my best performances have come when I have done that and often when I have been written off or am the underdog. That’s when I show up. That’s when I have to be the best version of myself. 

“I think I’ll be the dominant force in this fight and hopefully I’ll be able to win over the Belfast fans in the process. Then they can come and support me.”

Although it is often said that a boxer hears only the sound of punches and their own heartbeat when in the ring on fight night, sometimes, just sometimes, the crowd will also become a factor and play its part – for better or worse. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, where the crowd is famously quiet, it is maybe tougher for a fighter to use those in attendance as fuel or motivation when the going gets tough. In somewhere like Belfast, on the other hand, there is no such problem. That is true for not only the home fighter but the away fighter as well. 

“The atmosphere isn’t there as much in Saudi,” said Richards, who of course boxed Hutchinson in Riyadh last year. “When you are boxing in Britain and Ireland you know the fans are passionate – especially in Ireland, where boxing is very big. They’re very invested in fights and they always support their own. You know the crowd is going to be buzzing and rocking. You know you have to be up for it and sharp from the first bell. 

“Belfast is a boxing community and the people there respect good boxing. So long as you turn up and box well, and you can fight, and you’re not disrespectful to them, they’ll probably welcome you – after the fight. I know I’ll have to put up with some hostility on the way to the ring and during the fight, but yeah, maybe afterwards they will get behind me.”

If so, perhaps the colour green was never meant to represent grass in the context of Craig Richards’ fighting career. Perhaps the green he saw was instead the green of Ireland and it is there, on unfamiliar and uncomfortable ground, he is destined to turn a corner and unlock the best version of himself.