✨ Check out this insightful post from BBC Sport 📖
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📌 Main takeaway:
Sharon – who will be ringside in Riyadh alongside father John Noakes – has encouraged her sons to take up boxing. Noakes quickly became a talented amateur at Westree Boxing Club in Maidstone and went on to win the ABAs title in April 2019.
A month later he was invited to Billy Joe Saunders’ WBO super middleweight title fight with Chefat Isufi in Stevenage and was told by Francis Warren, the son of Hall of Fame promoter Frank, that he wanted to manage his career.
Noakes turned his back on working life having jobs in a call centre, a fast food restaurant and as a roofer until he turned professional.
“Thinking about those jobs is what keeps me working hard in the gym,” Noakes said. “I don’t want to go back to that.
“The roof was made of solid materials, but I was a fair-weather roofer. If it rained, you wouldn’t see me.
“You can’t get out of the track when it’s tough, but you can get back in the truck when you’re on the roof and it starts raining.”
Noakes had three professional fights before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and was forced to return to work briefly – assisting his brother as a “belt helper” on the railway during a power cut to allow work to be done on electrical lines.
“I spent a lot of time in the truck,” Noakes said.
He was a snacker, and after one night with very few sweets, he made a plan to run a marathon the next day to burn them off.
“I was going to run 20 miles because I felt bad after eating a huge amount of garbage,” he said.
“Then someone said: Why don’t you run a marathon if you’re going to go that far?”
“So my friend and I went out and did 26.2 miles. I did it in three hours and 40 minutes.”
His path through the lightweight ranks has been steady – and Noakes has carefully worked his way to the top of the division.
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