Fight Camp Day One: The Group Chat Goes Live
The Midnight Mayhem fighters’ training group went live in August. Runs in the dark, holiday gym sessions and the birth of “rent paid”: here’s how fight camp began.
Every fight camp needs a group chat. Ours went live in August, and on the morning of 18 August Lee set the rules: “Morning all, let’s add our training videos and pictures here.” The Midnight Mayhem fighters took him at his word.
The first posts
Lee kicked things off with his own morning session, then “another hard training and sparring session in the books”. Chris Anwyl checked in with “another run in the dark”, and Rosa Kolkka made the case that a 14-hour travel day with a 26 kg suitcase has to count as a workout.
Rent paid
The next morning, Antonio K Moreno posted a photo from the gym with three words: “Today’s rent paid ✅”. Nobody knew it yet, but it would become the catchphrase of the whole camp.
Meanwhile Roger Redfearn-Tyrzyk joined the group and Lee immediately reminded him to “watch that thumb”. Roger’s reply: “Wrong thumb, jokes on you.”
Training on holiday
It was August, so plenty of the training happened on holiday. Roger clocked 25,000 steps in the Scottish Highlands in his Help for Heroes shirt (“get me oot of here”). Alex Pratt was out early “running off a lot of pasties and cream teas whilst the world sleeps”. And Becky Johnson-Kent banked another 5k plus her “daily prayers”: a shed load of press ups, pull ups and plyo.
When Kevin Reid joined the group, Lee couldn’t resist: “Kev quickly joins group to check in on opponent’s training.” Kev’s defence: “I thought Alex and I agreed no training till the week before?!” Essex vs Kent was already on.
Back in the gym
By the end of the month Wayne Fisher was back in a boxing gym for the first time in around 22 years. “Go easy,” he said. “This was at the end of a 90 minute session, so treading in quicksand! More to come.”
WBC Cares UK coach Matt summed it up: “Great to see the effort being put in. Sessions banked each day and week all build towards fight night. Train hard, fight easy.”
Five months to go. Meet the full fight card or back a fighter.
