Clinton Woods Still Working Hard in Boxing 10 Years on from World Title Win

Clinton Woods has never been afraid of hard work.

It took the Sheffield fighter four attempts to become a world champion. After each failed challenge, he had to pick himself up and earn another opportunity.

However, working, or grafting as Woods likes to call it, is something he was used to doing long before he made a career for himself in the ring.

By the time he turned professional in 1994, Woods was already a father. He had left school to work on a construction site to support his young family. Plastering was his trade, not boxing.

Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Given a bag and gloves one Christmas (“I had four brothers, and they all got football boots”), he started boxing at a young age but quit the sport in his mid-teens.

Woods admitted, “I didn’t think about boxing. It was the last thing on my mind. Then, when I was 20 or 21, I walked back into the gym.

“But boxing wasn’t the biggest love for me. It was a job, and I earned money from it.

“I’m not a big lover of it now either. If there’s boxing on the television I won’t be too bothered about watching it. I may eventually watch it, but not when it is on live.”

Whether he loves boxing or not, Woods was good at it. In fact, he was very good at it.

He claimed the British, Commonwealth and European light heavyweight titles, and by September 2002 he had compiled a 32-1 record, earning a shot at world champion Roy Jones Jr.

Yet despite the opportunity that came his way, Woods was not taking it too seriously: “When I fought Jones, even though I was still European champion, I was still playing at it. I was still a baby in boxing.”

Things changed for Woods after he lost to Glen Johnson in February 2004.

Their first meeting had ended in a draw, but Johnson got the nod from the judges in the rematch to walk away with the vacant IBF belt.

Woods regrouped again, earning another crack at the same strap 13 months later. 

Standing in his way was Rico Hoye, an unbeaten American who had recorded 18 straight victories, most of them well inside the distance.

Even Woods was impressed by what he saw of his opponent: “I remember watching a couple of videos (of Hoye) a few days before the fight. He was beating good guys, good boxers in America.

"He wasn’t just beating them either—he was knocking them out. He was a tall boxer, had a good reach and could whack.

"But I got myself into the best shape of my life.

“I also knew that if I lost to him, that was it. Boxing would be over for me. That wasn’t a big worry for me, because I’d have just gone back to work.”

The difference for Woods in his fourth crack at becoming world champion was the preparation that had gone in beforehand.

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10 years since one of my proudest days pic.twitter.com/Q4EAwfzteJ

— CLINTON WOODS (@teamwoods101) March 4, 2015"

Hoye was his opponent on March 3, 2005. For Woods, though, it did not matter who stepped between the ropes to take him on that night in Rotherham, England.

“I knew that anybody they put in front of me that night I would have beaten,” he said when recalling the Hoye fight 10 years after the occasion.

“We had changed a few things (before facing Hoye). I’d never bothered with a nutritionist or a strength and conditioning trainer. We got both on board for that fight. We had a good team around me and got everything right. Because of that, I wasn’t really nervous before that fight.

“I remember in the first round he threw a shot and it didn’t fully catch me, hitting my gloves and then my face. He had tremendous power, and I thought then that it would be a long night.

“But he couldn’t cope with my jab. It took everything away from him. I was really surprised with how easy the fight was.”

The hard work, the grafting, had paid off for Woods.

He successfully defended the belt four times despite elbow issues, including gaining revenge over Johnson in a clash the Englishman describes as “a great fight to watch.”

Mike Carlson/Associated Press

His reign eventually came to an end when he lost on points to Antonio Tarver in April 2008. It was a fight Woods now confesses should never have happened.

While his elbows had bothered Woods for some time, forcing him to have surgery on both, it was a back injury just prior to leaving England that ruined his preparations for the clash in Tampa, Florida.

“People ask me about my regrets in boxing, and the only one I ever have had is not pulling out of the Tarver fight," he said when discussing the defeat he suffered at the St. Pete Times Forum.

“It’s the only fight I ever went into a fight knowing I was going to lose. I’ve never watched it since, and I never will. It was the lowest point of my career.

“My trainer and I have never spoken since. It was a disaster.”

There was one last attempt to reclaim the title after it had been vacated. However, a defeat to Tavoris Cloud in 2009 proved to be the end of the line for Woods.

With his heart no longer in it, he hung up the gloves. It was time to find another job.

The Yorkshireman tried his hand at landscaping and also went back to plastering for a while. In the end, though, the boxing business lured him back in.

He purchased a building in his home city and opened a gym, running boxing fitness classes for people of all ages.

Professional fighters also came along to be trained by the former world champion, something he quickly stopped doing because he “hated every minute of it.”

Now, though, Woods finds himself working with Jos Paul, a local cruiserweight who entered the pro ranks at the age of 24. “He (Paul) has had two fights and won both, though I told him that when it comes to fight night, I’d do his corner and then leave.

“He works full time, so I told him not to pack his job in. He goes jogging before work and then comes to my gym after he’s finished (at work). He is a grafter.”

They seem the perfect pair: Paul, a young fighter who willing to graft, and Woods, the reluctant trainer who is still working hard a decade on from the night he finally became a world champion.

Rob Lancaster is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations in this article were obtained firsthand.