Sean Lazzerini is laughing. He says he has a bone to pick with the compilers of the Boxrec website.
The online resource claims to be boxing’s official records keeper but someone, somewhere obviously didn’t get the memo when it came to updating the 22-year-old Glaswegian’s numbers.
“See that Boxrec record [it reads won 8, lost 14],” he does that half-sniggering, half-exhaling through his nose thing as he says it. “I have had over 70 fights with 16 losses. I won my last fight, but it only ever seems to record my losses, never the fights that I win.”
His exploits in securing a silver medal at the European Under-22 Championships in March last year provide a case in point. “It [Boxrec] showed me in the final against the Russian guy Alexei Semykin, I had four fights before that but it hasn’t put in those four fights that I won, it just put up the final that I lost,” he says.
Lazzerini finds the oversight more amusing than he does frustrating. He can afford to smile. A broken hand, sustained in that last fight against Vadzim Pankou in Belarus, seemed set to scupper his hopes of competing at the Olympic Games before a break of another kind provided him with a possible route back into the tournament.
“I completely battered him, it was an easy win but in the last round I hit him a big shot that gave him a standing count but I completely done my hand in and I had to pull out of the tournament,” he said. “The truth is I have been out through injury for a long time and it actually ruined my chance of going to the Olympics. My hand was sore for ages, and still is sometimes, but it is almost 100 per cent. I was gutted but coronavirus has given me another chance. I was upset about it and stayed quiet. I don’t really post about my career on social media. I don’t post my whole life on there.”
He is taking nothing for granted, however. For a start there are no guarantees that the Olympics, already postponed until 2021 because of the pandemic, will even get the go-ahead and boxing, with all its grappling, close contact and bloody exchanges, is likely to be at the bottom of the list when it comes to a resumption of sporting activity. However, with the loosening of restrictions in recent weeks, he believes a return to British Olympic Boxing headquarters in Sheffield will be on the horizon soon enough and he says he expects to be less self-conscious than he was previously in those surroundings.
“I think they are going to start bringing people in gradually,” he said. “People can’t share the same room, we can’t spar, so it will just be bags and stuff. I’m taking a different approach to everything: sparring, pads, using my own coaches. I’m almost 23 now, I’ve always liked to take different bits from other coaches but I feel as if it is time to listen to myself now rather than listening to other people. A lot of the time I felt as if I was going into the GB gym tying to impress but now I have been thinking about what do I need to work on to get better myself.”
When the time does come to step into the ring again, Lazzerini is confident that the enforced period spent in lockdown will have turned him into a better fighter.
“I feel like the next time I start fighting I’m going to be so much harder to beat,” he said. “I genuinely believe that. The fighters from eastern Europe are so experienced, they have had so many fights, but I feel like one day something just clicked in me.”
Lazzerini says he dreamt of becoming a pro after watching Canelo Alvarez for the first time and entering the paid ranks remains his ambition.
“The Olympics are still up in the air a little bit,” he says. “But I am focusing on that for now with a view to going professional.”
Who knows? Maybe then Boxrec might get around to updating those vital statistics.
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