Curtis Woodhouse: 'Someone said it's like Rocky but Rocky is made up'

Former Premier League footballer triumphs over doubt and defeat to be a British champion in the hurt business
Curtis Woodhouse
For Curtis Woodhouse when the bell rings 'the truth comes out. Football is swamped in bullshit. Boxing is brutal but it's honest. It's a better sport by miles.' Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Curtis Woodhouse has been through such hardship and struggle that he has learned to move from one testing memory to another with cackling good humour. In the same way that he overcame doubt and defeat to complete one of the year's sporting stories, Woodhouse relives his tangled past and the gritty detail of how he gave up the comfortable wealth of professional football for "the hurt business" of boxing.

The dramatic saga has a sweet centre because, last month, Woodhouse sealed his transformation from a former million-pound England Under-21, Premier League and Championship footballer turned derided no-hoper into the British light-welterweight champion. He announced his retirement on a giddy Saturday night just over three weeks ago after he defeated Darren Hamilton in a gruelling battle. Now, on a sunlit morning in Sheffield, Woodhouse admits he will remain in boxing until it ends in one of two ways – "on my face or on my back".

This remains a story of great hope and fierce truth. "Without wanting to sound arrogant, no one is going to go from Premiership footballer to British champion ever again," Woodhouse says. "No one's as daft as me for starters. Someone said it's the equivalent of Frank Bruno scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup for Sheffield United. Someone else said, 'It's a bit like Rocky.' But it's nothing like Rocky. Rocky is fucking made up. This shit is real."

Words tumble from the 33 year-old with lucid feeling. It's the day before he returns to Bridlington to bury his grandmother but there is more wonder than sadness in his voice. "She was an unbelievable woman, my nanna. She adopted my dad and his twin brother in 1957. Two black kids and she's a white lady, in northern England. It took guts. When they were toddlers she would get spat at in the street. I just want to celebrate her life now."

His father had been abandoned as a nameless baby and, on his birth certificate, he was called Barnardo. "He was a Barnardo's baby," Woodhouse says. "My nanna changed his name to Bernard."

Bernard Woodhouse was loved by his son and, even on his death bed, he shaped Curtis in a profound way. "The last thing I said to my dad was a promise I'd become British champion. But when you make a promise to someone you revere, and you haven't fulfilled it, the words eat away at you. It caused me such heartache but, if I hadn't made that promise, I would've given up boxing years ago."

When Woodhouse switched from football to boxing eight years ago, he "was in a blind alley. I was getting beaten up in the gym by amateurs who'd had 10 fights and lost seven. They were handing me my arse in sparring. I remember my first session down at Dave Coldwell's gym in Rotherham. I'd had one pro fight and I sparred against Daniel Thorpe. He had 139 fights and lost 113. But I didn't know Daniel then. I got absolutely took apart. Thorpey hit me with shots you can't even throw on computer games. I sat on the side of the ring and said: 'Fucking hell, Dave, he's good!' Dave said, 'Yeah, he's a good kid, Thorpey, but he's not won a fight in 16 months.'

"I'm ambitious but I'm also a realist. I thought, 'That's me done. This geezer's not won in a year and he's hammered me. I've walked away from my very well-paid job in football and I've got children. I've made the biggest mistake of my life'."

Woodhouse believes that hard work turned the impossible promise he made to his dying father into the delirious reality of becoming British champion. He learned from his mistakes as a footballer, when he lost the dedication that helped him break into Sheffield United's first team at 17 and become their captain at 19. Woodhouse had once out-trained everyone around him but then, softened by money and adulation, he settled for a life of shortcuts and long afternoons of drinking. "I became average again and, as a boxer, I remembered that."

Unstinting in his desire to master the raw basics of boxing, Woodhouse toiled for years in the gym. "I knew these guys were a lot better technically than me but when you're fit you can often grind them down into oblivion. I thought if I can mix that with learning the basics I've got an outside chance – possibly. I used to spar with Ryan Rhodes and Kell Brook, and they're good fighters. Even if they were only going 50% they'd still beat me up. I'd go 100% at them but it's like a little dog yapping. It reaches a point where the big dog has to bite the little dog. They put me in my place on many occasions but the next day I'd be there early. Eventually they were like: 'Oh God, here he is again …'"

Woodhouse lost six fights, and four of them were contentious decisions. His worst night was against Derry Mathews six months ago and he tells a chilling story of how he had to boil down to the nine-stone-nine limit, a division below his usual weight, to get a title shot. He put on almost two stone in the 24 hours after the weigh-in, but he was still so dehydrated he felt "like a zombie" as he was stopped in four rounds. Those dark moments inspired his title win. "My resolve got tested but setbacks don't mean shit if you're mentally strong enough. Hamilton had never been in a tough fight and he died down the stretch. I took him to a place he'd never been before."

His joy when hearing the verdict, on a split decision, still runs through him. "It was unbelievable. Even now it bubbles me up and I must have watched it 500 times. I just fast forward straight to the announcement. You'd think by the 500th time you'd be a bit numb but it still makes me go, 'Wow!"

The next day Woodhouse visited his father's graveside with the championship belt. "It felt like this massive weight lifted from me. I then went to my mum's pub in Driffield and the place was packed. The fight came on TV and it was surreal to sit with the belt over my shoulder and everyone I'd ever known seemed to be there. They were watching it as if it was live and people were screaming at the TV: 'Go on, go on!' It made me feel good to see how much it meant to them. I feel proud when people tell me I've inspired them. Before, I used to get fan mail as a footballer and be asked to sign this or that. I'd say, 'Fucking hell, get lost'. I reply to everyone now."

Woodhouse believes that football, the beautiful game he once loved, has been distorted by greed. He made a lot of money from football, having left school at 15 to join Sheffield United, and in 2001 he was transferred for £1m to Birmingham City. He also played for years in lower-division football and he still manages Goole AFC, a semi-professional club.

Comparing the two sports which have shaped him, Woodhouse says: "I love boxing. There's loads of shit in boxing but, when the bell rings, the truth comes out. Football is swamped in bullshit. Even when the whistle blows people are diving and cheating. Football lost its soul because there's so much money in it. There's no integrity. Boxing is brutal but it's honest. When the bell rings we bleed the same. That's why there is so much respect among fighters. It's the better sport by miles."

His love of boxing runs so deep that it's unsurprising Woodhouse has decided to keep fighting. "I knew the next day it would be impossible to walk away. It's taken me so long and I've worked so hard to get here. I'd be cheating myself if I stopped now. The pressure is off and now you're going to see the best of me. I'd love a crack at the European title."

Woodhouse is sharply intelligent and so he must have considered boxing's terrible dangers? "A million per cent. I'm a boxing student and so I'm not naïve. I'm 95% sure how my career is going to end – on my face or on my back. That's how fighters normally retire. Mine will end the same. When that is, I don't know. I still love it but this is the hurt business. It's tough and unrelenting – and addictive. Fighters all think we have one more fight in us. One more, and then we'll call it a day. And you box great and so you say, 'Wow, I've got plenty more … one more.' That 'one more' might become 10 fights. Fingers crossed I'll know when to go but we know what happens."

It's rumoured that, in 2006, Woodhouse placed a £5,000 bet on himself, at 50-1, to become British champion. "Allegedly," Woodhouse says magisterially as he winks at that supposed £250,000 win.

The previously discontented footballer is not fighting for money or fame. He made national headlines last year when he became The Troll-Hunter. Having been taunted for months by an illiterate keyboard warrior on Twitter, who questioned Woodhouse's right to be in the ring, the boxer decided to track him down. He posted messages on Twitter, coolly informing his abusive tweeter that he was about to knock on his front door. Grovelling apologies were tweeted back to Woodhouse while the troll ensured he was far from home.

Woodhouse, of course, would have just had a quiet word about respect, but in the end the troll and his hunter were united on morning television. The fighter accepted the apologies with some grace but a few weeks before his title fight he was spotted in Rotherham. "You're Curtis Woodhouse," he was told, and the former footballer nodded as he had once played for Rotherham.

"You're that troll hunter aren't you?"

"Jesus," Woodhouse thought, "400 pro football matches, 28 fights and I'm known for chasing some idiot off the internet?"

He is admired now for his British title victory but his wife, Charlotte, with whom he has been 13 years, worries about his safety. "Charlotte will be OK," Woodhouse cracks. "On our first wedding anniversary I'm taking her to see Froch-Groves. The romantic in me keeps coming out."

He admits more quietly that their eldest son, who is 10, endured real trauma on the night he won the title. "He'd watched the Derry Mathews fight and to see that happen to your dad is not nice. So he was really nervous. The mother-in-law stayed at home and watched it with him, and as soon as the ring walks began he started to cry. He cried all the way to the end of the fight just because he was that worried. So the best feeling the whole night was when I got to the dressing room and rang my little boy. I said: 'I've done it, son.' He said: 'I know, daddy, I watched it.' That felt brilliant."

There is vicious risk in the ring but, at least to Woodhouse, it seems a price worth paying for a life which consumes him in a way football never did. Even when his words are deadly serious they sound like they have been spoken by a man who has found himself. "It's tough for my family. Charlotte wanted me to retire seven years ago and my mum said she's not watching any more fights but they have to understand that without this I might as well be dead. This is what keeps me alive. This fulfils my life. I'm a fighter."

He stretches out his hand to take mine and smiles because, now, he is entitled to add another word before his chosen way of life. Curtis Woodhouse is a champion fighter.

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