LUKE CAMPBELL’S recently announced ring retirement is one you just know will not give way to any kind of attempt at a comeback somewhere down the line. This proud son of Hull and 2012 London Olympic gold medallist has always kept his feet squarely planted on terra firma, representing himself and the sport throughout his career with rare class.

Britain’s Golden Boy was similar to the United States original, Oscar De La Hoya, in being an Olympic champion with the features of your average male model. But that’s where the similarities end. In terms of lifestyle and outlook, Campbell is cut from an entirely different cloth.

Unlike his US counterpart — who unconscionably intends returning to the ring at the age of 48 in September — this father of three young boys never sought the limelight and never strayed far from his East Yorkshire roots. 

A southpaw, Campbell’s formative years were spent representing Hull’s St Paul’s ABC, and he went on to carve out a storied amateur career at bantamweight representing England and Great Britain. Among the highlights of his amateur career prior to the Olympics in 2012 was a gold at the 2008 European Championships in Liverpool and a silver medal at 2011 World Championships in Baku.

At the London Games Campbell was part of an illustrious GB boxing squad that included Anthony Joshua, Josh Taylor, Anthony Ogogo and Callum Smith. He emerged from London in 2012 a star, his image making it onto a first-class postage stamp and a post box and phone box in Hull painted gold in tribute to his Olympics success.

Turning pro afterwards, he won his first 13 fights at lightweight before experiencing his first defeat. This came against Yvan Mendy in 2015 in his first attempt at a world title for the then vacant WBC lightweight belt. 

Campbell avenged this loss when he next faced Mendy in 2018 at Wembley Stadium in a non-title fight, winning by unanimous decision.

The other three defeats on Luke Campbell’s pro record came against three future hall of famers - Jorge Linares to a close and controversial split decision in Los Angeles in 2017, Vasyl Lomachenko to a unanimous decision in London in 2019 and finally to Ryan Garcia by TKO in Dallas in January 2021 in what would be his last fight.

As Campbell revealed in a recent interview, after the Garcia fight “I just had no interest in being in the gym. Thinking about going back to training camp was just a big no from me.”

Outside the ring, he’s established a successful gym in the centre of Hull with plans to open another, and he’s also invested in a healthy eating business. Aside from that he can look forward to keeping his hand in when it comes to boxing as pundit.

If only more fighters retired in such good shape financially and health-wise. 

Speaking of the Olympics, as someone who’s always watched boxing at the Games with a keen eye on likely future professional prospects, I have to admit to not having watched as much as a second of boxing at the Tokyo Games. Covid has many morbid symptoms, and for me the lack of interest in this year’s Olympics is most definitely one of them.

The lack of spectators, or at least the lack stadia and arenas filled with spectators, has rendered Tokyo nugatory in terms of occasion, excitement and drama. Your heart has to go out to the athletes, who’ve spent every second of every day over the previous four years training, eating and sleeping for this very moment. That they have had to do so while adapting to the constraints imposed by Covid since the start of 2020, this will have been inordinately difficult.

It is no surprise that mental health has been a prominent talking point in Tokyo — indeed in top level sport in general — in the midst of Covid. For athletes who compete in individual sports in particular — boxing, gymnastics, tennis, athletics etc — mental health is a particularly fragile entity.

Current WBC heavyweight king Tyson Fury’s very public revelations concerning his struggle with mental health should have gone some way, you’d like to think, to removing any residual stigma attached to this silent killer. After all, if a 6’9”, 270lb fighting machine can become stricken at the hands of his own demons, anyone can. But, no, for the likes of the ever-bloviating Piers Morgan, athletes opening up about mental health struggles are “at it,” lacking that all-important (for him) quality known as a winning mentality.

The man’s an unalloyed disgrace.

Though today’s public awareness when it comes to mental health stands in contrast to previous decades, when it was a taboo subject and would mark out its victims as weak and deficient, today’s society can also be said to be more of a catalyst for mental health issues and breakdowns than it was back then. 

The intrusion of social media into our existence and the way it invites us to compare our lives with others through that prism can be damaging. It also platforms racists, sociopaths, homophobes, bigots, in general the human detritus of late capitalism, with regular pile-ons of hate and abuse the end product. 

When it comes to boxing, this is a sport which more than any other embraces rather than rejects the tenets of toxic masculinity. The hyper-masculinity it represents sits at odds with cultural values that have developed to the point where pain — emotional, psychological, spiritual — is rightly deemed nothing to be ashamed of.

In contrast, in the rarefied world of boxing, it is generally felt that it’s not okay to not be okay. Lamentable proof of this arrived when the aforementioned Ryan Garcia announced in April that he was stepping away from the sport to get help with depression and anxiety.

Predictably, and cruelly, a small army of social media trolls took the opportunity to hurl ridicule and insults his way, even though coming out about his mental health struggle must have taken more courage than it has ever taken him to climb into a boxing ring.

It really is true that life comes at you fast. Garcia defeated Campbell to take the interim WBC lightweight title in January. His achievement in reaching the summit of the sport you might think would see him happy and euphoric, with Campbell devastated and depressed. 

That the opposite transpired in the aftermath reaffirms the truth that the man who has everything has nothing without his health, mental and/or physical. Elite fighters and top athletes regularly perform feats that seem superhuman. Though the feat might be superhuman, the fighter or athlete who performed it most assuredly is not. Therein lies the contradiction.