Three weeks before throwing the left hook that changed everything, Liam Wilson lay sprawled out in a country paddock, crying.
How he got there?
Even the man himself isn’t sure.
Aware only that, around 90 minutes earlier, and at the start of yet another training day, he was walking through the car park of his local swimming pool, towards what was supposed to be a morning “loosen up” in the chlorine.
Only Wilson, he never made those pool gates.
Instead, and for reasons one of Australia’s most exciting fighters still can’t explain — even now, 18 months on — he walked on by the pool, down a dirt track, and off into a neighbouring field surrounded by pastures, farmhouses, even an old footy oval.
And it was there in the long grass that Wilson collapsed, rolled on his back — and wept.
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“Which looking back now, must’ve been depression,” the fighter says.
“The feelings I was having, I’d never experienced anything like it.
“Everything seemed so crazy.
“Like ‘what’s happening to me?’
“I was laying in that field, crying, wondering ‘is this the end of me?’”
All of which seems unthinkable today.
Jock Landale’s advice for Liam Wilson | 02:56
Especially with Wilson, right now, not only kicking back inside his Glendale, Arizona hotel room, or talking Fox Sports Australia through the biggest fight of his life, but on the cusp of what, with a win, will sit among the greatest underdog victories in Australian boxing history.
Despite having fought professionally only a dozen times — and having already lost once — Wilson is this Saturday challenging Mexican superstar Emanuel Navarrete for the WBO super featherweight crown.
Currently an $8.50 TAB outsider, and as wide as 20/1 with some US bookies, Wilson has been tasked with taking on the fight game’s equivalent of a Rubik’s cube.
With Navarrete not only a two-division champion, or without loss in 10 years and 30 straight fights — and now moving up again to reign over a third weight class — but a striker seemingly too unpredictable to break down, much less beat.
Which is why you need to know about Wilson and that field.
Or just as importantly, all seven months before it.
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Wilson DESTROYS Noynay inside two rounds | 00:28
A period commencing on the night of Wednesday July 7, 2021 — when this Caboolture kid sat stunned, and staring up at those brightest of lights, inside Newcastle Entertainment Centre.
Undefeated and set to light up another Tim Tszyu undercard in Tszyucastle, Wilson was instead dropped four times, and stunningly stopped in the fifth, by tough Filipino Joe Noynay.
Which, just like that, had the young Queenslander looking deader than disco.
Yet another Next Big Thing that wasn’t.
Which isn’t how things have played out, of course.
No, even the briefest of glances at Boxrec will show you how Wilson, first, bounced back against Noynay eight months later — kayoing his rival with what Main Event’s Ben Damon dubbed the “Left Hook From Hell”.
Then three months after that, doubled down again Argentina’s Matias Carlos Adrian Rueda – with that win earning what is now Saturday’s WBO world title shot.
Which on paper, is some comeback story.
Yet the real yarn, as always, is everything that’s happened when no one was watching.
Like in those eight months between losing to Noynay, and then avenging it, when Wilson was taken to places so dark, so disturbing, he at one point not only sat opposite young daughter Charlotte asking “Do you promise daddy will win this rematch?” but needed to hear her say he would.
“And why? No idea,” he shrugs.
Same deal his breakdown in that field.
“When my mind,” he says, “was everywhere.”
But the way Wilson, eventually, and after more than a little pain, won out, is also what has him now readying to go beat the odds again Saturday.
That, and continuing an Aussie underdog story which has also seen promoters Matt and George Rose gamble an estimated $1 million on him.
Wilson v Rueda – Full fight highlights | 06:14
Understanding that when this No Limit poster boy stared up at those arena lights some 18 months ago, his budgeted path to the top was effectively set in flames.
While not going into specifics, No Limit CEO George Rose says the costs involved with flying Noynay and his team out a second time, and for a Brisbane card effectively built around Wilson, was just the start of an outlay that overall, and most recently culminating in a two-month training camp traversing both Washington DC and London, has all added up to somewhere close to $1 million.
“And Liam, he took that Noynay loss harder than any fighter I’ve known,” says Rose, himself in Arizona this week for the world title showdown.
So as for how the fighter convinced you to roll the dice?
“He didn’t need to convince us,” Rose says simply. “We see something special in him.
“Yes, he’s got an incredibly tough fight coming, there’s no sugar coating that.
“Liam is fighting a Mexican warrior who hasn’t lost in more than a decade. Is at longer odds than even Jeff Horn before beating Manny Pacquiao.
“But we’ve invested in him for a reason … and the world is about to find out exactly why.”
Elsewhere, the Rose boys can tell you how even at his lowest, Wilson has kept grinding.
Take, for example, when everyone was ringing in the 2022 New Year, and this now 26-year-old was out in his garage, alone, and churning through a brutal workout all body weight, assault bike and shadow boxing.
Same as on that night he lost to Noynay, and Matt Rose visited his hotel room, the fighter made a promise he has spent every day since keeping.
“My head was all over place that night,” Wilson recalls. “So it’s hard to recollect our exact conversation.
“But I do remember looking at Matt and saying “you signed a fighter, let me f … ing prove that”.
So fight, Wilson has.
A truth confirmed when you ask head coach Ben Harrington how he felt in the corner that night his young charge was dropped, and stopped?
“Like discovering Santa Claus isn’t real,” the trainer deadpans.
“I’ve never spoken about it publicly before because, those eight months that followed, mate, horrible.
“Not because Liam had lost – I understood he could lose – but it was the way he lost. I’d never seen him hurt like that before.
“Liam had never even lost with me in his corner.
“Not through 37 amateur fights or 10 more as a professional.
“So I started questioning myself: ‘Am I up to this? Should I be shutting the gym down?’”
You considered closing the gym?
“I believe in Liam more than I do myself,” Harrington continues.
“Even when he was an amateur, I was sending Instagram messages to guys like Andre Ward, saying ‘I’ve got this unbelievable kid, would you coach him?’
“I said ‘I’ll send him to you. Pay for it from my own pocket’. These messages I sent, and sent, and sent.
“(Laughs) Not that anybody responded.
“Then eventually Liam came to me, saying he wanted to win a world title with just the one team. So every waking hour since I’ve been trying to lift my game.”
Same deal his charge.
Which is how, together, they rebounded from the darkness of that Noynay loss.
With Wilson not only putting everything into his ensuing three fight camps, but every sparring round, every road run and every lonely grind on that assault bike in his garage.
“Because there’s only one way out of a hole like that,” Harrington shrugs. “You fight.”
Pushed on the battles which culminated with him laying in that field, Wilson explains: “There was no running from what I was about to face.
“This was a guy who’d knocked me out. So what if he does it again?
“What happens to me? What the f … happens?”
It got worse, too.
With Wilson having become so consumed by all things Noynay, he lay in that field wondering if even his beautiful partner Courtney was set to leave him.
“Or more if I was forcing her to walk away,” he explains.
“In the months after that first loss, I’d become a terrible partner. A s … father.
“Wasn’t even acknowledging my kids.
“I’d become the one person I never wanted to be.”
Yet as he lay in that grass with the minutes ticking by – “and how long I was there, no idea,” he shrugs — Wilson finally had what he calls now a “reset moment”.
“I started thinking about the great boxing champions,” he says.
“Started thinking about how many of them had lost fights, then taken a rematch and won. I thought about how they all would’ve battled exactly the same thoughts I was having right then — and beaten them.
“That’s when I knew I had to get over it all.
“I remember telling myself: ‘What you’re going through now, it’s a feeling. That’s it. And how do you become a champion if you can’t overcome that’.”
Again, reset button.
With Wilson, weeks later, not only ending Noynay in two, but with that signature left hook he admits has become “my money shot”.
But you want to know a secret?
“I couldn’t use my left hand for three, maybe four months afterwards,” he says.
Huh?
“Dunno what happened,” the fighter continues. “But I must’ve done some tendon or ligament damage because my hand, it was so sore.
“Couldn’t use it for ages.
“So who knows how things play out if he fights on?”
Yet Noynay didn’t fight on. Couldn’t.
‘Oh my GOODNESS! What a shot!’ | 00:33
Pushed on the punch that changed everything, Wilson says: “In that moment, I was so deep in thought.
“First fight, I landed the hook a few times but never placed it properly.
“Second time around though, I got my distance right quickly.
“And I remember thinking ‘OK, this is it, this left hook is gunna be it’.
“Then, I just put f … ing everything into it.
“Excuse my language, but I actually closed my eyes and thought ‘this is it’.”
Which it was.
Not only the punch that ended Noynay, revived a career, vanquished demons or, unsurprisingly, sat ringside, sent the Rose brothers into raptures, but proved exactly why Wilson is now readying to go shock the world this Saturday.
“Because that moment,” he says, “it’s proved I’m made for this.”
Watch Australia’s own Liam Wilson take his shot at the WBO super-featherweight title against Emanuel Navarrete Live and Free Feb 4 on Kayo Freebies. Join now and start streaming instantly >
