HAMZAH SHEERAZ will almost drag his family out an £800,000 debt on Saturday night that they willingly risked to fund his boxing career. The 25-year-old Ilford middleweight captained the Frank Warren promotional team that battered Eddie Hearn’s flops 10-0 in June. And his ruthless double-bubble stoppage of American Ammo Williams earned him an ambassadorial role with Saudi boxing supremo Turki Alalshikh, who is bankrolling these Riyadh Season spectaculars all around the world.
Casual fans will assume a few televised shows and a sparring session with Justin Bieber will have made Sheeraz a multimillionaire already. But, unlike the young Premier League players they see on the same TNT and Sky channels, the slog is far harder and more expensive than those of the Prem pups who get a gilded existence before hitting the big time. And Saturday’s Wembley stadium battle with classy Midlands southpaw Tyler Denny will just about cover the crippling debt his courier dad took on to set his son on his way to greatness, He told SunSport: “I have never given this figure out to anyone before but - I am 25 now and from the age of 18, when I first turned pro - the debt we got into was about £800,000, in the red.
“Nobody would believe me, but we are still clearing some of that debt now. “Every penny of it was invested into me and I didn’t understand it at the time, but my dad just told me I had to take a punt on myself, he told me I had to do it. “He put every penny he had ever save.