Frazer Clarke: From Olympic captain to novice pro, 'Big Fraze' is starting out all over again

Frazer Clarke won a bronze medal in Tokyo last summer

In 2016, Frazer Clarke chose to gamble. The big heavyweight from Burton went to Rio de Janeiro, but only as a sparring partner, having missed out on the Olympics in Brazil.

It left him with a difficult decision to make. Should he turn professional then, or stay with the GB Boxing programme and try to avoid history repeating itself at the Tokyo Games?

The question, he explained, was: "Do you want to go and do things the hard way?

"You'll get there because you're a good fighter, you know what you're doing. You might change your life. Then I got asked, do you want to change your kids' life, your mum and dad's life, your brother and sister's life, their kids' lives? In that case, you stay 'til the Olympics, you get a medal and you work hard."

Clarke, 30, added: "I've done exactly that."

The platform an Olympic medal gives a boxer, particularly a heavyweight, can be transformative. But Clarke had to commit years of work to that dream, when nothing was certain.

Clarke qualified for the Tokyo Olympics and secured a bronze medal, signing a professional deal on his return. His first professional bout is set for the undercard of Amir Khan v Kell Brook this weekend - the gamble has paid off.

"It's what I wanted," Clarke said. "This is how the decision went - if I go to Tokyo and I get a medal, it's a great decision. If I didn't get that medal, it would have been a nightmare."

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When the pandemic saw the 2020 Olympics postponed for a year, Clarke worried he had made a major miscalculation. "You're just thinking everything's against you," he said.

"Qualifying for the Olympics was probably the best feeling out of the lot of it. That was probably the best single moment of my career. Getting the medal around my neck was fantastic and I loved it, I loved boxing at the Olympics, but qualifying was next level.

"That feeling is one I'd go back to in a second."

Qualifying came after years of adversity. Having overcome injuries including being the victim of a stabbing he was also among a group of boxers who had been in Parliament and witnessed first-hand the Westminster terror attack in 2017.

"It was terrible," said Clarke. "I've come through some bad things in my life. Some bad times. Some deep, dark times.

"As boxers, to do this sport, you've got to have that little strange thing about you anyway. This is not a sport for the normal person. This is a sport for people that do things a little bit different. I think we get on with it."

Through those tough times, Clarke was also discovering something about himself. He was a leader.

Appointed captain of the Olympic boxing team, he was never one to bark orders. Rather, Clarke was their cheerleader-in-chief and supported each member of the group with unbridled enthusiasm.

"Once upon a time, I was a bit shy and a bit in myself. As you get older and mature, you find your voice, you find your reason," he said. "When I have team-mates in the gym I try to lead by example. I'll fight everyone's corner no matter what.

"There was never ever a time where, if one of my team-mates was fighting, I wasn't the loudest. All the other countries used to get so [annoyed] with me because for nine minutes I'd be screaming trying to encourage [GB's fighters].

"I never wanted any props for it, I just did it because I thought it was the right thing to do."

He was doing something right. With their 11-member squad securing six medals overall in Japan, he led Britain's most successful Olympic boxing team in a hundred years.

Afterwards, Clarke could finally spend uninterrupted time with his daughter and baby son, born shortly before his Olympic qualifier.

"I didn't really get to see him much for the first three months of his life," he added. "These are the sacrifices that had to be made to get what I got. Now it's put me in the position I'm in and, ultimately, it's all for their future.

"My daughter's at the age now where she can look at YouTube. She often wants to watch her dad so I want her to see good things coming out of my mouth and I want to set a good example for her and my son.

"He's only eight months old but I want him to do the same when he gets a lot older. I'm still myself, I'm still me. The kids are my world now so it does change things a little bit. But don't think that's made me go soft."

As a professional boxer he starts all over again on Saturday night. "I'm bottom of the pack again now, I've got to climb the ladder," he admits.

"I'm not claiming to be the next coming of Roy Jones Junior or Muhammad Ali, I'm Frazer Clarke.

"I want to try to get to the top, like I did in the amateurs, in the professional game. That's it, that's me."