Elliot Worsell speaks to the IBF super-lightweight champion after his away win in Puerto Rico
YOU work hard for 12 weeks, work even harder for 12 rounds, and then suddenly it stops. The work stops, the fight stops, and all you can do in the end is hope that you have come away with the result you deserve; the result that befits all the hard work.
For Australia’s Liam Paro, currently relaxing in Las Vegas, the abrupt halting of action and of work has been every bit as jarring as it has been welcome. It all stopped, as expected, the moment his hand was raised following 12 rounds in the company of Subriel Matias last month. Since then, he has been doing his best – first in the Bahamas, and now Las Vegas – to resist the temptation to return to work and restore himself to his factory setting.
“It’s still sinking in really but it’s getting more and more real each day,” he told Boxing News from his hotel room in Vegas. “We did a week in the Bahamas, me and my partner, and that was just to wind down and relax. I was on the seafood diet and it was good. It was a hard 12-week camp and now I’m just kicking back.
“It’s exciting, you know? It’s been 10 days [since the fight] and I’m now ready for the next one.”
June 15, 2024; Manati, Puerto Rico, USA; Subriel Matias and Liam Paro during their fight at Coliseo Juan Aubín Cruz Abreu in Manati, Puerto Rico. Mandatory Credit: (Photo by Amanda Westcott/Matchroom.)
For the “next one” Liam Paro will enter the ring the same but different. That is to say, he will bring to the ring the same work ethic and attitude as usual only this time, and for the first time, will be boosted by the addition of an IBF super-lightweight belt, his prize for outpointing Matias, the favourite, in Puerto Rico on June 15.
“I always dreamed of being a world champion,” he said. “Even when I was 13 years old, I was sitting up on the bench telling my mum I was going to be world champion. I think that was after my first year of boxing and I had only had a handful of amateur fights. Everything I do, I always aim as high as I can. I try to dream as big as I can. Aim for the stars and hit the moon. I’ve always taken that approach.”
At 13, he gave his mother his word. Not long after that, he gave his word to someone else. This person, a close childhood friend of Paro’s, had tragically taken his own life in 2015 at the age of just 18. His name was Regan Grieve and it was to him that Paro’s first world title was dedicated.
“We were best mates growing up and he was always around,” explained Paro, who has Regan’s initials, birth date and death date, as well as the words “Conquer the World”, tattooed on his ribs. “The worst day of my life was carrying my best friend in his casket.”
He continued: “That’s what I refer to when I say that I have been through harder things mentally than these fights. I always tend to find a positive in everything and use that for motivation. There are times when you have to dig deep and I tend to think about that. He was my best mate; like my brother. It was a massive loss. It’s not ideal, you don’t really want that to happen in life, but you just have to use it as motivation and try to find a positive in every outcome, no matter how hard it is. That’s what I try to do every day.”
With this heaviness for so long with him, both in his heart and on his mind, the performance of Paro in Puerto Rico becomes all the more impressive. After all, aside from having the engine and output to keep the home fighter at bay, Paro had to also keep his emotions in check and ensure that he never veered too far from the game plan he had constructed in camp.
“You can’t be emotional, and you don’t want to be wasting any more energy than you have to,” he said. “But I’m always pretty good with the pressure. I always perform well under pressure. It was more after, when I got my hand raised, that all the emotion started flowing. You heard it in the post-fight interview with all the F-bombs; typical Aussie. But that was just raw emotion. All we’ve got in this life is our word and to be a man of mine is what really hits home. That’s the biggest thing for me in all this.”
Chris Hyde/Getty Images
Whether this is because Paro, though undefeated, is no stranger to setbacks, one can only speculate. But certainly the 28-year-old from Queensland has been impacted by his upbringing and won’t be the type to take anything for granted.
“I come from the working class and I’ve been brought up like that,” he said. “Nothing good in life comes easy and I know that. You’ve got to work for the things you want and that’s why I can keep humble. I was brought up knowing the importance of respect and respect is a big thing for me. Being part of a hard-working family has shaped me into the person I am today and I think you also see that on fight night in the way that I fight.”
Also influencing the way he trains and fights, albeit on a smaller scale, is Paro’s grounding in rugby league. This, in fact, was the first sport to which Paro gravitated as a young boy and something to which he was fully committed until boxing came along and stole his heart.
“I was doing both until Under 16s and then they just didn’t go hand in hand,” he recalled. “I was losing weight for fighting and the people I was playing with and against [in rugby] were getting bigger and bigger. I just had to make the pick in the end and boxing was a no-brainer for me.
“You definitely get a kind of ruggedness from it [rugby league]. It’s a hard game. It’s flat-out. It’s hard contact. It just gets you in that mindset early. But the competitiveness of boxing was what grabbed me and I’m glad I picked boxing in the long run. I had a bit of natural talent for it. I was very green, but once I have my mind on something I’ll just be obsessed with it and, with boxing, I still am to this day. I’m always learning new things.”
Even now, as a new world champion, Liam Paro’s education is far from over. It’s for that reason he wants to get back in the gym as soon as possible, despite the lure of Las Vegas and its bright lights. It’s also the reason why he has already watched and studied his most recent victory on tape – more than once.
“Yeah,” he said, “I have watched it back a few times now. I watched it properly for the first time two days after and it was good. I was happy with the way I fought and a lot of people were stoked. I’m still getting my head around it, the magnitude of it all, but we showed the world what we knew.
“It’s always a little bit different [watching it back]. It was a hard fight, for sure. I was very puffed in there. But I knew it was going to be hard going in. Matias was a tremendous champion and his record speaks for itself. He could bang, too. It was a perfect way to win a title, I believe. Watching it back I was happy with the way I fought.”
More than just bathing in his own brilliance, Paro will rewatch his win over Matias to figure out what he did well and what, given the chance to do it again, he could do better. Moreover, like a scriptwriter seeing their dialogue get brought to life by actors on screen, Paro receives a thrill seeing everything he and his team worked on for 12 weeks come to fruition when it mattered most.
“We knew what we were getting into,” he said. “We knew it was going to be a high-paced fight, and we knew how Matias fought. We just stuck to the game plan and the game plan we had worked perfectly. I executed it how I needed to in order to get it done.
“I knew he was coming on in the middle rounds, but I was building confidence as the rounds went on. He did have power, yeah, but not the one-punch power to spark me out. I realized that the longer the fight went. I was then building momentum as a result. I expected him to be powerful, of course, but from watching his fights I also realized that he wasn’t a one-punch guy; it is more accumulation.
“He just usually overwhelms guys and sticks to you like a bad smell. He doesn’t give you space if you don’t move. I thought he was going to punch a lot more, but the game plan we had was good. I didn’t set. That was the plan going in. You see all the other fighters stand in front of him and then, once you let him set his feet and tee off, he does damage and it gets pretty ugly. We never let him do that.”
Following this act of disobedience Paro must now do as he is told and stay away from the gym for the foreseeable future. It is his reward – also, his punishment – for performing so well on his biggest night and training so hard beforehand. It is, they say, a necessary part of his recovery, the comedown. Yet try telling that to someone who knows only one speed; someone whose hunger has never been greater than it is right now.
“I’m keen to get back in the gym, for sure,” Paro said. “Everyone around me is telling me to just relax a bit, but it’s hard for me to sit still. I’m just keen to get the next belt and the next opponent locked in. I’m happiest when I’m training in the gym, so I’m hoping for a quick turnaround. I just want to fight the other guys with belts now. I think that’s the plan. [Devin] Haney was an opponent we were targeting, but he has just relinquished his [WBC] belt, which means I’ll have to focus on others. I’m happy to go on the road and try to unify this division. This is a high I want to keep chasing.”