Deion Jumah: ‘I still believe I can beat Richard Riakporhe now’ | ‘Mikael Lawal doesn’t know what he’s getting into’ | Boxing News

“Do I want to lose my eye?”

It was a question Deion Jumah had to ask himself. Three years ago he suffered an injury that almost brought his boxing career to a premature end.

He had torn his retina. There was a procedure he could have to fix it but it was still a terrible risk.

“I was very, very close to losing my eye and this operation that I’m going to have is going to make you see better but they were saying, ‘You can’t be getting hit anymore. You can’t be sparring anymore, otherwise you will lose your eye.’ And I had to get second and third opinions about this statement,” Jumah told Sky Sports.

These were questions he had to confront. “Is this all worth it? Have I got anything from this sport that is worth losing my eye? The answer at the time was no,” he said.

“I did think: Am I being selfish? Why am I doing this? For what? I don’t understand why I’m doing this, it’s just been this selfish pursuit of something I wanted for so long. Is it about the money? No, is it about fame or recognition? No. It’s something inside.

“Is it some sort of self-validation? Probably. A lot of questions, why do I do this and should I keep doing it? Is it healthy for me or the people around me? But here I am. Still doing it.”

The operation was a success. “If you’re squeamish it was bad,” he said. “You’re awake the whole operation. They’ve got a scalpel in your eye. You can kind of see everything. You can see different lights, your head’s in this brace and they tape open your eyes.

“My eye is now stronger than a normal person’s eye,” he added. “Your eyeball’s got something inside it called vitreous fluid and in some people this fluid, it starts to go jelly-like.

“The older you get the more jelly-like it becomes. For some people, it happens a bit prematurely, like mine did. It becomes jelly-like and it starts pulling at your retina. So what they’ve done with mine is they’ve taken all the vitreous fluid out and replaced it with saline water so now it doesn’t pull at all. So my eye essentially is less likely to detach than a normal eye that hasn’t had the surgery.”

He had to fight though just to get his licence to box reinstated. “Having to deal with not being able to fight was much harder than dealing with a loss and dealing with a loss is hard,” he explained.

“I had to enter a zone that I’d never entered before. Boxing is a zone of determination but I had to go to places I’d never been before.

“I spent two years chasing this licence.”

He finally got it back. Then an opportunity arose that he couldn’t turn down – a fight with rising cruiserweight Richard Riakporhe. “I got that licence about two months before I was offered the Riakporhe fight. So you can imagine I wasn’t really in full-time training,” he said.

“I took it on wholeheartedly, believed it was a sign,” he laughed.

He acquitted himself well in that contest, stopped after a competitive eight rounds with Riakporhe.

“What I was asking from myself was a big ask after so many years out against a formidable opponent, who’s been in and beaten a lot of the best British fighters about. I believed I was going to win, I believed I could win, I still believe I can beat him now,” Jumah said.

“We’ve been training ever since. I don’t think we’ve really taken our foot off the gas,” he continued. “It was a good loss, I knew what I had to work on, physically, mentally, everything.

“It was the best thing that happened to me at such a horrible time in my life.”

Jumah intends to fight his way to the top of the division and, he hopes, an eventual rematch with Riakporhe. On November 27 he will meet another London rival, Mikael Lawal, in a British title fight.

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“I just know that isn’t 100 per cent the real Deion that [Riakporhe] fought on that night and I think he knows that as well and I would love that fight again. So this fight against Lawal is very important because when you’re calling for a rematch, like I will be doing, I feel like the general public need to see that, okay, this is the real deal,” Jumah said.

“Just looking forward to righting my wrongs, performing the best I can on fight night and seeing what’s next.”

While a Riakporhe rematch is unlikely to be in his immediate future, if he’s victorious he would willingly make a title defence against another Londoner, Isaac Chamberlain.

“We want the big fights,” Jumah said. “I know Isaac Chamberlain’s saying he wants that fight with me. So I’ll take that.

“It’s a good fight and that’s a fight I’ve wanted for a long time.”

All those future hopes hinge on beating Mikael Lawal on November 27. Jumah is confident.

“I saw in his last fight that he has no clue what he’s doing against a southpaw opponent. Obviously, that’s going to work in my advantage in a big way, not only because I’m a southpaw but because of the unorthodox way in which I move,” he said.

That movement saw him brought in as a sparring partner for Anthony Joshua when the then heavyweight champion was preparing for his first fight against Oleksandr Usyk.

“It was all very conditioned. I think they liked my movement in comparison and preparation for Usyk,” he said. “I haven’t been around them since the GB days, so we go way back.”

Jumah was a top amateur but has had a long, tortuous journey to finally reach this British title fight.

“I have fought,” he said, “to get in these positions. From my amateur days, I’m a two-time ABA champion. I’ve fought for the Southern Area title, I won that shot, fought for the English title, I fought a British title eliminator, against good opponents by the way, so I’m fighting Sam Hyde in a British title eliminator, in Manchester, to get these opportunities.

“While Lawal is so entitled he thinks he deserves these things for absolutely no reason. It’s a shame but he’s going to get what he deserves.

“He’s probably banking on his punch power but I’m going to show him there’s more to it than that.”