“April 6, 2021, I will be tidy for two years. It’s true, even though I’ve finished rehab, I’m still recovering. I still have dreams and wake up in the middle of the night thinking I lost a lot of money on bets.

Boxing without crowds has become the recent norm during the pandemic, but for Ted Cheeseman, the biggest fight of his life took much longer behind closed doors.

In a brutally forthright account of his journey over the past two years, Cheeseman joins James Lupton for a candid interview where he reflects on his recovery from addiction.

Cheeseman was 20 when he won his professional debut, stopping Gabor Ambrus in two rounds at the o2 arena following the victory of Anthony Joshua vs Gary Cornish.

However, the battle of his life began when he was just 17 years vintage, and Ted battled this demon for six years.

“I see people talking about their friends who let this get to them and I think, How could I have ever lived in that bubble for so long?

“From 17 to 23, it was a lifestyle. It wasn’t just a hobby. It was like boxing was a hobby and gambling was my career.

“It’s crazy to think about it.”

A day in the life of a boxer is very strict, almost regimental. A routine ingrained in their brains and a tunnel vision of success. For the former British champion, his routine was very different when discussing his previous antics on proboxing-fans.com.

“On Saturday or Friday I could be at the bookmaker until 10:00, do my job well, and then I’ll call my lady and tell her to get ready, I’ll take her to Aspersa [Casino].

“I would book her into a hotel and tell her I’d be back in a few hours and I wouldn’t be back at the hotel until about 6 or 7 in the morning, I’d made another load of money. I’m sitting there with my head in my hands thinking, what am I supposed to do?

“I just kept doing it over and over again. It’s crazy. I think back to when I was 21 and I went to Blackpool with my wife.

“Of course, during the day you have the theme parks and you can eat a little bit, but there was a gigantic casino there and I immediately said, ‘Let’s go there,’ and I immediately did everything I had to do, again.”

As his addiction grew and encroached upon Ted’s life, his mental health began to deteriorate, and negative, and then morbid, thoughts emerged and persisted.

“I thought, what is my life? What am I doing with my life? I finally got to the point where I didn’t want to make money, because whatever money I made, I knew it was going to last. The problem wasn’t the lack of money, it was me, I couldn’t control the addiction.

“I hated boxing, I even hated life in general. I even got to the point where I thought, what’s the point in boxing, because what I earn in boxing, I’m just going to gamble, so I might as well be a real loser and earn nothing.

“Those were the thoughts I had, it’s crazy that I had those thoughts, sometimes I said to myself what’s the meaning of life, I might as well kill myself.”

As an alcoholic or drug addict, you have observable signs of addiction, but gambling is an addiction that you can mask. Only those who witnessed it sensed it, but no one could stop it. Only Ted could do it.

“I hit rock bottom. They say when you’re addicted, that’s when you get support. Until I hit rock bottom, which I did [Sergio Garcia] fight, I thought my career might be over, that’s when I decided I needed support.

“The night of the Garcia fight, I knew I had no more money from the fight and I owed [trainer] Tony [Sims] money from tickets and other things.

“I thought to myself, all I want is to win this fight to get a world title eliminator and then I’ll get a lot of money, that’s all I thought about. It’s become like you don’t care about your career, you care about her [money].”

That fateful night in 2019 was the final straw, and the 25-year-old had to speak out. The first defeat of his professional career was a blessing in disguise.

“If I had never spoken to Tony after the Garcia fight, would have had another fight, sold all the tickets again and spent the entire purse before I even fought and got beaten again, that would have been the end of my career!

“But I came out and admitted it. The most significant thing is to admit the problem. People would often say to me, ‘Why are you doing this, why are you wasting all this money?’ I would just say, ‘It’s my money, I earn it. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do with my money if I want to spend every penny on gambling!’ But what do you do when you can’t earn more money?

“Until you understand addiction, you don’t know how to deal with it. A lot of people tell me, ‘Why are you gambling, you’re wasting your money,’ not, ‘Why are you gambling, you could ruin your mental health, you’re going to ruin your life.’ It all goes straight to the financial side, not to the problems it can cause.”

The next step for the super welterweight was rehabilitation. A chance to overcome this battle and win the war.

Now, two years after filling out his last coupon, the signs of addiction in others are crystal clear to Ted, and he now understands addiction, something he thanks his time in rehab for.

“I see it now in every aspect because when we were in rehab, we did AA meetings, drug meetings, all the meetings because it was a mix of people, so you see all the aspects of different addictions and how some addictions can lead to others.

“It’s crazy to see how it’s destroying people’s lives. If you don’t catch it at the right time, it’s going to affect you.

“Now I can control it, I think to myself, how could I ever get into that state of mind?! You see people do it with alcohol, drugs, food, and all sorts of things, and that’s a really bad way to be.”

Bermondsey brawler gets second chance at boxing career. Now committed to the sport, Cheeseman takes his obsessive, addictive traits and uses them to his advantage.

“The person I was back then, compared to the person I am today, is completely different, even the fighter I am now because I really want to box.

“Now that I’m in camp, I’m totally focused on boxing. I have to be in bed at a certain time, I have to take my vitamins at a certain time, I have to eat at a certain time, and it’s an addiction because I have an addictive personality.

There is earnest money to be made in British Championship boxing and above. Anyone recovering from addiction is at risk of relapse.

Ted is motivated not by money but by success.

“It’s not the financial aspect that hurts you, because you can make money your whole life in this or that career. It’s the mental aspect of it, whether it hurts what you’re trying to achieve. If it hurt my boxing career too much, before there was no turning back, if I didn’t admit I was an addict, I would have been ruined.”

“Although the purse has to match, I’m not fighting for money, I’m fighting to go as far as I can. Obviously you have to make sure you’re taking the right money for the fights because it’s a business, but as long as I can live and have a decent life and my family can have a decent life.

“I want to try and achieve as much as I can. When I started boxing and I was addicted to gambling, I didn’t care about boxing, I just cared about getting as far as I could as quickly as I could and making as much money as I could.

The revival continues on March 6th when Ted fights for the British title he once lost when he faces JJ Metcalf in the Dillian Whyte vs. Alexander Povetkin rematch, in a fight that for him is more than just a fight.

“It means a lot because it’s part of the recovery. When I started to recover, I lost my belt [in a fight] that I felt I didn’t deserve to fail. Now I get a chance [to win it back]it’s like I’m a little lucky now to be offered a fight and a chance to get my belt back.

“I’m glad I got out of that situation, now I have a very good life and I’m enjoying my career again.”

Redemption is in full swing for Ted as he is in good shape both mentally and physically. Life now begins for Cheeseman.