5 Live Boxing with Steve Bunce - In Conversation with Hamzah Sheeraz

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Is Hamzah Sheeraz on his way to becoming one of Britain’s most decorated fighters? Fresh from his devastating fifth-round knockout of Edgar Berlanga in New York, Buncey sits down with the 26-year-old super middleweight to talk Canelo rumours, that unforgettable night at Flushing Meadows, and growing up idolising Amir Khan. Plus, discover how former Chelsea star Eden Hazard played a surprise role in Sheeraz’s journey to the pros.

This is Five Live Boxing. Let's end this crazy summer of boxing. We have a change of pace because this summer we have been all over the globe. We have covered some exceptional fights in some fantastic venues. And one of them was the Tennis Center in New York, where we saw Hamza Chiras destroy Edgar Belanga. And Belanga had it coming, as they say, in the trade. So I sat down with Hamza Chiras.

Tea, coffee, cut. Waitress Service, Glorious Hotel. As I say, it's a change of pace. I'm Steve Bunce, and this is Five Live Boxing. So in New York, let me explain. In the ring, Hamza Shires had ruined Edgar Belanga. It was a very joyful fight. It was also devastating.

And I waited patiently outside the medical room for an hour. It was gone midnight. Hamza was still in there trying to do a sample or whatever he was doing in there. Then the next morning, I waited patiently, but Hamza was kipping. He's allowed to kip. They had to get on the plane.

So it's been a few weeks since I've sat down with him. Hamza, first of all, let's go back to New York. Let's start with New York and we work our way back. You and I talked before the fight. I said, you win this. You become one of the hottest properties in boxing. You not only won it, you won it in style. And at the end, you went down on your knees and just screaming.

Yeah, no, it was a sense of relief? I don't know. I think it was more a sense of I answered my own questions from the fight previous. The world tried of fight before. previous and when we'd done the interview where you said you was going to be a superstar

and whatnot in all honesty I noticed I took no notice of it I shouldn't have really said that really because I was so I was zoned in but at the same time I was aware of my surroundings I was enjoying it it's the first fight week I've actually

even though I was on the receiving end of all that talking I was enjoying it was different New York America you can't get any bigger do you know what I mean and then to top it off the way I did you know what I mean?

did, in the fashion I did. Yeah, it was the icing on the cake. Could you, I mean, I got the sense at ringside, so maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but did you sense really early that Edgar Balangas sensed he'd made a mistake? Straight away. Yeah, straight away.

It was when I was looking at him across the ring. Teddy Atlas, he'd done a review after the fight, and he said one thing. He goes after Hamza fought Adamus. He learned a lot in that fight, and going into his next fight, even though he was fighting a big super middleweight, when he got in a ring, he'll look across at him and think,

it's nothing, and that's exactly what I thought. And when I was listening to Teddy, I was thinking, like he knew exactly what was going through my mind as he would because he's been around for donkeys years. But that's exactly what it was. When I got in a ring looked across, I thought he's a beaten man. And it was just a matter of physically beating him. Yeah, which you made, I hate to say this,

but you made it look easy. You picked your shots. I mean, I know it was your first fight with Andy. Yeah. You did look like a different fighter. And I don't know if I should say that because, you know, I don't want to disrespect previous trainers that have worked with you.

But there was just something a little bit sharper about, just something a little bit more focused. Do you know what? I think myself and Andy only had eight or nine weeks to work together. So there wasn't something I consider and say, yeah, we worked on this to win this fight. It was, he was fixing my balance, making boxing a lot simpler than the perception I had of it before.

I'm just enjoying it. Just enjoying it. And that's what it looked like all week. I mean, when Berlanger was trying to get in your face and throwing all that stuff at you and throwing all that stuff at, you know, Oscar Delahoy. You know what I mean? Throwing verbally and actually throwing physically.

Let's get that way. Let's do, before we go back to your youth and your childhood, and I'm intrigued by one or two things in there, age-wise, because I saw you with a mere Khan. Then I got to thinking you would have been six when he was at the Olympics. So were you watching, were you up in your living room, throwing punches? How old was that when I was in the ring?

So I was up when I was in the Olympics? his first 10 or however many fights in the UK. You would have been 7, 8, 9. 8, 9, yeah, 8, 9. So did you, were you, did you follow him here like that? Yeah, we used to go to all his fights. We used to go to all his fights. We used to the ones in the UK before he made the crossover to America.

He was there, I was there at the Gary St. Clair fight. I remember that one very clearly. Prescott fight was there. Wow. Yeah, so it was there. Up in Manchester, that was heartbreaking, man. But it's still getting up, wasn't he? Yeah, people forget that, man.

He was out cold, but still trying to get up. Exactly. When I saw you, you're sitting with Amir, you're sitting with a guy that was your hero. Yeah. It's like a 360 moment. Do you know what I mean? It's like a 360 moment. And I was talking about yesterday, funny enough, bouncing back from fights.

That's what we were talking about. And I told him, yeah, I was ringside at the Prescott fight. And kind of being in the, not in the same, but in a similar position he was, to them bounce back and he won what the world title, two fights after that. And then was in big fights. Exactly. So the concept of where I am now in my career is similar. But you didn't lose to Carlos Adams.

It was a draw. But I don't think you won the fight. And I don't think you think you won the fight. That's okay. But you learned from that fire. And that was the main thing. Yeah. At the time you think,

it's the end of the world. What am I going to do next? And then luckily, thanks to his excellency, Frank, Spencer and the team, I got the opportunity to do so. And there was a lot of... It was a big risk, if you don't know what I'm saying. You could have easily taken an easier fight and just had a blowout in two rounds.

And no disrespect, we wouldn't be having this half an hour and hour. No, we wouldn't have. We wouldn't have. And I was weighing up the options. I think, do I sit here, go up to Super Middleweight, take the easier fights and build the hype train again. Or do I just grab the ball by the horns, part of my French, but think, Kit. Did you know you could be Belanger? Yeah, I did.

I did. And you really knew? I didn't think it'd be as simple and as easy as it was. But you knew you could do it? I knew I could do it. I had a whole different perception of how the fight play out in my head before the first round. Okay. So yeah, back to what I was saying.

I thought, why not just go for it? I'm in a position here where my performance can't get any worse. Yeah. Unless I was to get sparked out. It can't get any worse. So let's just go for it. And the good thing is when I spoke to Andy about it, I had his backing. And he said, he goes, ideally, it's not the first fight we should be taken together,

but let's go for it and we both agreed and we've done a job. The whole sort of the way the Saudi Arabian business works and the influence of Turkey, His Excellency, Turkey, Alishake, as you call him. The way that works is that there are hard fights. There are no easy fights. No easy fights. No one comes back with a gimmie. Like they would have 10 years ago. Exactly.

And I've come to terms of that. I've come to terms of it. And the reason why I have as well, because. fighters are getting financially rewarded in all fairness in a very fair manner and that's the line yeah exactly and I think if he's giving us his all

we should give him his all and give the boxing public our all as well and just make the make the sport great again yeah I mean because traditionally you would have just come back with two easy ones and they would have found you some kind of W they would have found you something that was the plan that was the plan I remember sitting down with with Frank and George in the office

Before I knew I even had the Belanga fight on the table and we've said, all right, what we'd do is we'll get you on the Dubois Ousick undercard in Wembley, fight a top 10 contender and just two or three fights and you'll be up there in a mandatory position. And then three weeks after that, I got the phone call from his excellency.

And then I was like, all right, cool, we got this opportunity on table. Do I take, how do we do this? What way do I go about it? And I just stood on it. And you're old enough and big enough and ugly enough now to make. going decisions.

Yep. Yeah. One million percent. You're not, you're not, but in all fairness, you were 21 forever. No,

a minute, you know what I mean it? You were like, you were 18 or 19 when you turned pro. Yeah. And you seemed to be 21, for like five or six years.

It felt like that. It was a kid. Until you went on the run, the run that started in Poland. That was a great run of fights, you know, the whole series of fights. See, I thought

Liam Williams would give you a test. He didn't. I really thought Tyler Denny would give you a test. He didn't. And, I mean, that was, you made that,

That was a real shocking ending the way you walked through Tyler Denny for in the European. Yeah. I'm doing to go back. We talked there a little bit about watching him here, Khan,

then watching him as a pro. So how old are you when you first walked into a gym? First walked into a gym with my uncle eight years old. Okay. Eight years old, it was in Loughton

actually in Debden. I was actually at a football academy and they were at a gym opening. Walked in a gym with him. He used to do a bit of boxing himself. there was a number on the wall. He was a good fighter. Yeah, yeah, eight, nine time national champion.

I covered him in junior ABA, stuff like that. That's it, yeah. There was a number on the wall, called the number, and here we are today. It's as simple as that, I swear. That's that a last promise, yeah. And that was then. They kept going back to the gym, walked into the gym, and at the time, James DeGale was training, who was his coach?

Jim McDonald. That's it. And they used to, in Loudoun, yeah. And they used to use the gym as well. Okay, yeah. So the Louton Leisure Centre, whatever it was called, something like that. The Academy. The Academy, sorry, yeah.

And within the first two or three weeks, he was in there training with him. So I was like, oh, this is a bit tasty this. So your nine-year-old boy, trained. Eight-year-old boy looking at James de Gao, Olympic gold medalist, and watching him in the gym. Yeah. And now I think about it, it's crazy. It's crazy where I've come, where I was and where I've come from where I am now.

It's surreal. So were you dreaming? as a kid as a baby were you mocking up winning an Olympic gold medal in your bedroom in all honesty not at all no not at all at all and until i think i watched may of verrenhattan the uh what was it at hbill or showtime what was it the all access i don't know it was all access access all areas or whatever that's when i was like oh cool i'd like to i'd like to get there i'd like to get to that level be a be a world name did i actually believe it at the time no not really because when i hear a lot of fighters do interviews and they say yeah i knew

what's going to be a world champion. Half of it's all the facade. I'll be honest with you. Half of it's... And they're just not... They're just not honest enough to admit. Because you won and lost as an amateur, did you? You haven't got one of those careers

where you had 93 fights and lost twice and you reversed that. No, no, no. I had, I think, 100 odd fights, lost 15, 16 of them. Four are a good level. Yeah, yeah. But then after I was about 15, I just didn't care anymore. Just turn up.

If I get a fight or a fight or fight, Or if I win or lose, it doesn't matter. It just gives me something to do. So do we nearly lose you at 15, 16? It was, no, I stopped at 16 because I've done the electrical apprenticeship. Because I was meant to go to the Commonwealth Games. Didn't get picked. And I was like, oh, forget this.

So from 16 to 17, I was on boxing. Did you not box at all? No, I wasn't boxing. Let's have a look here. I got a great picture here of you as a child with Amir Khan looking like he's only about 10 years. You see that? Look at that. Look. It's unbelievable, man.

Yeah, mad that Look at that Crazy Amir's being a good man For British boxing He's been a great man For British Asian boxers Yeah

I mean as a British boxer He's been uplifting But inside Inside his community He's been massive I was at his wedding Which was Oh was you there?

Yeah Yeah Were you there as well I mean that was When he arrived It was more of a concert Isn't it? You know that

That whole That whole Muslim Tradition I mean, there were thousands in there. I mean, thousands and thousands. It was some of it, eh? It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, it really was, yeah.

Hamz, you said there you walked away for a year or so. So what brought you back? My ego. My ego brought me back. I was working in an apartment. I think it was Eden Hazard's apartment in Chelsea. Working an electrician? Yep, fixing his sockets, fixing his lights.

And then I realized it's his apartment. And I thought, well, my figure. in his sockets and lights when I could have this. You know what I mean? It's a good apartment. Yeah, it was beautiful. And then ego kicked in, and then that was it. That was my last day of work.

And did you get, seriously? That's it. That's it. That's it. I didn't know what I was going to do, so out of boredom, I just went back into the gym, worked back into boxing gym. Did you gain much weight? Had you trained, had you become a man, so I didn't.

I was, what was I weighing? Around 65 kilos, so I wasn't, I didn't really put up much weight. I was still much in, like, a skinny, I'm still a skinny now, but a teenage frame. And then walked back into the boxing gym, started training with Lenny at the time. And then Dominic Niggas had Boy Jones Jr. And Sanjeev Sahota at the time.

And I was just on the bags and he goes, oh, we'd like to use you for sparring. All right, whatever, no problem. So we walked back in the next day, start sparring them. And then it became a regular thing. It became a regular thing for about two or three weeks. Okay. And then they were going over to Spain where they were based up.

Sanjeev's still there now, yeah. Doing their camps. And they asked me, oh, would you like to come over and be a sparring partner for us in Spain? Let's do it. I'm doing nothing. You're living a different life straight away.

Literally, like, within three weeks, within three weeks. And then at the time, whoever was managing, I can't remember. Ben linked me with Frank. And then we started having conversations. And it was very simple, to be fair. It was, do you want a contract? Yep, here we go on him.

And somewhere in there was, how many tickets can you say? sell. Yeah, and how many tickets you sell? Especially for your debut.

And we done a massive signing on my 18th birthday over in Elford. And yes, I'm a contract on my 18th.

And you did sell tickets when you start. I mean, I remember the debut wherever it was copper box or whatever.

Yeah. There was loads. I mean, you had loads and loads of family at ringside. And I don't know if your mum was there

for that one, but I always have this image of you leaning out that the first person you were allowed to congratulate you would be your mother. She went there, but she's always,

always the first one on the phone after the fight. Yeah, exactly, yeah. It's always the first one you talk to. Always. So, yeah, it's just a nice feeling to have, do I mean, when you've done your business in the ring and you know as soon as you get back in training, your mum's on the phone. So at what point then, with those early pro fights?

And by the way, they weren't all on big shows. You went unboxed the Hilton, sort of hotels at Heathrow. Yeah. And there's on different little shows, Lee Eaton shows. You know, you weren't just strictly, Frank, you know, seventh on the card on Frank Warren Bill selling. You were quite, you were quite, you were quite low. key in some events.

At what point did you start to dream then? What point did you allow yourself to, if not daydream, but just thinking, you know what? Yeah. You know, I might get that Eden had a hazard flat at the way this is going. In all honesty, it was a bit late. It was after the Liam Williams fight.

Wow. Yeah, it was after Liam Williams fight. So it's a couple of fights into the run. Yep. Before that, it was, you're fighting, no disrespect to whoever was fighting at the time, but area-level fighters. And I was aware of that.

But I think where fighters start to get a little bit dissolution is when they fight area-level fighters on world title bills. Yeah, because you're looking at the guys. Do you know what I mean? You start to think, all right, cool, I'm a bit of a superstar here. But it wasn't until the Liam Williams fight. It wasn't because I knew that I was in a fight with a serious, serious fighters, fought for world titles, never been stopped.

Tough as Nels. And then I dismantled him in the way I did. And I spoke to Liam before that fight. And again, I've covered him through British title fights, highs and lows. And I had no idea that he was going to get beat like that. Yeah. No, I mean, so to, so don't anyone ever tell you.

Even the, even the mitrafano fight before that, I knew, like, it was a... That was the fight in Poland. Yeah, he wasn't an area level fight. It was a great fighter. But then when I see him and how small he was, I thought there's no way that this is even going to be competitive. No, let me ask you about the Amma Williams fight. It was Amma Williams.

It was in Saudi Arabia. Amma Williams was unbeaten. He was definitely one of Eddie Hearns prospects. He was one of global boxing's prospects. It was 11th or 10th round. You were winning, but it was a proper fight at half fight. That to me, I mean, I don't know what you think. That to me was the fight that really maybe show him other people.

Hold on a minute. This kid's not just freakishly tall with a good jab and a good right hand. He's done the business of ammo and broke ammo's half. Yeah. And that was the first fight in which I answered a few questions. Yeah. So you answer questions to yourself? Yeah, and the public's going to terms of can he come back from being hurt? Can he go the distance?

Yeah. What's his heart and desire like? Exactly. Exactly. And that fight, the reason why I was so comfortable with it was because it went out, it went exactly how I played it out in my head. What visualization? Yeah, visualization. It went out more or less exactly how I thought it'd go anyway. I knew there'd be a moment in that fight where I could get hurt because he's an explosive fight. He's very, very explosive. young, strong, hungry. So in that fight, I'd almost already been there. So there was no surprises.

You talked there about answering questions yourself, and I said heart and desire. Is it possible, do you think, for a fighter, he can be unbelievably confident? But if he knows he hasn't been in that hard fight, he won't really know how he's going to react. I mean, you can say, oh, I'll never quit. You can say I'll never do this.

You can say, I'll fight until I'm carried out the ring. But you don't know, do you? Until it actually happens, Sam. Is that fair comment? I'm thinking about Daniel Dubois a little bit here. 100%. And my kind of experience of that was against Adamis. That was where the hand went in the fourth or fifth round,

lost all their middle rounds, come back in the last two rounds. And at the time, I was saying it was, it was a sense of disaster. It was like, oh, what's going on here? not being on the receiving end of, I'm not being on this end of... What's happening there?

Why hasn't he fallen over? Exactly. Exactly. And I still stuck it out to the end. And then when I spoke to Andy, he always said it, he goes, listen, that fight there, he goes, even though you didn't perform best,

he goes, it was a gut check. He goes, he was there from round one to round 12. Yeah, yeah. Against a big, big puncher, as though a strong puncher, a physical fighter. He goes, so the gut check's always there. He goes, that's a box ticked. So when I looked at it from his perspective

and that perspective, it was like it done me a world of justice. When you watch that fight back, I mean, there are rounds when you just don't seem to connect. You just like go through them. And I think that was, obviously, we know about how bad the hand was.

And it was like you trying to calculate what you could do and him just, him just nicking rounds. I mean, let's get it right. He's a smart. He may have been a little bit better than we thought also. We may have,

not saying we underestimated, all of us, but he was a little bit slicker than I expected him to be. And I think he picked up, he probably realized, you had an injured hand before anybody else did, let's get that right. He was smart, but was there a sense there when you watch it back,

if you've watched it back, where you're saying, you know what, next time it's not a problem. Next time it's not a problem. Exactly, because I made the occasion bigger than what it was as well. Yeah, well, yeah, good, okay. I made it way bigger than what it was. Was that by putting pressure on yourself? Yeah, and fighting for your first world.

Because you hear it all the time, didn't you? I want to be world champion and want to be world champion. And then after the fight, a couple weeks after, I was like, even though it wasn't a good performance, that was that it? You know what I mean? It was a bit of an anti-climax. Like, is that it?

So it put me in good stead going against Spalanga. Now, I want to talk about one thing, and I really appreciate your time, haves. I want to talk about that move when you moved out to Ricky Furnace in America and how your family had to back you. And I remember talking to you there, and you were living, you know,

it's fairly Spartan life you had there. You weren't living a great Californian surfer dude life. Let's get it right. There was a lot of sacrifices involved with that. I know you moved on for Ricky now. It's not my business. You were vandal now and that's fine. But you did make some sacrifices.

And you were young when you first went out there. You were still a baby then? I think 19 or 20 when I went out there? Certainly no older than 20. No, no, young. Very, very young. And at the time it was every sparring session you had there, every training session,

it was gut check after gut check after gut check. after gut check and I done what four years out there yeah at least four years out there so lots of camps

yeah loads of camps loads of sparring but sparring out there is like fights yeah of course yeah and then yeah at the time it was like I'm wrecking up

all the experience reckon up all the experience but then I knew that if I wanted longevity in the sport yeah I'm gonna have to make some changes here

yeah no I think there's an awful lot of fighters that realise at 25 26 that they might have really maybe maybe

maybe jeopardise their later career by four really hard years of proving their number one in the gym. You can prove that at 27, that 28, 29 more than you can prove it in the ring. In the gym, you don't get paid for it, do you? You don't get paid for it. It doesn't really make sense.

It's all ego, it's all, like, who's a stronger, bigger fighter. You talk about ego quite a bit. It looks like you've controlled yours. Is that what you're saying? I've learned to. I've learned to. Yeah, good.

Nothing wrong with a bit of ego, though? No, there is. You need it. You need it. You need it. You need it. You need it. To perform at the top.

level and he's been around Andy Lee yeah the nicest quietest guy in the world and suddenly when he has to yeah he's a different beast it's like where's that man come it's like there's two Andy Lee's and he's just swapped in his twin brother yeah so let's deal here with with the future and he's very excited about what might happen obviously Solkinella Alvarez is fighting Terrence Crawford win or lose whatever let's assume he wins will he keep the titles who knows but your position post Belanga puts you in a good bargaining place with him and I'm sure it's something that Turkey Alishait would like to do

he's you know he does business with them it's quite exciting going forward from here hams from here this might be the last 30 minute casual conversation you and I have I might have to go through I'll always make types of people to get close to brother there's um the can the Canelo fight there is it's there do you know what I mean? I mean, it's there. It's the one providing he goes through Crawford with ease. And I believe he will. I believe he will.

But at the same time, 168, I think in the top 10, there isn't one fight where you can match two fighters and be confident one wins. Absolutely. It's a competitive division. Yeah, very, very competitive. So in terms of the fights themselves, any one of them are good to make. But ideally for me, I'd like to face Canelo because the dynamics of the sport, as they are now, you've got the opportunity to face one of the greatest fighters in boxing.

So why not challenge myself and go for it and give it my own? That'd be special, wouldn't that? I'm crazy. Canelo outdoors somewhere. Yeah, it'd be nuts, wouldn't it? Yeah, would, wouldn't it? Now, and finally, we've mentioned Andy quite a lot. once you have a half date, I'm assuming you'll be back in W.

You went there recently, didn't you just to say? Yeah, no, I'll be there again in a few weeks. Just to train a guy out there and stay in the gym, exactly, stay active, stay learning because, like I said, we only had eight weeks. So there's different training and learning outside of camp when there's no pressure. Binger. Yeah. Little conversations.

Little moments in Andy's house, million books on the wall. You can afford to do things you can't afford to do in camp. So that would be nice to learn a few more things inside and outside of the ring. So, yeah, be interesting. And what about your private life? Not asking about your private life. What about you? Can you still do normal things now?

Can you still do Hamzashir as things around your family? You still do your stuff? Yeah, always, always. I live out in Dubai now. I've been there for the last six months. So life's a bit more slower out there. But in terms of going back to your question, I'll always always even if I can't I'll make sure I can't

You strike me and I've always thought this about you You're the kind of fight As he's walking to the ring You know if there's a woman there with a baby You're kissing a baby on there There's a granny there with her shopping You're shaking hands with her Nothing wrong with that

You're that kind of person you know Yeah There's nothing wrong with that I love for sure Between us whisperer I like my fights to be nice guys Yeah Out here once they get in there

They can do what they like You know once you go through the road You have to switch on You have to switch on You know what I mean But I suppose that's where controlling your ego, controlling your inner superstar. You can switch it on when you're in the ring, but outside the ring.

It's time and a place for it. Exactly. Listen, Hams, it's been an absolute delight and a pleasure sitting with you. I really appreciate your time and we'll be in touch. Will you be out in Belfast for Palli Donovan's World Time of Fight? I think I'll be the same weekend as the Canola fight. I'll be in the Canella fight, yeah. If I wasn't there, I'd definitely be...

You'd be snatched at the Canallelah fight, man. Pardon? You'll be properly dressed up at the Canada fight. You get a proper outfit for that. I'll get a nice whistle made for that. Yeah. Listen, Hansa, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Steve, thank you very much.

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