'Cannonball' Liam Cameron returns to boxing ring after tortured five-year absence

Stepping out at the Canon Medical Arena on Friday night will mark the 32-year-old's first entry into a professional boxing ring in more than five years. It will be his first competitive action since stopping Nicky Jenman in two rounds before the result was overturned to a ‘no contest’ following Cameron’s subsequent failing of a post-fight drug test.

UKAD – the UK Anti-Doping Agency - identified traces of benzoylecgonine (a metabolic acid that comes from cocaine) in his urine sample and despite Cameron’s repeated protestations of his innocence, issued him with a maximum four-year ban. A later appeal from the boxer against the sentence was rejected.

The lack of support that the Sheffield fighter feels he received from the boxing committee contrasts sharply with what has been lavished more recently on Benn since his positive test for the banned substance clomiphene. It would be easy for Cameron to be bitter, but he is sanguine about the whole painful journey he has been on. “People are in boxing as a business,” he says matter-of-factly. “They probably could have helped me, but they didn’t want to put themselves in that position.”

What still frustrates Cameron is that not only was he handed the toughest possible sentence for a transgression that he has unwaveringly denied, but that the maximum punishment in certain circumstances has now been reduced to just three months – at least for out-of-competition offences - for ingestion of non-performance-enhancing recreational drugs. “How can they ban someone for four years and then change it to only three months,” he muses. “But I didn’t do it. If I did, I would say. What advantage would it have given me?”

For Cameron, the terms of his ban not only prohibited him from boxing professionally but also barred him from so much as entering a boxing gym. Not only was he stripped of his livelihood but also removed a huge part of his identity. The man nicknamed ‘Cannonball’ had been boxing since he was eight years old and now suddenly had to contemplate a future without it.

It was a situation that for a long time he found impossible to come to terms with. “I was drinking every day,” he says of that mad, lost period. “Often a bottle of gin or whatever. I was constantly in a fight with my mind.” At his lowest point, he ended up hospitalised after an overdose of pills and alcohol. He had to borrow the money from his mum and dad to get some shopping for his kids.

It took only a further tragedy to lead him out of the darkness. “My stepdaughter Tiegan died in a road accident. She was 20 years old,” he remembers. “Everything I do now is for her. When she died, I made her a promise that I would come back. That’s what it’s all been for.”

Perhaps, this is why Cameron (20-5, 8kos) can be so philosophical about these past few years. Because at its heart his mission is one driven by love rather than burning resentment. With the support of Pearce Gudgeon and Grant Smith at Sheffield’s Steel City Gym, he has resolutely paved the way to a return.

Cameron fights Robbie Connor on the undercard of tonight’s GBM Sports promoted bill featuring Doncaster's Reece Mould. “The only thing that matters is I’m back now,” he says. “Whoever I’m fighting, no fight could ever be harder than the one I’ve had outside of the ring.”