Maybe he misses the Irn-Bru? Craig McEwan swaps LA for Glasgow
After his tenth round stoppage defeat against Irishman Andy Lee in March of this year, Scottish middleweight Craig McEwan decided to leave Los Angeles' Wild Card gym and head back to his native Scotland to revitalize his career in Billy Nelson’s Glasgow set up.
BoxRec News recently spoke to McEwan who explained that although he “loved the Wild Card and all the guys there” he felt that Freddie Roach “just didn’t have the time to train him properly” and with guys like Manny Pacquiao, Amir Khan, Julio Cesar Chavez Junior taking up a lot of Freddie’s time that he was “just about training himself” for a lot of his fights and says that he “should have got out earlier”.
Despite believing he stayed in the Wild Card a bit too long, McEwan doesn’t regret the five years he spent in LA. He told BoxRec News that “I sparred with the best in the world”, citing an impressive list including the likes of Bernard Hopkins, Antonio Margarito, Victor Ortiz and Saul Alvarez, and fought “all over America including half a dozen times in Vegas”.
McEwan also enjoyed his time outside of the ring, getting to meet with people like Floyd Mayweather, Oscar De La Hoya, Sugar Ray Leonard, Manny Pacquiao as well as a host of famous actors and musicians. Any young boxers reading this thinking that a move to LA sounds tempting (and who can blame you!) are advised by Craig to go for it but to “take a good coach with you”.
McEwan has now joined up with the Billy Nelson stable, which includes WBO world super-featherweight champion Ricky Burns. McEwan explained that he didn’t plan to come back and train full-time with Nelson but said, “as soon as I started working with him, things just clicked”. It was “lack of preparation” that McEwan feels let him down against Lee as he believes he “ran out of steam” after six rounds and thinks that the strong emphasis Nelson puts on strength and fitness is exactly what he needs at this point in his career.
Although Craig is back in Scotland he still has another year left on his contract with American-based promoters Golden Boy and has been told that they are trying to fit him onto the Mayweather-Ortiz card on September 17th in Vegas against an as yet unknown opponent. Golden Boy have also told McEwan that they still see a world title fight down the line although McEwan himself told BoxRec News he would “quite like to fight for the British and European titles”.
Craig hopes to get a couple of fights in before Christmas before getting a big one in the New Year and he still hopes that he may get another crack at the only man to beat him as a pro, Andy Lee.
