Jazza Dickens: Faith and boxing

If you are ever in the company of Jazza Dickens, make sure you never play the Peter Gabriel song ‘Solsbury Hill’.

“I’d just run at them and start throwing punches,” Dickens laughed.

The 1977 Top 20 hit was part of the family soundtrack in Dickens’ ears during his childhood, along with folk singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman, in an era when the iPod was still several years away and the CD was the boss.

Solisbury Hill has a particularly special meaning for Dickens because since January 22, 2011 it has been the song that the 29-year-old has walked out to on fight night.

The tune, which was penned during a spiritual experience of Gabriel’s, is one that now represents fighting for Dickens, going to war, and he refuses to listen to it until the day of his fight.

On Wednesday night, live on Sky Sports from the Production Park Studios in South Kirby, Dickens will once more be revved up by one of his father’s favourite songs minutes before he attempts to topple Ryan Walsh in the finale of MTK’s Golden Contract Featherweight tournament.

“I can’t put the song on in my house because I want to fight if I hear it. It’s associated with going to war, so I don’t listen to it till fight day,” Dickens (29-3, 11 KOs) told Boxing Social.

The first time his fans heard it associated with Dickens was on his professional debut at the Liverpool Olympia on a night when Derry Mathews, now the lead trainer to Dickens, was topping the bill against Scott Lawton. Many nights and many fights have passed since. Dickens used the word “cauldron” to describe that night at the Olympia, a memory he carries with him to this day.

The memories of a then near 20-year-old, who has always retained the look of the classroom cheeky rascal, feel like a lifetime ago. Dickens is now a veteran of the sport without the large double digits in the age column. The expectations as a young man led to a British title fight at 22-years-old to having his jaw broken by Cuban wizard Guillermo Rigondeaux a few years later. These have all been mashed together in such a way where the fighting youngster has been broken into a fighting man as well as a family man who hits 30 next year and is currently in the boxing form of his life.

Dickens’ Golden Contract semi-final victory against Leigh Wood (MD10) in February was the perfect example of a man armed with years of experience, relishing the heavy underdog tag. From round one, he took the fight straight to Wood who was dealing with a Merseyside marauder on the night. 

“I was making sure he [Wood] didn’t get the space, didn’t get a chance to breathe and to actually work and get his good work off. I had to nullify a lot of his work early on and I done it perfect really,” Dickens recalled. Another positive memory in the bank with the best potentially just around the corner.

“It’s not really the end is it, it’s the start,” he said previewing the moments and days to come after Wednesday night’s final.

“That’s what we’ve all been fighting for. It’s nearly there now. I’m looking forward to it and getting the job done on Wednesday night.”

Dickens v Walsh is a fight without ego and one minus the bitter rivalry (or beef since we are in 2020) that will be on display from Ohara Davies and Tyrone McKenna in the night’s other Golden Contract final at 140lbs.

“I don’t think we need any ego because we both know it’s on. It’s a fight and we don’t need to do that,” said Dickens. “I’m not going to take no shit and he’s not going to take no shit. We won’t be playing any mind games and it wouldn’t stand us in good stead doing that anyway. I think we’re both happy, both trained as hard as we can, showed each other the respect that we deserve and now we’re getting it on.”

Just like everything else in life this year, boxing has been hit by the Coronavirus. Shows rescheduled and postponed have been weekly stories as the sport continues to shuffle itself around the ongoing battle against Covid-19. Dickens vs Walsh has also been affected with two dates falling by the wayside but Dickens has used it as a positive, ensuring his body has received plenty of rest in between camps. He has discovered some unorthodox ways of training such as putting a mattress up against a bedroom door as a replacement for a punchbag.

“A lot of lessons have been learned. I’ve kept myself active and kept myself healthy and kept myself in great shape,” he said.

Dickens has also had the unexpected blessing of spending more time at home with his partner and children. 

“I have a close circle around me. I don’t go to the pub to see my friends. I live with my family, I’m a family man, I’ve got three kids I don’t need anybody else,” he said. “I can still see my mum, I can still see my dad, I can still see my three kids and my partner so they’re always around me. Been seeing my coach now and again and on the phone to them so I weren’t missing too much. I was actually gaining more by not seeing the people that I don’t wanna see!”

While enjoying more time at home, Dickens has also been working on his own self-development, which you can find out more about in some of his own vlog videos on YouTube. Weekly episodes show Dickens sharing with viewers his personal thoughts, life philosophies and, if you are lucky, hilarious tales of tackling some Jack Russells who were trying to bite him while out on a run.

“It was the same morning I’d just been stung on the lip by a wasp!” he laughed recalling a morning to forget.

“I was just running up the hills, I had my earphones on, and I could hear some screeching and there were these dogs trying to get at me. It was a bit of a bad run that one!”

The self-development, however, is about Dickens trying to find a broader vision in life.

“I asked God to open the world to me, show me what I don’t understand and what I’m really looking at,” he said.

“We go to school and the world becomes a little bit bigger. We start playing outside with our friends and the world becomes a bit bigger, then we go to football on weekends, and it gets a little bit bigger. I’m just trying to do a lot of work on myself.”

The conversation travelled deeper into the thinking of Dickens, which portrayed a man who is continuing to learn in life each day. Dickens says he found self-worth as a child along with some acceptance but, as he grew up and witnessed a bigger world around him, he has realised that boxing is not and cannot be his only fulfilment in life. 

“My partner and my kids they shouldn’t have to relate to boxing, they shouldn’t have to see the happier version of me because boxing has gone well,” he said. 

“I’m just trying to be happy and function without boxing. Just trying to be happy in life and not use these external outlets to be my source of happiness. They say you’ve got to fill that God-sized hole in some way haven’t you and I’m not trying to get it through boxing anymore. I’m trying to fill that God-sized hole with God. Without boxing, people around me didn’t see a happy version of me if boxing didn’t go well. If it didn’t go well, I’d be miserable. It’s sad really but I don’t think I’ve been given the opportunities that I deserve.”

It has taken years and years of thought. As a fighter and a man of God, Dickens spends a lot of time alone and in prayer as well as meditation and yoga.

“When I found the Lord, I started asking myself a little bit more not just about myself, not just about my surroundings but about life.”

Dickens recalled a time as a teenager when he had never been on a plane, let alone a holiday, but before long found himself boxing in Sardinia, returning home and then travelling to Delhi for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India. 

“I saw all these different lifestyles and cultures and I was coming back to my area where I was from, back to standing on the corner with the lads and it’s like bloody hell this is not the whole world. There’s a bigger world out there because I’ve seen different things,” he said.

And to fellow teenagers who are embarking on a life in boxing Jazza’s advice is simple: listen. 

“We’ve got eyes and ears and I think the more we talk the less we listen. I think you can pick so much up, not just in the sport, but in life and general if you could listen. Try your best to listen,” said Dickens. “It’s a tough age for kids because they’re just leaving school, they have to find their own identity and they haven’t got much going on in life for themselves and they don’t know what they’re going to do, or what they’re going to be. They’re unsure and there are uncertain times. I would say to these young kids just try and pick up that bit of wisdom where you can and do understand at this tough age that these people you think are having a go at you and moaning they’re only trying to steer you in the right direction and, if you can listen to them, it will pay off massively.”

Dickens is one of many examples who continue to show how strong the link is between faith and boxing. Boxing, as we know, is unlike other sports. Dickens debated if it is indeed a sport. Survival and courage, he reminded me, are paramount. They play a frighteningly pivotal role that is experienced by the protagonists in the ring and witnessed by their families, and us the viewers for our pleasure. Our understanding of it is skeletal. There is no meat to the bones of what we believe is our definition. We are mere passengers on a journey where a fighter is striving to keep the car on the road. Fear also has its say.

“We’re all men and we all face fear and the Lord takes that fear away,” Dickens said. “I can hand that fear over to the Lord and my anxieties to the Lord and the Lord gives me a path in life and gives me these great outlets every time. Every time I’m cornered by the devil the Lord, just gives me a new way, an escape route is what I would call it, that’s what he gives me.”

Sometimes there is no escape, sometimes faith is tested, and these last six months will have challenged the beliefs of many. Dickens hasn’t faltered, he has adapted, but that does not mean he has not experienced similar feelings in the past. 

“Many times,” Dickens answered when asked if he had doubted his belief and faith in God. 

“When I had my son, when I had my little boy in the hospital, the [umbilical] cord was around his neck and his heartbeat stopped and, at that time, what do you do when you’re faced with that? I put my hands together and said, ‘Lord do your will, that’s it. If he’s to live, he’s to live. If you’re to take him back then take him with you but please just get us through this time and your will, will be done’.

“It’s happened many times and it’s happened, too, when it’s come to other family members. I know I’ve been tested in that way. I know who I am when I am tested.” Dickens then paused before adding, “Who knows how strong or weak I will be the next time I’m tested.”

On Wednesday night, we will find out.

Main image and all photos: MTK Global.