Lee Selby interview: A tale of triumph, tragedy and a second coming on the James DeGale vs Chris Eubank Jr undercard

Exclusive: One of British boxing's most undercelebrated fighters has climbed the summit, but never seen the stars

Few fighters have walked the line of tragedy and success with the same silent valour as Lee Selby. The slender Barry-born boxer, slightly tanned but largely unscuffed after weeks spent touring Los Angeles’ roughneck gyms, returns to the ring on Saturday nine months after losing his featherweight world title to Josh Warrington.

Selby’s career, even in world title triumph, has been unforgiving. He speaks in the slightly tired manner of having already been here a thousand times. A career where he has reached the summit, but never quite seen the stars.

The last time Selby was seen outside of the ring, taking to the scales before that gruelling bloodbath with Warrington, Selby cut a dangerous mess of skin, sinew and bone. Gaunt in the face with dark circles around his eyes, he had spent the last three weeks chewing on lettuce leaves trying to trick his stomach into believing he was full, as he wrung his 5’9” frame down to a skeletal 126lbs (57kg).

“I wouldn’t eat,” Selby tells The Independent. “I couldn’t spar for three weeks out from a fight because of how few calories I was eating. I was just on the cross-trainer or running all day. I would be constantly thinking about my weight, it was mentally draining. Looking back, I can’t even imagine how I did it.”

Selby was exhausted and outclassed in a punishing and ultimately one-sided contest with Warrington. After three years as a world champion, only pride and mettle kept him on his feet.

Defeat in a sport like boxing rarely brings relief, but after toiling at the weight in search of that one big fight – and payday – Selby was finally released from the crippling cycle. It may not have been on his own terms, but in a game so crude and often unjust, it became cathartic. “It’s not frustrating,” he says. “To be honest, it felt like I could finally move on.”

Selby has now moved up two weight divisions, to lightweight, giving himself an extra 9lbs of leeway. On Saturday, he takes on Omar Douglas, a dreadlocked puncher from Delaware, who has only lost twice in his career – both times at world title level – and is eyeing a coronation of his own. Selby could have had a softer touch on his return, but that’s not what he wanted. That’s not who he is.

Still living just a short drive from the council estate in Barry in South Wales where he grew up, Selby is on the one hand so daring and borderless, but on the other inseparably rooted in his hometown. “It’s all I know,” he says. “It might be tough to an outsider, but not when you’re brought up like that. It’s just the life everybody is living around me.”

Children wail in the kitchen along with the sound of the television set, just down the road is the rundown gym where his father catapulted him into boxing aged 8, and where he had his first amateur fight, 22 years ago, as a fearless 10-year-old boy.

Selby held the IBF Featherweight world title for three years (Getty)

“It was hard from the beginning,” he says. “I was fighting on the small hall shows, no money, no slots on TV, going away as the opponent. It’s tough but you appreciate it more when you’ve done it the hard way.”

Home has also been a place of heartache.

When Selby’s older brother, Michael, suddenly passed away, it was the gym where he re-devoted himself to boxing after time spent papering over his emotions. When he became Wales’ 12th world champion, beating undefeated Russian Evgeny Gradovich in 2015, despite “nobody believing it was possible”, it was Michael to whom he dedicated the belt.

Eighteen months ago, when preparing to make the third defence of that belt, Selby arrived at his hotel room in London on the Tuesday evening of fight week. At 3am in the morning, he was awoken by numerous phone calls from his younger brother, Andrew, back in Barry. Only in the morning did he find out his mother, Frankie, had been rushed to hospital and passed away during the night.

Outside of his close circle, Selby didn’t tell anybody. Still starving himself to make the weight, he insisted he would fight on. “That’s just me I guess,” he says. “I just got on with it, that’s just the type of person I am.” That night, he produced one of the most impressive and assured performances of his career and drove back to Barry to see his family before sunrise.

Selby suffered gruelling defeat to Josh Warrington last May (Getty)

So, you see, when Lee Selby says defeat to Josh Warrington was “just another fight” he hasn’t watched back yet, it’s not an attempt at a front. And when he says he is returning to the ring to become Wales’ first two-weight world champion, not for the money, you believe him too. He is no average, nor ordinary fighter, but he is disarmingly honest.

A career, and a life, where everything has been earned in the hardest possible way and where success has walked hand-in-hand with tragedy from sports hall to stadium. Sometimes, between training and raising his two daughters, he’ll walk long and high up into the fields and woods above the town to go shooting with his seven dogs to get away from it all. To get a taste of “an easy life”.

“A nice, easy life,” he says heavily. That’s what he is most looking forward to. “I’ve done enough work in these gyms to last me a lifetime.”