'We all thought she was going to die' - AEW star Anthony Ogogo relives London 2012 trauma

By Will Castle

When Anthony Ogogo bagged boxing bronze at London 2012, he was going through the worst time of his life.

Reaching the highest point of his career in front of a rabid home faithful, many would expect such a moment to be instantly bookmarked as a career highlight for Ogogo.

However, his crowning glory came without his mother in the crowd, who was fighting for her life in a coma at the time.

Having endured a period of overwhelming despair that had impacted all facets of his life - not least his training regiment - Ogogo’s triumph meant much more than medals to him and his four sisters, providing a desperately-needed boost in family morale.

“The Olympics were a really difficult time for me,” Ogogo said, speaking as part of SportsAid Week. “It was horrendous. I don't know how I got through it.

“My mum, she’s my hero, and she was in hospital for the whole Olympics. She had suffered a brain aneurysm and we all thought she was going to die.

“I'd sneak out the Olympic village at night time and get in my car and drive to Cambridge to see my mum - hold her hand, comb her hair.

“It was hard to find happiness in those moments, but I know that my medal did give my family a lot of happiness and it gave them something to focus on other than my mum being in hospital.

“I've got a picture of my sister Toni when I’d won the fight, it’s emblazoned in my head. She's sitting front row in the stands and she's holding a barricade, celebrating so profusely she's going to topple over the railing.”

As he stood on the podium, medal draped around his neck, the eternal conqueror in Ogogo could not help feeling that he’d fallen short. He didn’t just want a medal - he wanted gold, he wanted superstardom.

It was a perceived shortcoming that he would battle with for years, but it would eventually set in that amidst such damning adversity, his bronze medal was incredibly special - both for him and everyone in his life.

“Honestly, it took me a long, long time to be content with my bronze medal, because I wanted a gold medal,” Ogogo added.

“Of course, going to the Olympic Games is amazing. Winning a medal is unbelievable, under the circumstances that I was under it is almost a miracle. But I wanted a gold medal and that's what I knew, in my head, I deserved.

“But now, I'm in a place where you get older in life, you understand that those moments are so few and far between. When you're a kid, you think everything's going to be amazing and adversity hits, and you realise how special those moments were.

“I get goosebumps because I can see it for what it is now. My ego is dimmed somewhat that I can see that my medal was unbelievable for me and my family, my community, my town, and hopefully the pros that knew about my story.”

Four years on from achieving Olympic stardom, catastrophe struck for Ogogo’s in-ring career.

In a WBC International middleweight title defeat to Craig Cunningham, he suffered a fractured eye socket - and after a number of complications and botched surgeries, he was eventually forced into an early retirement at just 30 years of age.

Having been stripped of his professional purpose, Ogogo fell into a dark place and would require the invaluable support of his then-wife to pull him through.

“My ex-wife did a great job in reminding me that I wasn't just a boxer,” he said.

“My entire life, I've been Anthony Ogogo, the boxer. I've been to Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, schools and I was always the boxer.

“The boxer and I became one, and she specifically did a great job in going, ‘I'm not the boxer. Boxing is something that I did, it wasn't who I was.’

“I think it reminded me of who I am, that I'm not just a thing. I'm a person with many different qualities that can be transferred to many different things. That was really important for me.”

Even with the hindrance of almost complete blindness in his left eye, Ogogo wasn’t prepared to throw in the towel on his in-ring career.

Now thriving as a professional wrestler in All Elite Wrestling, Ogogo boasts high-profile matches with current WWE Champion Cody Rhodes, and most recently returned to TV by throwing hands with sports entertainment icon Chris Jericho on AEW Collision.

Breathing fresh life into a combat career that looked under serious threat of a premature demise, Ogogo credits WWE Hall of Famer, yoga miracle worker and close friend Diamond Dallas Page as the man who pushed him into the industry.

“I've known Dallas for a long time, even in my boxing days,” Ogogo said. “He was a bit of a mentor to me, back even before my eye when I hurt my shoulder.

“Being a wrestling fan myself, all the wrestlers spoke highly of DDP Yoga, Dallas’ yoga programme, so I started doing it and we became friends from it. We'd hang out all the time.

“One day he was like, ‘you could do this, you know’. I was flattered, but I was like ‘I could be a wrestler? I don’t know Dallas’.

“Then when I retired, he called me that night. He said, ‘I’m really sorry. I know how much your dream meant to you. Do you want to wrestle now?’ Same call.

“I said that I want to mourn my career, I want to sulk, I want to cry. And he said, ‘where's that gonna get you? When you finish sulking, give me a call.’

“I retired the next day and I sulked for a little bit, and he called me about two weeks later. He said, ‘you finished sulking? Should I put in a call to Triple H?’ He’s obviously high up in WWE.

“Then he put me in touch with Cody Rhodes, who was in AEW, and I had the choice of the two biggest companies in the world.

“I chose AEW and I'm there now and I'm a professional wrestler, so Dallas was a big driving force. DDP is a big factor in me becoming a professional wrestler.”