Here's my story of how a cut cost me $43,000. I received this cut from a deliberate headbutt in my eighth professional fight.

The doctor who stitched me up after the fight, didn’t do the best job. There were a few fighters who were also cut on the show and as he was the only doctor sewing up the lacerations, I think he was rushed, so he didn’t do a great job.

Six weeks later at training camp for my next fight which was scheduled for eight weeks later I flew back to LA where I trained with Tommy Brooks.

I started training and everything was going great for two weeks, then as soon as I sparred the cut started to bleed a little. It had a load of scar tissue around it and never healed properly because of the doctor's botched job after my previous fight.

Still, I continued to train and for my next sparring sessions one of the old-school trainers came up with an idea that he said would help prevent the cut re-opening.

The idea was to cut a hole in a sponge, position the hole over the middle of my scar then wrap a bandage around it, I would then put my head guard on top of it. To be honest, I felt pretty stupid having a big bandage around my head, but what the hell, I gave it a go as I only had six weeks 'til my fight.

To my surprise, the old-timer's trick worked and I was back to sparring for a couple of weeks.

I was very happy because Evander Holyfield was in camp at the same time and we shared the same trainer and I had been told I was going to be sparring with him. This made me nervous but very excited, but the sparring session before I was about to spar with Holyfield the cut burst open, blood dripped all down my face; the sponge must have moved under the head guard. I was gutted!

Not only did I miss the chance to share the ring with one of the greatest fighters of all time, but attending this camp had made a MASSIVE hole in my pocket!  I was due to be paid $32,000 for the fight but now it was off! I’d put around $8,000 of my own money into my training camp with flights, hotel, food, flying my sports scientist out and putting him up in accomodation, plus other expenses such as massages, equipment, car rentals etc. It was all down the drain!

For my career to continue, I had to get my scar fixed so it wouldn’t happen again. I was referred to a very experienced doctor in Beverly Hills to fix the cut. He had to cut the scar tissue out and re-stitch it. I remember this like yesterday because after he cut the lump of skin from the cut, he let me hold it :-/
Obviously this come at a cost, too - $3,000!

So, yeah, this cut ended up costing me a fortune!

Tony Jeffries
Co-Owner of Box 'N Burn

P.S

This was the story, in a nutshell, I could write all day about this…

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