Key points:
- Troy Williamson lost three straight fights in 2023-2025 and considered quitting for bare-knuckle boxing
- He moved up two weight classes to super middleweight and stopped Mark Dickinson in round nine, September 2025
- Three months later, he dropped previously unbeaten Callum Simpson four times to win the British, Commonwealth and European titles
- Williamson and Simpson rematch on August 8 in Leeds
The man everyone had already written off
Three losses in a row will do that to a career. By early 2025, Troy Williamson had lost to Caoimhín Agyarko, Ishmael Davis, and Jahi Tucker – three decisions, zero knockouts against him, but zero wins either. He was 33, campaigning at a weight that clearly wasn’t his, and the boxing world had quietly moved on from him. Not hostile, just indifferent. The kind of silence that’s worse than criticism.
“Everybody had the right to say that I was finished, I was done, I was old,” Williamson later admitted. He wasn’t performing badly out of decline – he was performing badly at the wrong weight, grinding himself down just to make 154 pounds. But nobody was interested in that nuance. A fighter with three losses on the bounce doesn’t get the benefit of context. He gets written off.
The bare-knuckle offer that almost happened
Here’s the part that didn’t make many headlines at the time: Williamson was seriously close to walking away from boxing entirely – not into retirement, but into bare-knuckle boxing. No more four-round journeyman fights on small hall shows for a fraction of what he used to earn. If this was going to be the rest of his career, he wanted out on his own terms.
Then the phone rang. Mark Dickinson, a promising but unproven prospect, needed an opponent at 168 pounds – two full weight classes up from where Williamson had been struggling. It was a “gimme” fight on paper. Dickinson was supposed to add Williamson’s name to his résumé and move on.
Ripping up the script
Dickinson missed weight by five and a half pounds and lost his title on the scales before the opening bell. But the story that actually mattered happened over nine rounds at Rainton Meadows Arena, where a completely different Troy Williamson showed up – heavier, sharper, and finally fighting at a weight that fit his frame. He stopped Dickinson in round nine and, for the first time in years, had a reason to keep going.
“I know that I was at the wrong weight for a long time,” Williamson said afterward. “I was just finding out the wrong way.”
From forgotten to unbeaten conqueror
Three months later, in one of 2025’s biggest upsets, Williamson dropped previously unbeaten European champion Callum Simpson four times before a 10th-round stoppage in Leeds – becoming British, Commonwealth, and European super middleweight champion in a single night. The fighter who was one call away from quitting boxing altogether was suddenly the man everyone else had to get past.
Now Williamson and Simpson do it again on August 8, back at the same arena, this time with genuine tension between them rather than a simple rematch clause. Williamson doesn’t need reminding what was on the line the last time he laced up gloves at 168 pounds. He’s lived it once already.