Lawrence Okolie has had seven months to come to terms with losing his WBO cruiserweight title to Chris Billam-Smith. 

The 30 year old Londoner came to the conclusion that he had begun to treat boxing as little more than a tool but it sounds like the defeat to his former gym-mate has awoken some of the old passion that took him from behind the counter at McDonalds to the Olympic Games and world title glory. 

Okolie (19-1,1 4 KO’s) was negative but effective during the early rounds of the fight with Billam-Smith but seemed to come apart mentally after suffering the first knockdown of his career in the fourth. Okolie retreated further into his shell, unable to prevent his title slipping out of his grasp. He lost two points for holding and suffered two further knockdowns. As Billam-Smith posed for photographs in front of his adoring fans, the giant, formidable figure of Okolie slipped almost anonymously away.

“I’m chilling, ticking over and waiting to get back out. I think I’m back out in February,” Okolie told IFL.

“Losing is never nice. With that one, I think the most important thing that I realized was that as long as you win, it doesn’t matter. After losing, in terms of what I wanted out of boxing - winning a world title, getting financially secure within myself and converting my boxing money into business money - yeah, that’s all done. Now, I’m more interested in fulfilling something for myself.”

Okolie has rebounded from poor performances before. An early career victory over Isaac Chamberlain could legitimately be written off as honest scrap between novice professionals unused to the attention and pressure of headlining a show. 

His British title defence against Matty Askin was harder to excuse. Given a prime position on the undercard of Anthony Joshua’s unified heavyweight title defence against Alexander Povetkin, Okolie allowed the fight to devolve into one of the worst spectacles in recent years. Okolie won a horrible decision but lost three points and was extremely fortunate to escape disqualification. 

There is a feeing that the performance he put in against Billam-Smith will be harder to shake off. In the past, winning was always the most important thing and it also provided the promise of ‘next time.’

Okolie lost to Billam-Smith. He doesn’t have a title belt to act as a passport back to the big time and there aren’t fans clamoring for his return. Okolie knows that he need to reinvent himself and has found the perfect motivation.

“You know what it is? My future kids,” he said. “They’ll see I won a world title, lost and, ‘Oh, he holds a bit,’ so I kind of want to have the next chapter a lot more explosive. The worst thing that could happen has happened. Losing. Now I wanna go out and enjoy myself.”