By Thomas Gerbasi

The mantra in the gym is simple, but it means everything to Matt Remillard.

“It’s ‘Unfinished Business,’” he said. “It’s something we really stand for as a team, and that’s coming back strong and finishing what we started.”

It shouldn’t have been this way for the Connecticut native, but when does anything ever go according to plan in boxing? Remillard was as much a can’t miss prospect as you get in the sport, though. Maybe not to be on top of the pound-for-pound list, but he had the potential to pick up a belt or two, and if that didn’t happen, he was going to be the kind of action fighter people would pay money to watch.

But when he took a plea bargain in a 2010 assault case that netted him five years in prison, it all disappeared.

“Matt, by accepting this plea, has given up his career,” said his lawyer, Kevin O'Brien, at the sentencing in November 2011. “This is just a tragedy.”

Just like that, for the first time since he was eight years old, boxing was out of his life.

“When you have all that stuff going on in your life, you lose focus and drive because, for the first time, I couldn’t put boxing first,” Remillard said. “I had to put my life first.”

He was 25.

On Saturday night, Remillard fights for the third time since being released from prison, taking on Yardley Armenta Cruz at Foxwoods in Mashantucket. He’s 31 and trying to recapture something that once looked effortless to everyone outside his immediate circle, and after two wins this year over Agustine Mauras and Fatiou Fassinou, he’s beginning to feel like Matt Remillard, prizefighter, again.

“I think it’s starting to feel more and more real,” he said. “Everything’s starting to come together and the ring rust is slowly starting to come off. It’s hard to get that rust off during training without being in a real fight, so this will be my third fight this year on the comeback and I feel like after this, I should be good. I’m getting all the experience I need to get back to where I used to be.”

Where he used to be, at least before his 2011 loss to Mikey Garcia, was on the verge of stardom. Already a popular figure on the New England scene, Remillard signed with Top Rank and was 23-0 and on the fast track at 126 pounds.

Then came the aforementioned assault, and while awaiting the case to work its way through the legal system, he was matched with fellow rising star Garcia. A strong start was followed by three knockdowns and a 10th round stoppage loss.

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“I wasn’t hungry for the Garcia fight,” he admits. “I didn’t really care if I won or lost. The situation would still be the same. The end result was I was going away and if I won that fight, five years later, nobody would have even talked about it.”

A few months later, Remillard’s boxing career was over. But soon, he realized that it was just on hold.

“A lot of things go through your mind,” he said of his early days in prison. “For something that I dreamed about since I was eight years old, everything was falling apart. So I thought a lot of things. Once I got settled into it and really started thinking more clearly, I always knew that I’d come back with a vengeance.”

Remillard did his time, waited for his release, and as soon as he was out, he was ready to return. And while silver linings aren’t par for course in situations such as his, he now believes that at least in a boxing sense, he needed a break.

“I try to look for the positive in the end result,” he said. “It was a s**tty situation, I’m back now, and maybe my body needed the layoff. I was doing that every single day for ten-plus years. Maybe my body did need a break. This is a crazy business and an extremely hard business to make a living in. People get beat up and their body gets beat up and a very small percentage of fighters can retire from this. So at certain times, your body needs a rest, and now I’m back and my body is responding great and that’s something I’m taking fight by fight.”

More importantly, Remillard has his life back, and he’s not taking it for granted.

“After all that got situated and I’m back, I don’t have all that time and five years on my back anymore,” he said. “I’m back and I’m like a kid in a candy store. I’m taking everything in and I have that hunger. And that’s something I think I lost toward the end of it.”

The excitement in his voice is evident when he talks about the future, something he couldn’t muster a year and a half ago. And with a win this weekend, there will likely be a step-up fight early next year and he’s ready for it. But if he had his way, there would only be one fight made in 2018.

“I’ve had Garcia on my mind for six years now,” he said of the three-division world champion. “I think he knows, deep down, with everything I had going on, that he didn’t beat the best me.”

Remillard chuckles, then lets us in on the joke.

“He’s the type of fighter I wish was cocky,” he said. “I wish he was more of an asshole because it would be easier for me to take a loss like that. But him and his family are some of the coolest, nicest, down to Earth people, so it haunts me even more. So I would love to get that rematch. He’s out there doing bigger and better things than I’m doing right now. If the rematch ever presented itself, I would hands down jump all over it. Maybe he uses me for a tune-up, but any opportunity I can get in the ring with him, I’d take it. That’s part of the motivation.”

The rest of the motivation? Take care of that unfinished business, of course.