Rocky Fielding, the former WBA “regular” super-middleweight champion, has announced his retirement from boxing at the age of 35, a month after being stopped in a British light-heavyweight title challenge by Dan Azeez.

The Liverpudlian held British and Commonwealth titles at super-middleweight and, apart from Azeez, the only two other boxers to beat him were world champions, Callum Smith and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who stopped him in four rounds at Madison Square Garden.

In a statement on social media, Fielding gave a big list of thank-yous, but gave the biggest credit to his first professional trainer, the late Oliver Harrison, and Jamie Moore and Nigel Travis, who trained him during the latter part of his career.

“Twenty-six years of boxing from walking into the Stocky (Stockbridge) ABC aged 9 just to keep fit for playing football,” he said.

“Dreamed of being a world champion and fighting at Madison Square Garden with Michael Buffer calling my name – that came true.”

His big breakthrough came when he won a Prizefighter tournament in 2011, having come into the event with only three fights experience. It led to him becoming a regular on Sky Sports, as he won English and then Commonwealth titles.

Tall and with a big right hand, he used his range effectively and while it often looked like he boxed with his chin in the air, he was much better than he looked at times.

He went unbeaten in 21 fights before he was blitzed by Smith in an all-Liverpool British title fight in 2015, Smith knocking him down three times in 165 seconds.

He had to get off the floor before narrowly winning his comeback fight against Christopher Rebrasse, but after one more win he finally got his hands on the British title as he claimed a split decision over John Ryder in 2017.

A year later, he travelled to Offenburg, in Germany, when he produced perhaps the best performance of his career as he dominated Tyron Zeuge, stopping him in the fifth round to claim the WBA “regular” title.

The win set up the fight with Canelo in December 2016, although that proved one-sided, as he was knocked down four times in less than three rounds.

He boxed only twice in the next three years and was close to moving to Dubai at one point. But he came back to the North-West for one last shot at making it as a light-heavyweight, but found Azeez too young and hungry.

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.