BRIGHTON, ENGLAND – When Tommy Welch was two years old, he told his father he wanted to be just like him one day: He wanted to be a boxer.
Scott Welch was a very good boxer back then, one who would win British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles and challenge for the WBO strap. But he did not want his son to follow in his footsteps.
Late one night, after a particularly punishing contest, Scott returned to the family home, where young Tommy was waiting for him. The skin above Scott’s eye had been ripped open and sewn back together with 14 stitches. Welch senior looked down at his son and stroked the facial souvenir from his night’s work. “Do you really want to be a boxer, Tommy?”
Only briefly deterred, teenage Tommy still wanted to fight. He would fight anywhere he could find the room to unleash a punch. In school, on the streets, against rivals on the rugby field. In the end, with Scott’s begrudging approval, he became an amateur boxer. Yet his tearaway tendencies stopped him from taking it seriously – which in turn stopped Scott from taking his son’s desire to fight seriously.
It all changed in 2020 when Tommy, sick of being in trouble, decided he was going to turn professional. “I was 23 years old and I knew if I didn’t pull my finger out of my arse, I was going to miss the boat,” Tommy said.
It took a while for Scott to believe in his son. He had lost money sending him to private school and grown tired of picking up the pieces from the demolition derby that was Tommy’s life. Slowly, however, he realized that Tommy Welch, his unruly boy, was indeed going to be just like him.
Today, the thickset Welch is 15-0 (9 KOs) and all grown up. The 30-year-old is expected to notch victory No. 16 on Friday when he takes on Vaclav Pesjar on the undercard of Harlem Eubank-Tyrone McKenna in Brighton, England. Scott will be with him in the corner.
“He was surprised, and he is surprised,” Tommy told BoxingScene when asked about his father. “When I had my little epiphany and turned ‘round to him and said, ‘That’s it, I’m turning professional,’ he wasn’t a believer. But as soon as one year passes, he understood. Then I get my pro license and he knew I was taking this very seriously. And when I do switch my mind on and believe in what I’m doing, he believes in what I’m doing because he can see the work paying off. He can see the people that can’t touch me in the gym. He can see me training hard and sticking to the game plan. He seems to be happy now, and making him happy, and me saying he’s happy, is a hard thing. Yeah, I’m doing well.”
Does Tommy, once so easy to distract, find it difficult to focus?
“Not really,” he said, shrugging. “I’m in a good place in my life, where the only thing I have to worry about is boxing. I get up, I train, I come back, I relax and get ready for training again. I’ve got a good partner, and now a baby, so if anything, I’m the most focused I’ve ever been.”
That baby is four months old and already sleeping through the night. Tommy, at last, can understand what his father went through all those years ago.
“Oh yeah, now I get it,” he said with a chuckle. But as any worthwhile parent will testify, those early stresses of bringing new life into the world are balanced by the instinct to provide and protect. “It makes me more hungry to succeed, it motivates me in quite a special way,” he said. “So I’m looking forward to fighting now [that] I have these responsibilities.”
Welch started out at heavyweight but is now campaigning in the bridgerweight division, a much-maligned weight class with a 224lbs limit introduced by the WBC. For fighters like Welch, who is ranked 12th in the world by the sanctioning body, it serves a purpose even if only a temporary one.
“I’m a bridgerweight fighter at the moment,” he said. “I’ve come down from heavyweight, and I’ll go back to heavyweight after. There are goals to accomplish here first.
“I’ve always fought bigger guys; I’ve never been the biggest or strongest. There’s some big dudes out there. I’ve always competed with them and beaten them, so it was never a worry. But I think bridgerweight makes it more of a level playing field – we’re the same size. You’re not fighting someone who’s 6ft 9 and outweighs you by a stupid amount. There’s not many people in the world at 100 kilos [220lbs] that I would even worry about, so let’s have a good crackin’.
“I’m ready for the next stage,” he continued. “I can put my work out there, and people will get to see and enjoy what we’re doing. We entertain by smashing someone in.”
That desire to fight – to smash someone in, to have a good crackin’ – remains strong. It’s always been in his genes, after all. But unlike in his younger days, he understands it takes more than just throwing hands.
“I want to carry on building,” he said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes years of hard work, but everything relies on you performing on one night – and that’s what I’ve got to keep doing.”
Matt Christie, a lifelong fight fan, has worked in boxing for more than 20 years. He left Boxing News in 2024 after 14 years, nine of which were spent as editor-in-chief. Before that, he was the producer of weekly boxing show “KOTV.” Now the co-host of ”The Opening Bell” podcast and regularly used by Sky Sports in the UK as a pundit, Matt was named as the Specialist Correspondent of the Year at the prestigious Sports Journalism Awards in 2021, which was the seventh SJA Award he accepted during his stint in the hot seat at Boxing News. The following year, he was inducted into the British Boxing Hall of Fame. He is a member of the BWAA and has been honored several times in their annual writing awards.
