\n
Sharon – who will be ringside in Riyadh alongside Noakes’ dad John – encouraged her sons to take up boxing. Noakes soon became a talented amateur at Westree Boxing Club in Maidstone and went on to win the ABAs in April 2019.<\/p>\n
A month later he was invited down to Billy Joe Saunders’ WBO super-middleweight title fight with Shefat Isufi in Stevenage and Francis Warren, the son of hall of fame promoter Frank, told him he wanted to manage his career.<\/p>\n
Noakes turned his back on the working life where he had jobs in a call centre, fast-food restaurant and as a roofer, to turn professional.<\/p>\n
“Thinking about those jobs is what keeps me working hard in the gym,” said Noakes. “I don’t want to go back to that.<\/p>\n
“The roofing was hard graft, but I was a fair-weather roofer. If it rained, you wouldn’t see me.<\/p>\n
“You can’t get out of the ring when it is tough – but you can get back in the van when you’re on a roof and it starts raining.”<\/p>\n
Noakes had three professional fights before the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and had to briefly go back to work – helping out his brother as a ‘strapper’s assistant’ on the railway as they cut the power to allow work to be done on the electrical lines.<\/p>\n
“It was a lot of time in the van,” Noakes said.<\/p>\n
He would munch away on snacks and – after one night with a few too many treats – he hatched a plan to run a marathon the next day to burn them off.<\/p>\n
“I was going to run 20 miles because I felt bad after eating a load of rubbish,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Then someone said: ‘Why don’t you do a marathon if you’re going to go that far?’<\/p>\n
“So myself and a friend went out and did the 26.2 miles. I did it in three hours 40 minutes.”<\/p>\n
His run through the lightweight ranks had been steady – and Noakes has carefully navigated his way to the top of the division.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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