‘I weighed 19st and drank till I overdosed – late step-daughter modified me’

It was lying in a hospital bed after taking an overdose just under two years ago when Liam Cameron realised he needed to change.

The Sheffield boxer had been blue-lighted to hospital and he thought the end was coming. Tonight he will look to take the next step in turning his life completely around by beating former world title challenger Lyndon Arthur in Bolton.

It would be quite the ‘Rocky’ story but this is no cheesy Hollywood flick. This is a story of heartbreak, loss and the depths of despair. A tragic tale in which he also had to deal with the death of his stepdaughter.

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It’s five years now since Cameron, 33, was handed a four-year ban from sport after traces of benzoylecgonine [a metabolite of cocaine] were found in a post-fight UKAD test following his Commonwealth middleweight title win over Nicky Jenman.

Cameron was stunned, pleaded his innocence but his defence that he could have handled money with traces of cocaine on them when collecting ticket money in pubs for his fight were dismissed.

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“I’m not a liar, I’ve no need to lie,” he said. “It could have been four or five things, but it was a metabolite and not the actual drug.

“Why would I take it? It’s not performance enhancing. It was minute traces but you get others who have needles sticking out of them getting six months.” Cameron went off the rails following his appeal rejection.

He said: “I totally went, ‘I can be a regular person now, go to the pub and enjoy my life’ but that turned into alcohol abuse, other stuff I was doing that I can’t speak about.

“It wasn’t a good time. I was drinking every day. I was either going to be killed or kill someone. I was that bad. I was saying the same rubbish ‘I’ll start Monday, I’ll stop drinking by Monday’ but I never did. I ended up having an overdose, ambulance came for me and I thought I was dead.

“I said then ‘listen if I can survive this I’ll stop drinking’ and from that day – it will be two years in January – that happened.” In the midst of all this, Cameron’s step-daughter Tiegan, 20, was killed in a car accident in 2020.

“That was a horrendous day, a really sad day,” he said. “I used to take her to the boxing gym when she was younger, she watched me win the Commonwealth title.

“She text me after the ban saying ‘I hope you sort yourself out and stop drinking and get yourself back to the gym’. I wrote a Facebook status on my girlfriend’s [Tanya Scott] page saying ‘I will fight for you again, I promise you’.

“But I didn’t do it initially. Then I thought ‘I made a promise here to this girl that I would do it’.”

After the overdose, Cameron got back on track. The old habits were kicked and, at over 19 stone, he ran marathons to shed weight.

Now after three comeback wins, he’s taken a huge step up in class to face former light-heavyweight title challenger Arthur on a big TV show with plans to use the win to help his plans to run his own boxing club one day.

“I’ve already turned my life around but this will change it completely,” he added. “If Tiegan’s up there she can give me this favour and give me a bit of luck. I’m asking for a favour from her.”

Watch Arthur v Cameron live on Channel 5 tonight from 10pm

If you or somebody you know has been affected by this story, contact Talk To Frank for free, confidential advice on 0300 1236600, texting 82111 or visiting their website