‘We’re dealing with a freak’: Meet Adam Azim, the 20-year-old boxer scaring world champions

independent.co.uk:

It is a chilling statement uttered with the most flattering of intentions: “We’re dealing with a freak.”Those are the words of boxing promoter Ben Shalom, speaking over Zoom, pacing back and forth in a room that appears to have just a few small windows – just below the ceiling, along the back wall.

You’d think he was a military commander fruitlessly planning how to take down Godzilla, but the Boxxer chief is in fact on the side of the monster in question here.And that monster is Adam Azim.

It might seem an odd way to describe the 5ft 11in, 20-year-old super-lightweight, but put a pair of boxing gloves on the Briton and the results really are terrifying.“I remember when I was four years old,” the monster tells The Independent while lurking in a hallway inside Shane McGuigan’s gym. “My dad made me learn the basics at the back of the garden in Slough, he got me a speed ball in the garage.

He used to put weighted hand wraps on me and make me do shadow boxing for like 20 minutes straight. Even when I was punching the speed ball, he used to put ankle weights on my legs and hands.