Matt Maher: Gloves off but journey not over for Brierley Hill's Bob Dillon

Lithuania, Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Russia, Cuba, Japan, Kazakhstan: You name the country and there is a strong chance Dillon has visited during more than two decades coaching Britain’s best fighters.

He’s encountered some fairly famous people too, notably the Williams sisters, when staying in the same Rome hotel as the tennis legends. Then there was the time he bumped into Vladimir Putin.

“It wasn’t exactly hello, how are you? But he was closer than we are right now,” says Dillon, sat across a table at Lions ABC, the club he founded 22 years ago in Brierley Hill.

“It was about four years ago and we were backstage at a tournament in Belarus. I just happened to turn round and a chap walked past me with a great big gun and I thought crikey, I’m going to be his friend! Then the next guy comes past and you think: ‘Hang on, is that Putin? Good God, it is!’.

“We followed him into the arena and honestly, you’ve never seen anything like it. People in the crowd were throwing themselves at him like he was Jesus. He watched his boxer fight against a Belarussian – guess what, his guy won – then he was gone. Feeling that – the aura, the power and the reaction from the crowd – it was a bit scary, to tell the truth.”

Potential

The memory is among countless lodged in Dillon’s conscious, to the extent after more than two hours in his company there is a sense you’ve barely scratched the surface. His phone, meanwhile, contains hundreds, if not thousands of photos and video files which effectively chronicle his career, first as a part-time coach to the England boxing team and then more recently as GB’s lead podium potential coach and world class performance coach.

One video, from 2011, shows Dillon stood on a stool in a deserted gym, as then Olympic hopeful Anthony Joshua throws left hook after left hook into the air pad in the coach’s left hand.

“We were trying to get him to perfect that shot,” says Dillon. “Those are the moments no-one ever sees.”

Dillon’s ancestry meant a career in sport was probably inevitable. His grandfather was a jockey, related to the Irish legend Bernard Dillon, while his father was a footballer on the books of both Birmingham City and Nottingham Forest.

Born in Cork before the family relocated to Bromley Lane, Brierley Hill, months later, Dillon recalls being fascinated at a young age by a pair of boxing gloves brought into the home, before a habit of fighting back against the school bullies saw him taken to Kinver Boxing Club.

A talented amateur, he had two bouts for the England Select team as an adult. That came after a move to Warley ABC, where his love of coaching was first nurtured.

“Dennis Jackson, who was a great England coach, first taught me boxing isn’t robotics,” explains Dillon. “It’s about getting into a boxer’s head.

“You can have three fighters who look exactly the same, the same weight and style, yet inside they are all different. You have to find out what makes them tick.”

Dillon’s first worked with England at the turn of the century. In the build-up to the 2004 Athens Olympics, he helped train a 17-year-old named Amir Khan.

“Was he a talent!” he exclaims. “You would get Amir back to the corner and say: ‘Listen mate, you need to push your foot across and punch’ and he’d go and do it. Transferring thought into movement, that is the secret of sport. He was born with that ability.”

Khan would win silver in Athens, before embarking on a professional career which saw him hold the unified light-welterweight title. Dillon cannot understand why he isn’t more celebrated.

“He fought more world champions than anyone else when he went pro. He never ducked anyone,” he says. “I really believe in five or 10 years time people will look back and think, what a performer!

“Have we kept in touch? No. The crime of being a coach is you are not only selfish with your family – and you are incredibly selfish – you are selfish with the boxers too. You are always on to the next one, to make them better, stronger and find whatever magic you found in the last one.

“Anytime I see him he always gives me a kiss and a cuddle. I remember we were up at a gym in Liverpool a couple of years back and I felt an arm round my shoulder and it was Amir.

“He was the first megastar I ever had the pleasure of working with. But he never thought of himself as a megastar.”

Khan was the only GB boxer who qualified for Athens, at a time when they were very much Olympic boxing’s poor relations.

“I remember going to my first tournament abroad in 2001 and no-one batted an eyelid when we walked in,” says Dillon. “Then when we got our act together, became ‘professional’ amateur athletes, all of a sudden people took notice.

“You had the top Russian coaches coming over and shaking your hand. For someone my age who was a boxing fanatic it was like having Bobby Moore coming over and saying hello.”

Dillon puts the turnaround down to funding and the ‘stroke of genius’ – after GB had sent eight boxers and won three medals at Beijing 2008 – to appoint Rob McCracken as head coach.

“The beauty with Rob was that he had no amateur background. He had no interest in the politics you sometimes get,” says Dillon. “He is like Clint Eastwood, he doesn’t panic. He likes a cigar before he shoots anyone.

“We had always chased the Russian and the Cuban way. Rob wasn’t interested in any of that. His plan was to have more sessions but with fewer boxers, more one-on-one coaching.

“The funding allowed us to do more, get more coaches in. It was money but it was money spent well.”

McCracken’s mantra boxers should focus primarily on their own strengths, rather than those of their opponent, also chimed with Dillon’s philosophy. The key to coaching, he believes, is to keep it simple.

“The secret is giving the people the right to think when they are performing,” he says. “If you are a football manager with a great winger, you don’t tell him the opposing full-back is a great tackler. You say: ‘Go out there and terrify him’.

“You can’t change someone’s style in the middle of combat. Just work on balance, maintaining your shape and controlling the range and with a big spoonful of belief, you are going to give the opponent more problems than they can handle.”

An exchange with David Price, super heavyweight bronze medallist in Beijing, provides an insight into the psychology of top level sport. Dillon would spend hours stood on a bench, looking into the eyes of the 6ft 9in Price, stressing the importance of ‘committing to the storm’.

“If he came out and went BA BOOM, BA BOOM, threw his shots, he was unbeatable,” recalls Dillon. It was an approach which saw Price upset tournament favourite Islam Timurziev in the opening round. Yet in the semi-final against Roberto Cammarelle he began hesitantly and was stopped in the second round.

“I remember being on the phone to him after,” says Dillon. “I said: ‘David, where was the storm?’ He told me he’d got in the ring and thought: ‘It has to be harder than this’. But it wasn’t. He just had to go and do what he did best.”

The GB team would win five medals at London 2012, three in Rio four years later before claiming a record six in Tokyo last summer.

Dillon wasn’t in Japan. Having battled rheumatoid arthritis for more than 30 years, two slipped discs suffered in quick succession early last year left him unable to travel. Deep down, at the age of 64, he knew time was catching up with him.

He says: “There was a day in the gym when Rob looked at me and said: ‘Bob, you look old’. I replied: ‘I feel it mate’. I knew it was time. We sat down and had a meeting. The way it was done was classy, as you would expect.”

Stepping away from his full-time position will free up time for travelling with his wife Julie. Their first stop this month will be in Croatia.

“I have worked so hard at everything I do and been successful,” he says. “But I’ve been lucky I had parents who used to tell me not to worry about failing. I also have an incredible wife and family who have not just allowed me to do the things I’ve done but encouraged it.”

Neither is this the end of Dillon’s boxing journey. He remains a consultant to the GB team, while there is now more time to commit to the Lions, where son Kevin is head coach. Dillon would love to help Midlands boxing properly punch its weight.

“People have been asking if I have ‘retired retired’ and the answer is no,” he says. “I’ve had calls from a couple of good professional boxers to ask about training and maybe I will do a bit of that now.

“Midlands boxing does tend to get overlooked but in some ways we have allowed ourselves to become the poor cousin to London, Liverpool and Manchester.

“Go and do what Ben Whittaker has done. He’s the perfect example, so proud of where he is from and the funniest dude out there. And talent? Wow.

“He isn’t going to let the fact he is from the Black Country hold him back. He is going to use it as a springboard. I remember going over to the US with him and people were asking him what was so special about Wolverhampton? He replied: ‘Me’. That isn’t arrogance. It is how it should be.”