Luke Campbell: From Olympic boxing champion to mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire
The 37-year-old won the election for Reform UK.
Luke Campbell has crossed over from the boxing ring to the political sphere after being elected the first mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire.
It is an unusual switch of careers for the first Briton to win Olympic bantamweight gold in more than a century at London 2012 and two-time world lightweight title challenger but is not without precedent.
Manny Pacquiao juggled huge fight nights with his commitments in the Philippines Senate, while Vitali Klitschko has been a spearhead in Ukrainian resistance as mayor of Kyiv following the Russian invasion.
Campbell, a married father of three boys, told the Daily Telegraph this week he only committed to running for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK five days before his candidacy was officially rubberstamped.
The 37-year-old was emboldened by his zeal for his local area, having been born and bred in Hull, where he fought seven times in his professional career, including a debut at Craven Park in July 2013.
“This community shaped me, supported me through my journey in boxing and helped me achieve success,” he wrote to his prospective constituents. “Now it’s my turn to give back and fight for a better future.
“I’m not a career politician, I’m a fighter. I know what it takes to succeed and I know how to get results.”
That much is true, irrespective of the backlash he has faced since aligning with Reform, with Campbell having to defend himself against accusations of racism as well as explain a couple of alleged homophobic social media posts in 2011 and 2012.
Behind the cherubic features that belie over 200 amateur and professional contests is an iron will, typified by him ignoring mother Jill’s plea to “find a safer sport” when he first started boxing, aged 12.
Jill was “shaking from head to foot” following Campbell’s Olympic triumph, after which he was awarded an MBE and had a phone box in his home city repainted gold to commemorate his achievement.
A stint on ITV’s Dancing on Ice was followed by Campbell winning his first dozen professional fights in style.
More of a technician than a knockout specialist, his blurring hand speed helped him gain regular stoppages, while a fan following, especially in Hull, was assured after the Olympics.
He rebounded from a shock defeat to Yvan Mendy by winning his next five fights to earn a shot at lightweight king Jorge Linares in 2017.
Unbeknown to anyone outside his inner circle, his father Bernard died two weeks before the bout, but Campbell pushed on ahead and produced a stirring display, only to come up fractionally short on the judges’ scorecards.
He again showed tremendous heart and grit two years later when fighting for several 135lb world titles but was ultimately outclassed by generational great Vasiliy Lomachenko.
The writing was on the wall when he was stopped for the first time in his career by rising star Ryan Garcia and he retired in 2021 with a record of 20 wins and four defeats, declaring he had “lived his dream”.
Since then, Campbell has turned to business and still occasionally body spars. Having emerged from the murky world of boxing relatively unscathed, he now enters the equally chaotic and unpredictable realm of politics eager to make his mark.
