Aidan Walsh

And for me, like I always say, my hardest battles, my toughest battles were done in the background.

And there's a select few people in my life that really, really helped me and they know what it was like.

For example, even qualifying for my second Olympics, that was a period that was so, so hard and it was so, so difficult.

And to be honest, probably I'm still recovering from it, to be quite honest.

I went to Thailand and had six fights in eight days.

And then I had fought world champions, fought Cuba, fought an odd number of countries.

And even then, I phoned Michaela after my first fight and said, Michaela, I can't do it.

I had five more fights to go.

I said, Michaela, I can't do this.

I was struggling even then.

And even throughout that whole tournament, I would have been on the phone to the psychologist and stuff and saying, I'm going to come home and I don't want to do it anymore.

And this was on a daily basis.

and the day that i went to qualify for the olympics i lost against the guy from jordan and i got out of the ring i had no energy at all prior to this competition i had retired for a year so i had been out of the ring for like a year and after i got out of the ring i lay down i had nothing left in me like i mean absolutely nothing i was shot i was done and i was saying to the coach i can't go on but i had another fate i had two more fates if i still wanted to qualify

because it went off into a box-off.

So that was my fourth fight, two more fights to go, and I was to fight Cuba next.

And I said to the coach, there's no way, I can't, there's no way I can fight Cuba, there's no way.

And Cuba's one of the best countries in the world.

I was like, it's not even about the opponent, but I had no energy, I literally had nothing left.

So I went out that night, so I did it by myself, went to a steak restaurant, got a big large steak, chip barbecue sauce, two cans of coke,

And I was due to fight the Cuban the next day.