ALEX ARTHUR arrived at Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood from Scotland to train and spar under Freddie Roach’s tutelage towards the end of 2003.

This was just after his defeat to Michael Gomez in what remains to this day one of the all-time classic British domestic fights.

I’d followed Alex’s career from a distance and watched him emerge as a local Edinburgh celebrity, tipped from a young age to achieve great things in boxing.

He’d come up through the amateur ranks, winning almost every tournament in sight, culminating in him taking the gold at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.

Turning pro afterwards, he quickly established an undefeated record and seemed well on course to taking a world title.

During this period he was the golden boy not only of Scottish but British boxing, a status enhanced by his media-friendly persona and articulacy.

Indeed for a spell the boxing world looked to be Alex Arthur’s oyster. That is until he lost to Michael Gomez in what was his first defeat as a pro.

I recall Freddie telling me in the gym one day that Alex would be arriving to train and spar for a few weeks.

Freddie hadn’t long taken on the role of Alex’s head trainer, despite having been unable to make it over to Edinburgh for the Gomez fight, and he was looking forward, he told me, to working with him up close and personal.

During his time at Wild Card Alex dazzled. Clearly determined to shake off the psychological impact of his Gomez defeat, he looked a class act in sparring.

Freddie put him in with the likes of world title contender Israel Vasquez, future Irish world super bantamweight champion Bernard Dunne, and former world champion Nate Campbell. Alex not only bested each of them, he literally schooled them, he was so good.

Wild Card was not a gym for the faint-hearted. Day in and day out the place thundered with gym wars in which no quarter was ever asked or given.

It was rare indeed to see a fighter exude the kind of poise and craft and control that Alex brought to his work while sparring there.

This to the point where I don’t think any of his sparring partners managed to land a clean shot on him throughout his entire time there.

After one session, I recall giving Alex and his brother Mark a lift all the way from Hollywood to Santa Monica, where they were living with Bernard Dunne at his apartment for the duration of their time in LA.

Rather take the freeway, I took them down Santa Monica Boulevard to give them a look at Beverly Hills, which we passed through on the way. If Alex was impressed by this famous part of the world renowned for luxury and unfettered wealth, he certainly wasn’t showing it.

The product of an Edinburgh housing scheme, boxing had provided Alex Arthur with an escape to a better life. Long years of gruelling early morning roadwork, sparring and training had seen him achieve a level of financial security rare for a young lad his age and from his background.

Traditionally, and sadly, money has bewitched and blinded many fighters — young men who typically come from nothing and end up back there, after making the mistake that the money will never stop and so spending it accordingly. Alex

Arthur, you got the sense, would not fall into the same trap. He was just too switched on and focused for that to happen.

I still have the vivid memory of watching him climb out of the ring after each sparring session emitting the aura of a fighter who knew he’d done well, had impressed, and was well on course to re-establishing his trajectory towards world title honours.

It was exactly the morale-booster he needed after the Gomez defeat, confirming in the process that fighters exist, like precarious economies, between extremes of buoyant surplus and crippling deficit when it comes that that non-negotiable commodity in any boxer’s arsenal: self-belief.

By the time he left to return to Scotland, Alex had succeeded in impressing the entire gym, including and most importantly Freddie Roach.

However, with that said, Freddie was not destined to remain as his trainer going forward. Freddie just had far too many commitments at the time, and with Manny Pacquaio’s career about to head into overdrive at this point, his priorities were mapped out.

Alex knew it too. Here was a fighter who did not function well as part of a stable, who liked to be in control of every aspect of his career, including who trained him, where and how.

Indeed, during his career, Alex came in for criticism for cosntantly switching trainers. It was the pattern of a young fighter who never found a trainer whose knowledge and know-how he every completely trusted.

However rather than the weakness that his critics tried to assert, it may in retrospect have been a strength, one reflective of his single-mindedness, which for any fighter serious about his or her career it a vital attribute. 

Fast forward 20 years and Alex Arthur has established himself in boxing as one of the best and most respected pundits in the sport, successful gym owner and trainer — particularly of his two boys Alex Jnr and Machlan.

Like their old man before them, both are being touted as potential future Olympians and who knows what thereafter? In them we have two apples that have most definitely not fallen far from the tree. 

Those four weeks in 2003 that Alex Arthur spent schooling some of the most elite fighters operating at the time at Freddie Roach’s famed Wild Card Boxing Club are weeks this writer will never forget.