The life of the new WBO cruiserweight champion changed one August afternoon in 2012 when he was on a brief break from flipping burgers
“I was working at McDonald’s in Victoria station,” Lawrence Okolie remembers of a time, in the summer of 2012, when he was lost, lonely and clinically obese. Last month, in a very different world, Okolie became the WBO cruiserweight champion as he completed his “crazy transition” from being an unhappy teenager who weighed more than 19 stone and earned £5 an hour while working at McDonald’s.
His life changed one August afternoon in 2012 when he was on a brief break from flipping burgers. The television flickered in a corner of a back room at McDonald’s and Okolie’s gaze fixed on the screen as Anthony Joshua fought in the Olympic super-heavyweight final. Okolie lived every punch, and every moment, as Joshua finally won the gold medal.
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