Memories and scars bring Yafai to the edge of glory

Olympic champion Galal Yafai, the baby in a boxing family, now has his sights set on a full world title, writes Steve Bunce

- Steve Bunce

It has been a hard road for Galal Yafai, from being the baby boxer in the family to winning a gold medal at the Olympics - and now being the main attraction in his hometown.

On Saturday, at Resorts World on the outskirts of Birmingham, Yafai defends his WBC interim flyweight title against the Mexican Francisco Rodriguez Jr. It is not an easy fight, it's a difficult fight. A real fight.

Yafai is now 32, this will still only be his 10th professional fight, but his amateur career was long and established; he fought and lost at the Rio Olympics, and then in 13 days of glory, he won five times in Tokyo in 2021 to win a gold medal. It is arguably the best gold-medal streak in British history. Every single one of the bouts was hard; Galal fights that way.

Yafai was the youngest and smallest of three fighting brothers; that can be a constant battle. His two brothers could both really fight: Khalid went to the 2008 Olympics, won a British title and was world champion at super-flyweight; Gamal won the European and Commonwealth titles as a professional. All three brothers won international medals. Khalid was, in 2005, just the second British boxer to claim any version of a world amateur title when he won the under-17 world championship in Liverpool. They are one of the world's great fighting families.

"It's been a long journey to just get here," Galal said. "It's not finished yet, not even close."