Sheffield boxer Liam Cameron wins his fight with booze

And the only way he could do that was to resume what he used to do best - hitting pads, bags and other boxers, instead.

Now Sheffield's former Commonwealth champion - whose life was spiralling out of control - is well and truly back in the ring and forming a plan to win titles again.

Having once been ranked as Britain's number two and the world's number 11 at middleweight, he knows he has the pedigree and has rediscovered the appetite to achieve his goals in the sport he loves.

Liam's journey continues on Friday when he fights on Izzy Asif's GBM bill at the Park Community Arena, Sheffield.

But it has been a long road to get to where he is at.

His career hit the buffers in 2018 when the UK Anti-Doping Agency detected a trace amount of benzoylecgonine (a metabolic acid emanating from cocaine) in his urine and banned him for four years.

An appeal was rejected.

Back then, Cameron insisted that traces of cocaine could have passed into his system by handling bank notes - something that has happened to other people.

He insists that is the most likely cause, to this day.

The five-year exile from the sport was a tough time for the one-time ABA champion with the world at his feet.

Without the discipline and direction boxing offers, the one-time athlete drifted into drink and weighed around 19 stones.

"I was going cuckoo and was really bad on drink - I went to hospital twice in an ambulance and I thought it was over.

"Basically I was killing myself with it. In the ambulance I was thinking: 'Just let me survive this' - and I did and I am 14 months sober now...not a drop has been on my tongue."

Cameron said he drank "vodka, gin, anything I could get my hands on.

"It goes back to when I was banned and I thought I could be proper lad now! I can be normal and start partying.

"But after a few months, it (drinking) just kept going up on the Richter scale of how bad I was doing it."

The road to recovery started exactly there - on a road, near his house on the Manor.

"I started with a 10-minute run. From then it snowballed. I went to Steel City gym and saw Grant Smith and his coach Pearce Gudgeon, who used to follow me around boxing fights when he was 10.

"Grant really put it on me saying: 'Do you want to start training properly, Liam, or not? This is your chance to get back.'

"I wasn't expecting but I said yes and then wondered what I had got into," said the 33-year-old.

"I started doing pads and have dropped my weight started to drop off.

"I have experience of how to do that. I don't eat rubbish I am not the immature kid who wants burger or pizza all the time."

Liam stepped up his training, sparring with unbeaten IBO World Super Middle champion Lerrone Richards.

"He is a very good fighter, and the spar went well."

Still slow and heavy, Cameron, finally stepped back for a competitive fight in October, as a cruiserweight, outpointing Robbie Connor at the Park Community Arena.

He is back there on Friday, facing journeyman and old foe Harry Matthews, at super middleweight. Matthews is a late replacement for Rob Parry, who pulled out.

Liam reflects: "I am in a good place now. Hopefully, there will be good things ahead for me this year. It is great to be back."