Phil Lo Greco: ‘I could have died in the ring… I don’t want other boxers to make the same mistake’ Exclusive interview: Boxer opens up about hiding concussion, his mental scars and why he should never have stepped in a ring with Amir Khan

Phil Lo Greco is on a mission from God – and he’s already got the sunglasses to match.

When Eddie Hearn poked fun at Lo Greco for walking into a press conference in Liverpool last January wearing shades, the boxer brushed off the comment with a joke about a hangover and set about the business of winding up Amir Khan to promote their fight a few months later.

But this was no laughing matter. The reality was that Lo Greco’s long-term concussion was so serious that he could not tolerate the bright lights or stop his left eyeball from wandering stray.

The Canadian had already been hiding his symptoms for the best part of a year and was determined not to lose out on this fight, an opportunity to beat the returning Khan and put himself on the map.

“I was looking past him. I thought that he had been out for two years and if I beat him with a puncher’s chance, I could fight Kell Brook,” Lo Greco tells i in his first interview since surgery to repair a strabismus in his left eye – a lazy eye, in common parlance.

“I wasn’t able to make a healthy decision. I made an unprofessional decision and I took the Khan fight. In my blogs, I was talking openly about how great my training camps in Las Vegas were going.

“But it was literally just a weight-loss camp. I showed everyone how to lose 38 pounds in two months.”

When he got in the ring with Khan, Lo Greco lasted a second for every pound that he had lost in camp.

“I never saw it coming,” Lo Greco said of the shot that ended his night.

It’s a common phrase but in this case, he really means it. He had been battling concussion symptoms that were leaving him confused and crying after sparring, and feeling ‘mentally drunk’ most of the time.

“I went to the doctor and told him I was seeing blurry, feeling confused and having all these negative thoughts. I was extremely mentally tired and physically drained,” Lo Greco says.

“I said to myself: ‘Maybe I’m just overthinking’. But I was concussed. I couldn’t keep my thoughts together.”

The truth is Lo Greco should never have even sat down with Hearn – but it wasn’t the first time he had, he now realises, taken his life in his own hands by trying to fight through the condition.

The symptoms had first manifested themselves before his 31st professional fight, an eight-round win over Jesus Gurrola back in June 2017.

“I was lucky Khan ended it in 40 seconds because I could have lost my life that night. I could have died, and never seen my daughter,” Lo Greco reiterates, under no illusions about the risks he was taking.

“It could have happened against Gurrola but he was a journeyman and he wasn’t a puncher.”

Instead of being scared about losing his life, he was worried about the pay cheque.

Now, Lo Greco has been out of the ring for 18 months and has had surgery to repair the strabismus in his eye. He is even keen on a return to the ring, if medically cleared to do so.

Concussion in boxing became a global conversation in the wake of Anthony Joshua’s trainer Rob McCracken revealing he knew his fighter was concussed early on in his defeat to Andy Ruiz. Just a few weeks later, Patrick Day tragically died after injuries sustained in the ring.

Boxing was forced to look at itself and ask some searching questions. Lo Greco saw his opportunity to come clean.

“I would have been a coward not to address this, for myself and for future boxers,” he said.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. I don’t remember a lot of stuff. I don’t remember the biggest fight of my life, the Khan fight, the camp leading up to it.

“But I feel there are a lot of fighters out there going into the ring with symptoms that they don’t want to talk about.”

Lo Greco’s honesty is refreshing, although he is careful not to apportion blame. This was his mistake, his deception and his choice. But he does not want other fighters to make the same mistake.

“God took me out of that ring in 30 seconds,” he says.

“But he said to me ‘here’s what you’re going to do in return – you’re going to speak about this openly so you can save a life or two’.”

However Lo Greco avoided a fate that he tempted more than once, he is alive to tell the tale. And he is not going to do it quietly.