I feared the worst for former flyweight champion of the world Lorenzo “Lencho” Parra when I noticed he was scheduled for a six-rounder against a five-fight novice in a leisure centre in Ibiza. My concern deepened when I saw he had weighed in as a junior welterweight. What was he doing: 5,000 miles from home in Venezuela, two years shy of his 40th birthday, fighting for peanuts at 28lbs above his prime weight?

As I sat on the train from Madrid to Valencia I wondered who I might find at the end of the line. Lencho had gone to ground since our initial contact the previous week, so when I arrived into Joaquín Sorolla Station, I dialled his number in hope as much as expectation.

“Hola hermano,” Lencho answered on the first ring. It was a dodgy connection and his accent was as strong as I’ve heard, but I made out the bare essentials of his instructions: “I’m at the general hospital. Come meet me here.”

The hospital? A full 10 days after his fight? I hadn’t been able to find any news about the contest other than that he lost on points, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that he may have endured a beating. I braced myself for the worst.

A short taxi ride later I was at the hospital’s main doors, peering in to see if a convalescing patient might shuffle out in my direction, when a light tap on my shoulder beckoned me to turn around. Lencho wasn’t in the hospital; he just lives beside it.

He looked unscathed from both his recent trip to Ibiza and the previous three decades spent in the ring. He is as small as you would expect a flyweight champion to be, but a stockiness built on middle-aged heft has emerged and precipitated that unwanted climb through the divisions. I notice a scar curling around the corner of his right eye but he later tells me that was from a clash of heads on the football pitch rather than anything in the ring.

Lencho takes me to his local bar and begins his story. “I wanted to be a footballer. That was always my thing. And I’m a good footballer, good enough to play at state level in my country. My older brother was the boxer. He was scheduled to fight for the world title on 16 February 1989. But on 31 December 1988, there was some trouble on the street and they slit his throat and killed him. I was only 10 but I told my mother I was going to win a world title for Alexis. I was going to fulfil his dream.”

Fifteen years later, he did just that when he claimed the WBA flyweight belt. He did it the hard way too, defeating the unbeaten champion Eric Morel in the Puerto Rican’s his own backyard. “He was 33 and 0. Unbeatable, like a Mayweather figure of the day. My manager didn’t want me to take the fight so I told him he could keep my entire purse if I lost. I was so hungry to win and knew I could beat him. I knew I could slip his punches and counter him. And I did.”

That was Lencho’s first fight outside Venezuela but he soon became used to fighting on the road as five successful defences were made in Japan, South Korea and France. A meniscus injury and subsequent surgery stalled his career in 2006 and, when he returned in March 2007, the 15-month layoff had taken its toll. Unable to will his body anywhere close to the measly 112lb limit, he lost his title on the scales in Tokyo. The following day, Takefumi Sakata, a fighter he had already beaten twice, stopped him in the third round.

Lorenzo Parra in Valencia. Photograph: Paul Gibson

Every champion loses eventually and few flyweights can stay in that division for their entire career. Presumably, after six lucrative defences of his title, he had enough bolívares in the bank to guarantee a comfortable life in Machiques? “The most I ever got paid for those big fights was $60,000. Expenses then came out of that. Then I bought a house for my family and started a business. It was decent money in Venezuela, but it still didn’t last long.”

After a year effectively out of action, Lencho needed to get back in the ring. The flyweight division was now a distant memory and making super fly or bantamweight also appeared beyond him, so the WBA ushered him into a match with their 122lb champ, the formidable Panamanian Celestino Caballero, in June 2008. At 5ft 11in and with a 73.5-inch reach, Caballero was a giant at the weight and he towered over the 5ft 4in Parra. But Lencho was a smart, tough boxer and the contest was still alive going into the final round.

“I was enjoying the fight,” he tells me now as we reminisce. “It was hard work, but one judge had it even and another had me only one round down so I stood up for the 12th ready to give everything. Then the referee suddenly pulls me to one side for the doctor to look at my jaw. I’m moving it, opening and closing it, saying I’m fine, but they decided to stop it. It was swollen but I knew it wasn’t broken. I broke my jaw in the third round of my first fight with Sakata so I know what that’s like.”

What is it like to fight with a broken jaw against an elite opponent for nearly half an hour? “It’s fine,” Lencho says with a puzzled look on his face. “You just get on with the fight.” So you barely even realise? “Oh, you definitely realise! But you just suck it up and keep going.”

Two low-key domestic fights in the next two years did not keep him sharp, but such was Lencho’s standing in the sport that the WBO were happy to push him straight into a super bantamweight eliminator against future four-weight world champion Jorge Arce. The pair battled to a draw and impressed enough for both to be given subsequent title shots: Arce against Wilfredo Vazquez Jr. for the WBO super bantamweight crown and Lencho against Anselmo Moreno for the WBA bantamweight belt. Arce took his chance, but Moreno was in his prime and Lencho became his eighth successful defence.

“Eight months later I get a call,” he continues. “It is half-time in the final of a football tournament I am playing in. My manager is telling me they want me to fight Arce again and it’ll be decent money. ‘When?’ I ask. ‘Next week,’ he says. I start laughing because I’m about 10kg overweight. But I still took the fight.”

Took it, and lost it, stopped in the fifth when one of Arce’s vicious body shots dug a little deeper than usual into his substantial midriff. Fast approaching his 35th birthday, Lencho knew his time was up as he pulled the gumshield from his mouth before the referee’s count reached 10.

That should have been that. And it was for four years. But last summer, Lencho returned. Weighing in as a junior welterweight, a full two stone heavier than his glory nights, he eked out a draw against a 2&8 fighter and then stopped a debutant in the fourth. Then, with his country self-destructing around him, he looked to Europe.

“My plan is to bring my wife and four children here this summer. Venezuela is complicated now. It’s a very dangerous place. I’ve seen people killed for nothing. I saw a bullet go through a policeman on a motorbike and kill the child sitting in front of him. Right in front of my business. The gunman stopped, pointed the gun at me, perhaps recognised me and then rode on. I want to bring my family to Spain where it is safe.”

One thing boxing doesn’t lack is middlemen and it wasn’t long before Lencho was shipped over. The day after he arrived in Spain last December, the woefully out of shape former world champion clambered between the ropes to face an elite European-level fighter in Juli Giner. Already this year he has fought three more times, including a tune-up for Andoni Gago before the Basque took on Lee Selby in the O2. Lencho has lost each time: he is just an opponent now.

With plenty of winks and nods, Lencho describes his new role. The expectations on his performance may vary, but he is now fighting to lose. It is that or don’t get paid. He says he toys with opponents and has literally held one up after catching him cleaner than he should have.

He smiles proudly when I bring up the competitive eight rounds with Gago in Bilbao. “He expected a very easy night,” says Lencho. “He was mistaken.” But the smile soon fades. Lencho’s current status reflects his finances rather than his ability. He is reluctant to go into details but I know a middleman has been withholding the majority of his already light purses. He’s a proud man but it is clear he is struggling.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however, in the form of a link up with MGZ Promotions, a Basque outfit who are one of the more reputable boxing promoters and managers in Spain. Iñigo Herbosa, one of the team at MGZ, tells me they are keen to help Lencho in the short term by finding him decent fights and in the long term by moving him into a training role.

“Lencho is a really good guy,” says Herbosa. “He’s an honest and hardworking man so he deserves to be treated well. He impressed us against Gago. We’ll find him good match-ups and then, because of his character and knowledge, employ him as a trainer.”

As if on cue, a teenage boy enters the bar and greets Lencho with an elaborate handshake. They discuss times and places animatedly, then the kid leaves with an extra bounce in his step. “One of my students,” Lencho explains. “I’m teaching him some things in the gym or just in the park. He came to me looking like his dad [the rotund punter standing at the bar] and now look at him. If nothing else, I’ll get him healthy.”

Lencho will be a good trainer when his time comes but he’s not ready to hang up his gloves just yet. Once a champion, always a champion and he is still hungry for wins in the ring. “I’ve never taken too many punches in my career. I was always gifted at slipping punches or softening their impact. So I’ll fight until I’m 40 – that’s two more years. All I said to MGZ was, I want to be a winner once more. Please just let me fight to win again.”

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