Craig Richards has revealed the key difference between new coach Tony Sims and his former trainer Shane McGuigan.

Light-heavyweight Richards is days away from wrapping up his first full camp under Sims at the Matchroom Gym ahead of his clash with Dan Azeez in Ghana on December 20.

It is now nearly two years since the 35-year-old left Essex to link up with McGuigan in Leyton, East London. The pair won their first fight together, a seventh-round stoppage of Boris Crighton, but things fell apart after Richards was beaten by Willy Hutchinson in June 2024.

Then, early this year, it was confirmed that Richards had decided to leave McGuigan and rejoin the Matchroom gym to start working under Sims. It was a return to familiar ground given that Richards’ had long been trained by Sims’ brother, Peter.

The new relationship paid immediate dividends as Richards stopped Padraig McCrory only a few weeks after joining up with Sims, and now eight months on from that outing, the light-heavyweight and his coach are preparing to go again.

Now from his unique vantage point of working under two of Britain’s most esteemed trainers, Richards has explained why Sims is a better fit for him than McGuigan.

“I’ve noticed a chance since going back, one million per cent,” Richards tells The Ring.

“They are a lot longer days with Tony and a lot harder days with Tony. I’m talking brutal days.

“In a lot of gyms, you might train hard but the fight is still the hardest part but in Tony’s gym, the fight is easier than the camp. You can’t wait for fight night just because it means you’ve finished camp.

“Tony really knows his stuff and he’s probably the best coach I’ve ever worked with and I think he’s the best coach in the UK overall.”

Although he has joined a bustling gym which currently includes the likes of Conor Benn, Daniel Dubois and Johnny Fisher among others, Richards has also noticed that he could not escape the watchful eye of Sims even if he wanted to.

“They are long days in the gym but it’s not just that they are long,” Richards explains.

“The thing with Tony is the days are hard too. He’s not one of them trainers who says ‘right, mate, get on with it, this is your programme, see you later’. He’s there watching over everything you’re doing.

“I mean from your shadow boxing to hitting the bag, he’s there standing over you making sure you’re doing it right and not slacking. When he’s padding you he’s going through everything in detail. Every second of every day there is no eye off the ball.

“But if you look at a lot of other trainers, they will tell you to do your run in the morning and then meet them at the gym. With Tony, he’s with you on the run, holding his stopwatch checking your times, comparing them to last week’s times, making sure you’re progressing constantly.

“Now I’ve seen my times from this camp compared to my March fight [against McCrory], and the progress is much better. It makes me wonder if I was even fit for that last one.

“It means you know the progress you’ve made, you can’t trick yourself. They say ‘men lie, women lie, numbers don’t’, well Tony’s got the numbers.”

Now Richards feels ready to put what he has worked on during camp into practice against Azeez, after losing his last two domestic derbies on points.

He was beaten by Joshua Buatsi in May 2022 while a trip to Riyadh in June 2024 ended in defeat to Hutchinson on the Queensberry v Matchroom 5v5 event at Kingdom Arena. On what was his sole defeat under McGuigan, the self-styled ‘Spider’ said: “My camp just wasn't camping right. My tactics weren’t how they were. And sometimes it's just rapport with trainers.

“Some people understand you better and I've been in the Matchroom Gym for years, under Peter and now Tony and they understand how to get the best out of me. So I felt like I had to come back to prove that losing to Hutchinson was a one-off night, and that that's not how I box.”