LONDON, England — Success has many fathers, the old adage goes, but failure is an orphan.

It is often suggested that the loser’s dressing room is a bleak and lonely place in boxing, particularly after the man who returns to the center of it has been knocked out.

The great Argentine middleweight Sergio Martinez once said he had more than 1,000 missed calls on his phone following victories while, in the wake of his 2014 defeat to Miguel Cotto, there were only four. One was from an unknown number, and the other three were from his mother.

It is a scenario that Johnny Fisher, the Essex heavyweight, cannot relate to despite the brutal nature of his defeat to Dave Allen in May, the first of his career. The Fisher Express had been trundling along nicely, gathering pace with every victory and picking up passengers along the way.

But it was unceremoniously derailed by Allen, who drew a line through the controversial nature of their initial encounter in December, which ended with Fisher winning split decision. Allen stopped Fisher at the end of the fifth round in the rematch.

Back the 26-year-old Romford Bull trudged to his dressing room. But if he was expecting an empty space in the bowels of Copper Box, or a phone untroubled by well-wishers, he was wrong.

“After the fight, the dressing room was probably more full than any of my other fights that I’d won,” Fisher told The Ring. “And that's testament to my family, my management, my team, and that's testament to Mark and Jimmy Tibbs, as well, and everyone around me.

"I've had great people there supporting me all the way through. I’ve got great people around me, and the support network in my army will follow me whether I win, lose or draw, because that’s the sort of people I’ve got round me.

“They’re salt-of-the-earth people that will never change, because they’re proper people. There are a few that might fall away, but you expect that anyway. Most of the people round me are genuine.”

One of the visitors to Fisher’s dressing room late that night was Derek Chisora, who knows his fair share about bouncing back from defeat given he has tasted it 13 times in his 49 professional outings. Even so, Chisora has evolved into one of British boxing’s biggest cult heroes in recent times.

“Derek said to me, 'Look, this is going to be a dark, hard time,'” Fisher said. “And it was a dark, hard time in the first couple of weeks. Then he said what I probably knew, looking with hindsight, that in boxing you have to play to your strengths.

“What I was doing was probably going too technical and sacrificing time on just being super fit. You’ve got to do both at the same time, and that’s the sort of discussion I had with Derek.”

In the wake of the defeat, Fisher decided a change was needed and split amicably with Tibbs, his longtime trainer. He stayed close to home, however, crossing Essex to link up with Tony Sims. Fisher knew from the first conversation that it was the correct decision.

“He gave me a call, and the first thing he asked me was, 'What do you think went wrong in that fight?'” Fisher said. “I suppose it's important for him to know that we’re on the same page, to know what my psyche's like and to understand me as a human being a bit more. I think that's what good coaches do.

“We just started with that discussion, and then we just went down to the gym. After the second time, I just knew I wanted to train there, and Tony actually said let's not mess about, let's just get it all done, and then we can move on and get working.”

The good news for the new fighter-trainer team is that both men agree on went wrong against Allen, and, in theory, it should be reasonably straight forward to put straight.

“Collectively, we probably strayed too far from what got me to where I was in the first place,” Fisher said. “I think we went too technical and took away all the main attributes of myself.

“What I've said to Tony in that sense is I don't want to stray too far from what I'm good at. It's just about enhancing what I've already got, rather than trying to turn my weaknesses into my strengths.

"But you have to realise what you are and what you're good at. What I'm good at is being aggressive, being powerful, being explosive, and being super fit.

“I think we went too technical and took away all the main attributes of myself. I’m making things a little bit tighter in how I move my feet, where I hold my hands and how I'm rotating into shots.

"It's about breaking down the minutiae of what makes someone a good aggressive, front-foot, explosive fighter. That's why it's good I've got a bit of time until my next fight because we can do the groundwork.

"I always compare it to a degree, right? You do your background reading before you go into an exam. So we're doing that initial reading stage now, and learning and building up the base of knowledge before we go into an exam.”

Fisher, incidentally, is highly educated himself. He has a degree in history from the University of Exeter. His dissertation at the heart of his studies focused on the aerial bombing of Germany in 1944-45.

He has, therefore, always been a critical thinker who likes to extract meaning from the past. Those attributes, it seems, have helped him come to terms with what happened at Copper Box.

“After you win, you’re just over the moon all the time, completely buzzing," Fisher says. "So when you’re the one it has happened to, it is the exact opposite, you hate it, it’s horrible, it’s dark.

"But then you realise it’s a boxing match, for God’s sake. You’ve had a boxing match, you’ve been paid well for it, and this is just the nature of the game we’re in.

“It has been me doing that to other people plenty of times. They have been the ones feeling down for weeks afterwards. It was my time to have it done to me.

"Just look at the history books and all the champions that have come before. Almost everyone of note, with a few very notable exceptions, has lost a fight. It’s part and parcel of the game we’re in.

"Now it has done me a favour to take the pressure of the rollercoaster off. We were just going up and up, from big fight to bigger fight, thinking, ‘What can he do next?’ Because I don’t have the experience of others.

“I’ve had 24 fights, amateur and pro. It’s now time to lay the groundwork, build the foundations, think more in depth, do the reading and go into that exam sure of what I’ve got to do. Not just winging it.”

Fisher, as The Ring reported earlier this month, will return in December. Win, lose or draw, the dressing room will be packed.