Chelsea Players with Connections to Boxing

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London has always been a city that has two sporting loves. One is obviously football, with the city boasting a whole host of professional teams to bet on and spectate, and the second is boxing, a pastime driven into the spotlight by the city’s amateur and professional gyms that take average joes and turn them into men and women deemed worthy by boxing tipsters and odds makers.

For this reason, it’s perhaps unsurprising that there is a deep bond between the sports which extends to the athletes themselves as well the fans who like to wager on both sporting pursuits. Here we take a look at the Chelsea players of past and present who all have ties to the sweet science of boxing, with some even appearing in the boxing/MMA betting odds lines, as they swapped their boots and shin pads for hand wraps and boxing gloves.

Many players now use boxing training as a means of staying fit during the off-season

Mason Mount

Mount is the only active Chelsea player on this list and not because he boxes himself but due to his fighting spirit out on the pitch partly coming from the fact that his grandfather was a boxer.

It is that ingrained grit and determination that his seen the youngster rise into the Chelsea and England first teams.

Chelsea FC: Stamford Bridge
Not many boxing events have been hosted at Stamford Bridge over the years with the great Jimmy Wilde vs. Joe Conn back in 1918 perhaps being the most famous

Diego Costa

This Spanish bruiser was certainly never shy of throwing his weight around out on the pitch and he did the same when he donned some boxing gloves to take on the Chelsea physio, Billy McCulloch, back in 2015.

Luckily the pugilism meted out on that day was only done in jest, although it must be said that McCulloch appeared to have a better grasp of the boxing fundamentals as the two men battled it out next to the training ground’s salad bar.

Wayne Bridge

One of the few Chelsea players to actually glove up for real is full-back Wayne Bridge, who perhaps wanting to get rid of some pent-up John Terry inspired aggression, faced up to social media star Spencer Matthews.

In the end it was Bridge’s athletic conditioning and poise that saw him through, as he knocked his opponent down on the way to a wide points decision victory. Thankfully, Bridge didn’t get any funny ideas about trying to take his boxing career any further than that.