He had been a talented boxer ever since he first set foot in the gym as a 12-year-old kid but, despite his success as an amateur, Birchall drifted in and out of love with boxing.

The same could not be said of his younger brothers Leighton and Nelson, who followed the eldest into the boxing club but then stayed put.

“I’d win 20 on the bounce, then stop,” 25-year-old Birchall tells The Ring. “Then I’d win another 30 on the bounce, then stop again. I kept on having little niggling injuries that would set me back.”

It was just before lockdown when Birchall, still only 20, had decided to give it one final go, turn professional and chance his hand punching for pay. Of course, the worldwide pandemic would draw a line through that plan completely.

 “Then when lockdown finished, I was a young lad with bills to pay so I had to try and get a few quid in,” he says. “I needed some finances behind me so I never went back to boxing. I carried on working and earning a nice few quid every month. I thought ‘this is nice’ and carried on working.”

At that point, Leighton and Nelson, now 19 and 21, were still swinging and flying the flag for the fighting family as two of the country's most promising amateurs. William, however, had retreated to the shadows in their home town of Morecambe.

But everything changed on one remarkable day in 2024 when separate encounters with two of Britain’s recent world champions set him back on the path to his long-awaited professional debut.

 “So firstly I was in the gym just watching Nelson spar because he was preparing for a fight,” he recalls. “And also in the gym that day was Jazza Dickens. I had a friendly conversation with him and he said he’d heard I was good and that I should come back. I thought nothing of it really. But then later that day I bumped into Tyson Fury too.

 “We happened to be in the barbershop at the same time and we were having a bit of craic in there. But then he said ‘look, son, I’ve heard all three of you have done nothing but good things as amateurs and one day you’ll all be the talk of the town like I am’.

“He told me it’s time for me to get back to boxing and it just gave me the little kick up the backside I needed at that time. Without seeing him that day, who knows if I had ever come back.”

But, much like Fury, boxing comebacks were nothing new to William and there were eye rolls in the family when he told them about his latest plan.

 “After I’d spoken to Tyson I thought ‘right, here we go again’,” Birchall says. “I told my brothers I was coming back and I was going to turn pro and they said they’d only believe it once they’d seen it.

 “Then for the next few weeks and months, all I could think was those two saying that, they’ll believe it when they see it. That was enough for me, I couldn’t make a fool of myself and go back on my word to them.

“I stayed in the gym, kept training and kept believing. I thought ‘who should I spar to see if I’ve still got it or not?’ And the answer was my little brothers. They’ve got my best interests at heart, they won’t want to see me get hurt and they will be honest. But I held my own with them.

“If I could still do it against them after all that time out then why not? I applied for my licence.”

He and young Leighton, both campaigning as featherweights, eventually made their professional debuts on the same event, both securing stoppage victories on the undercard of Nick Ball’s victory over TJ Doheny at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena on March 15.

They are now both 4-0 while Nelson (10-0, 7 KOs), the middle brother, is a little further along on his journey. With a combined 14 knockouts from their 18 victories, the brothers are showing an early propensity for stoppages. 

“That’s what we do,” Burchill says. “That’s what people want and that’s what we do.”

So now the ball is rolling for all three of them, thanks in part to Fury and Dickens, what is the dream for the fighting Birchalls?

 “For all of us to fight on the same show at Morecambe’s football ground for world titles,” he says without much hesitation. “We sell out that arena and all win by knockout.

 “Hand on heart I would not be in this sport if I didn’t believe I could be a world champion and I know my brothers would say the same. I believe in the future we will all be world champions and even if it’s the same weight, because we are all around it, there will be enough belts for one each.

 “But we wouldn’t fight each other for them. We’d just rule the sport together as world champions.”