The 34-year old heavyweight has been training at the famous Champs Camp gym in Manchester for less than a month but already looks and sounds like he is starting to feel at home.

In November, Clarke was outpointed by Jeamie TKV in a battle for the vacant British title.

The loss - and performance - left him at a crossroads. He split with his longtime coach, Angel Fernandez, and set about plotting a different route to the top.

With his career on the line, Clarke didn’t take the easy option and seek out a trainer who would alter their schedule to suit him or cater to his every whim.

Clarke called Joe Gallagher.

“This is my fourth week and I can feel the difference,” Clarke (9-2-1, 7 KOs) told The Ring.

“I think Joe can see a difference as well compared to the first day that I came in.”

Three days a week, Clarke makes the trip from his hometown of Burton-on-Trent and climbs the steps to the gym in the inner-city area of Moss Side.

On an unusually warm January morning, he warms up with lightweight contender Zelfa Barrett and shares a heavy bag with former European cruiserweight champion, Jack Massey. On other days, he jumps the bar with flyweight talent, Mikie Tallon, and skips alongside middleweight hopeful, Clark Smith.

Gallagher patrols the gym. The 2015 Ring Magazine Trainer of the Year notices every punch and every slip. Everything has to be done with purpose and intensity and everybody is held to the same high standard.

The busy, competitive environment isn’t alien to Clarke. He spent years as part of the close knit, successful Team GB set-up. The system brought the best out of him and he won a host of international honors including a bronze at the 2020 Olympic Games.

“I went from 12 years in a group environment - a team environment - to being on my own for the last four or five years as a pro and I'll be honest with you, coming in here and seeing 1-0 prospects, 2-0 prospects grafting their nuts off, I was quite embarrassed,” he said.

“It’s not that I've not been working hard because you feel like you are but you've got nothing to compare it to. Seeing the hunger in some of these guys, it does feel a bit like when Rocky goes to Apollo's gym. It is that feeling.

“I was going to have a look around a few trainers. I came in here and I thought, “You know what? I don't need to go anywhere else.” This is not just the trainer but the environment that I need to be in.”

If the crushing first round defeat Clarke suffered in his October 2024 rematch with Fabio Wardley was a sudden, sharp shock, the loss to TKV happened in slow motion.

Beforehand, most expected Clarke to use his experience and utilise his advantages in height and reach to dictate the pace and range of the fight.

When the bell went ding, Clarke went dong. Rather than establishing his jab and making TKV work out how to close the distance, Clarke voluntarily gave up his advantages and quickly got himself caught up in the type of close quarters battle that played to TKV’s strengths.

“I thought after about four rounds, “Oh my God, I've f****d this up here”" he remembered.

Clarke admits that he was overtrained and exhausted after training through a series of postponements but is also big enough to accept that he compounded the issue by fighting the wrong fight.

Earlier this year, Clarke told The Ring that he had left Fernandez on good terms but that he wanted a more experienced voice in his corner.

There are few trainers in world boxing who have been involved in as many significant fights as Gallagher but he has also created the type of team environment and structure that Clarke has previously thrived in.

“When they were speaking to me in the corner - even after round one - I can't remember a word they were saying. It was like I wasn't listening,” Clarke remembered.

“I've got no excuses for that, that's all on me. I hold my hands up. I'm that kind of fighter, I'm not the kind of person to sit here and put blame anywhere else.

“I'm also the type of man to say, “You know what? It's time for a change. Let's go and have a look elsewhere”.

“I feel like this is a place where I can learn and work hard but also get that team mentality - that siege mentality - and that sort of arrogance that Joe's got. It's not a bad arrogance, it's like a winning arrogance. I need to get that back a little bit.”

Champs Camp is situated less than five miles from Manchester United’s home stadium, Old Trafford.

Gallagher and Clarke are both fans of the team and witnessed a long, sustained period of success when Sir Alex Ferguson held the reigns at the famous club.

Tactically, Ferguson understood the game inside out but he was also a master at shielding his players from outside noise and using criticism and doubt as fuel.

Over the years, Gallagher has successfully engrained that same winning mentality into the boxers who represent his gym.

Clarke’s defeat to Wardley can be put down as a consequence of big men trading shots in 10oz gloves but the loss to TKV will be harder for people to look past.

He has heard the criticism but is already learning to use scepticism as motivation.

“I'm a professional and, like I said, I’m a little bit embarrassed,” he said.

“I'm a big boy though. I can hold my hands up. People can talk and say this and that. “He's finished. He's 34 years old. He’s going nowhere. He hasn't even got past British level”.

“Well, I beg to differ and I'll do the work. My job now is to prove people wrong. Some people are going to love you, some are not going to like you but all I'm doing is focusing every day on trying to improve as a fighter, trying to improve my knowledge and taking that into the next fight.”

Clarke has had preliminary discussions about returning to the ring and, soon, he will be thrust back onto center stage. For the time being he is concentrating on embedding himself into his new team.

The character building bar-bag sessions are getting slightly easier and Clarke will soon be ready to start putting Gallagher’s teaching into practice under live fire. When he does duck back between the ropes, he aims to do so as a more robust fighter, both mentally and physically.

“If you're like me, you're a sponge in this game and I listen to everything,” he said.

“When I'm not doing my work, if Joe's doing the sparring and he's talking to Zelfa Barrett or whoever, I'm sitting there and I'm watching him intensely. They're probably thinking, “What is he doing?” but I just like to learn his thoughts, the way he thinks things.

“I feel like a novice again. I'm enjoying learning, I'm enjoying working hard and I'm enjoying seeing the progression.

“I'm a big boy, I hold my hands up. Last time out was just not good enough for me from a personal standpoint so now I'm here to do something about that. I can't change the past, it's been and it's gone, but I can change the future.”