But that was the route Constantin Ursu decided to take in his quest to become one of the world’s outstanding welterweights.

As soon as he received his passport in October 2018, the 18-year-old Ursu upped sticks and headed for Devon. He had no money, no job and did not speak a word of English.

“I actually only came for a one-month training camp,” Ursu tells The Ring. “But this has been nearly eight years now.”

However, his move to Plymouth was not a complete gamble given an old friend from Moldova was already in position on the ground. This old acquaintance had mentioned Ursu to a well-known local boxing coach, Marlee Dann, and the wheels were set in motion.

“I don’t even know why my friend was in Plymouth in the first place,” he remembers. “You’re kind of far away from everything when you live here.

“He is a boxing fan and said to my coach that there’s a lad in Moldova and if we don’t take him now, we will lose him.

“To be honest, when they said a month in England, I didn’t really want to come but in the end I came and that’s how I am here now. I believe God put my friend in Plymouth to then bring me here."

Now eight years on, the Commonwealth welterweight champion speaks fluent English and is preparing to face Owen Cooper for the British title in Derby on Saturday night. It has been a long, hard road to this point for him and his coach.

“I remember when I landed in England my coach and his friends picked me up at the airport,” Ursu says.

“I didn’t speak any English and they are all like ‘blah blah blah’. I understood nothing.



“For maybe the first three months, we communicated through Google Translate only. But even then because I speak a mix of Russian and Romanian that was complicated too.



“Thankfully I learned very quick but they are still correcting me all the time when I say something wrong.”



Ursu was also forced to take the old boxing adage of ‘living in the gym’ literally.

“I had no money because I had no time to work,” he says.



“At first I was working for a friend’s construction company for a couple of months but I’d be up at 6am, run to the place because I didn’t know how to use the bus. I’d run there, then work, then train afterwards. I had come from having a good life as a teenager in Moldova to this and every day I’d ask myself ‘why am I doing this?’



“We even set up a bed for me in the office at the gym and I lived there for more than six months I would say. Eventually I started training kids in the gym for a tenner so it was alright after a couple of months.

“I’ve done it the hard way but when I’m 50 or 60 years old I will have good stories to tell and I’ll be proud of myself. My soul will be at peace forever.



“This life means nothing but everything I do now is for the afterlife. I will be happy for myself because I didn’t waste this life.”

Despite his struggle outside the ring, his progress has been reasonably serene within it, given he has won all 14 of his professional fights since turning over in late 2019. But the little-known southpaw has had to do it all on the small hall circuit with no major promotional backing or television exposure.

It is put to Ursu, therefore, that Saturday night’s clash with Queensberry Promotions man Cooper, in a DAZN main event, represents his first real shop window opportunity.



“Shop what?” He says, before explaining that it’s not a phrase which has come up in his crash course in the English language just yet.



“I just know that people will see me on Saturday night and think ‘I’m a Konstantin fan’. They will look at me, they will be inspired by my journey and think ‘I want to get on board with this guy now’.

Chisinau to Plymouth? Ursu’s journey is nowhere near finished yet.