I looked in the mirror and said, I'm going to be world champion. I am the world champion from this moment onwards and everything I do, I'm going to make the right choices. And that just completely turned everything around for me and my life.
Hello, everybody, whether you've been listening for a while or whether this is your first time here, we are happy to have you. Before we jump into the episode, it would be awesome. If you could write a review for this show, especially on apple podcasts. So it takes less than a minute or two. It's pretty straightforward. So you click on the show, you scroll all the way down to the bottom. And there's a little button that says, write a review.
And as always, if there's an episode, you really like send it over to your friends They'll probably like it too. Thank you so much. And let's get back to the show. So welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. And I have the pleasure of having Dennis "Hurricane" Hogan on he's a professional boxer. He has 30 wins and only four losses. Three of which came in World Title fights against World Number One. And he has one draw in his whole professional career.
He's won six continental titles, challenged for the World Championship in two weight classes. So, light middleweight and WBC middleweight titles. Someone that knows full well what it takes to perform not only at the top, but actually maintain that performance both physically and mentally. And I'm just really excited for him to share what he has to offer. So welcome to the show, Dennis!
Thanks, Michael.
Absolutely. So I want to start and this is something that means, quite a bit to you. I want to start with a tattoo that you have and the last words of your grandfather. So can you give some context for what was going on in your life at that point and how that has shaped your life moving forward.
Yeah, the tattoo is a picture of my grandfather and that it says, "Give it everything you got!" So. As an amateur boxer, I never really had massive aspirations. I used to love boxing and, I was always fighting and, and whatever else, but I never actually had the patience to go to the Olympics or to be the world champion or something like that. I used to take life as it was. I was carpenter for 10 years. I think I just sorta believed at that point that it was going to be hard.
So, win an Irish championships and boxing's Royal and I was on the Irish team was sorta good enough for me in my mind. And at the time I didn't really know that if you can really set up a goal, you can really achieve it. That's not bred into us in Ireland. Now with the internet people might be starting to see that now. Certainly when I was growing up in Ireland, you didn't really, you weren't told to shoot for stars really.
So people that sort of aimed to be these things like Olympic champion and that coming from Ireland usually were special breeds So for me I suppose I would have lived a bit of a normal life and I used to kind of get into the party and a good bit and just doing, stuff like that and not really focusing in on my career like I could. And that was, it was okay as an amateur really, but when I decided to go professional and go all in. And then I said that's what I was doing.
And then I came around, I came to Australia, was offered at a couple of fights to go Pro in Australia. I was planning to go to Boston after that. I came to Australia anyway, and I was over here and then I had two fights, two wins, two knockouts. So that was good. And then I spoke to my grandfather on the phone and it wasn't far from a fight and my grandfather knew that I'd been partying and he could hear that I'd been drinking on the phone. He recognized that.
And he said, why don't you just give up that drink son and give her everything you've got. And at the time I didn't really know where he was being like I didn't really pay it much heed. He gives the phone back to my mother then. And I just proceeded on. I said, well, what was he saying that for? And then he fell sick and I went about to see him. Cause he was meant to pass away in November. He didn't then. He was in a coma.
So I suppose I said a few words, but he wasn't conscious when I was there and I came back to Australia and they were all too well, drank a lot when I was there knowing that I had to fight in Australia when I got back within a week of getting back. So I was partying and drinking and partying and came back to Australia within six days, I had to make weight and I had a draw for the first time against a guy I should have really beat well.
At that point, it was at a bit of what just happened there, I was kind of frazzled a little bit and then my grandfather died and it was only when he died at that point. I remember his last words and I thought, oh, this is serious. Like I really have to give this everything I've got. It's crazy how those words didn't kick in a little bit before that. But they didn't, they took for him to physically, literally die on me,.
And then those words just, I never heard words more clearly or more loud in my head then that moment. And so from that moment onwards, I walk into the mirror, I looked in the mirror and said, I'm going to be world champion. I am the world champion from this moment onwards. And everything I do, I'm going to make the right choices.
And that just completely turned everything around for me and my life, all the decisions I was making the discipline of showing the focus and then just completely new person, even within a couple of months. And I enjoyed seeing the results that they did. And then it brought me my career to where now, today,
Hm, what are like, I know affirmations are important to you and that's just incredibly powerful. What are some of the other things that you make sure to affirm yourself and really believe perform at the level that you do?
Yeah, look, I mean, it's funny cause I done affirmations for so long. I've kind of brainwashed myself a little bit. Like it does work. It really goes well, I had a borderline and career defining loss early last year, I've had two good wins since then, but you know when I weigh everything up at the end of that was like, I had one person close to me saying what want to think about what you do after boxing. And all I was thinking I can't believe these conversations are starting to happen.
But my mind, just wouldn't let me go there. It was like, you haven't finished the process yet. You are the world champion. Cause I've said it a million times probably a billion times, than you are, this, you are that you have all these things that I have confirmed to myself. I truly have. And I truly do believe them. But I know from a core sense from a subconscious level. There wasn't anything that could change my mind on that fact. And then a weight of all the sort of moving parts.
And I had been inactive for 18 months while the fellow I fought had fought three good world class fights then and I did break my nose in camp. And there was a couple of factors that made me go, okay, well, let's stand back. And if that was the best I could do to maybe it would be time, but it certainly wasn't the best I could to do. Sometimes life gets in the way.
It did that time and we kicked off from there and I've already shown that, that was just the circumstance and that was just something to happen. If I didn't confirm and affirm to myself, all the things that I am today and make them actually happen, that might have been a completely different scenario.
I might have listened to the world and I might have believed what a lot of the people who aren't in my sort of mindset and my head and everything that I do, that they don't do, they just might think that is what happens when you get old and everything else, but shown them the last couple of fights that have lots of vitality, My last fight have shown everything that I spoke about and everything that I believe. And it's very important, I think, to do that.
And you have to affirm these things yourself.
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, obviously in boxing you have these really big highs and then you have these really big lows as well, What do you do to kind of overcome work through those. I mean, you've had everything from like physical injuries to mental injuries.
What do you do on to make sure that you get back to where you need to be like affirmations is one, one of the things, what are some of the other things that you do to just Even when everybody around you might be saying something that like, oh, maybe you're past your prime or, whatever.
Yeah, well, it's like this, I've learned many years ago, when I looked in the mirror that time, and I said, I am the world champion. I am the world champion. I'm going to do whatever it takes. At At that moment in time, I wasn't the person that was ready to win the world championship. So when I asked that I was provided the obstacles and all the grind and all the, as they call them all the valleys, all the hard work to get where I needed to be.
I wasn't yet, but life provided them and once I keep overcoming and everything and I keep getting back up again, and I dust off and I go again and I learned what, those hard times taught me. Then I start to become the person that I need to be. And that's what I thought. Every single time I go through something, even if it's, even if it was financial, but many times where I've not been paid, you know what I had put in my budget and things didn't work out.
Well, I always found that the biggest blessing was coming. Once I overcame the obstacle, it was the same in boxing. It was the same in anything it's the same in a bad spot. I've seen some fighters get really upset, nearly even tears after a bad spar. That's how much fighters want it. Well, you come back, you see them the next day.
Then when they come back ever again and they get really upset to be put off by a bad spar,, it kept getting hit with something, they were hurt and their comeback in the next part, they won't make that same mistake. So, the harder it is, the harder, the obstacle at the bigger the lesson. And that's what I've gone through to, to really know.
Yeah. I mean, that's just a phenomenal way to look at obstacles and you have very real examples of that. Tangible examples, like if you do this wrong and you're like, oh, that was very painful. And I don't want to do that again. learn, let's get stronger. Let's train, better smarter. then, not make that same mistake. about for you? I know something, I mean, this is just. It's a long process, but been times where sabotaging yourself, especially I'm trying to be the Irish champion.
were times where you'd be winning the quarterfinals, but then losing in the finals. And how did you go about navigating that and overcoming that self-sabotage to become who you are ready.
Well, it's a funny thing because like I said to you before, I didn't really know that if you really affirm it and believe it will happen. So, I remember as a kid, all I wanted was to win another title. Like back then I boxed in the national team I won a national title. And it's craziest thing because.
I would fight in tournaments and I would beat Irish champions and I will cruise and like really win well, a lot of the time some of them was happening when I was getting up to the national stadium, it just, it wouldn't happen for me. Something would happen even once before I went off, my semifinal and I was the favorite at that point. So I had just beaten the favorite,. And then started like I took my foot off the gas.
And I went off with a friend and I ended up coming back nearly late and I had to rush getting ready. And I came out and I lost by a couple of points. There's someone that I was, should have beaten. And he won the championship again that year and all these really close little things. Like why did that happen then? But it's kind of clear to me now. I remember standing on the grandfather's front door and knocked on the door to go boxing and I looked up and I see a shooting star.
I remember saying, I wish I would be Irish champion. Right. That was the problem you see, because I didn't believe already that I could be, or that I was, I didn't hold that energy. So it wasn't until the year 2008. Then my house got flooded and it was a book found, a woman, gave my mother a book called The Secret. And and it's funny because a year previous to that, we had fought in Birmingham and there was a girl she's now a world champion, she's now an Olympic champion.
She won the gold medal in the last Olympics. My name is Kelly Arrington. She said to me, then in this, the airport leaving Birmingham, there's a great book that you love called The Secret. So I remember she said it to me and back then I wasn't a book reader, so I kept it in my head. But yeah. There was only when someone gave my mother that book and I'm going to say, oh, here's that book? And I said, oh right. So I picked it up and I start reading.
It was only then that I really realized that you have to encapsulate what it is that you look into be, and you have to get that energy and you have to believe in, well, once that happened, like it was game over because I started to believe that I'd be world champion and that it was going to be that year. And then all of a sudden I started noticed that all. this sparring and started to happen.
Like, it was like you can get, I was getting sparring up and Dublin up and we're now on a Monday open Polish and a Thursday, it was doing my own train and joined a week. Then I got called. I got asked to spar up in the national boxing team and on a Saturday. And then I ended up getting asked and I got put on the team one time. It was just like, I was just up there sparring and the guy, one of the head coaches said that Dennis go get fitted out for a team tracks, get your passport up to date.
now on the Irish team, I was just like, what's the, how is all this?
Yeah.
out of my own way life started to work for me for the first time ever. And it was only because I really started to believe. In myself. And I started to see that everything that was happening, things started happening for me when I started to really affirm it and believe it. That was it. That was a game changer for me as well. You know I said, I didn't, I still never had the goal of be Olympic champion or world champion an amateur at night.
When I go pro I'm going to go all in and I'm going to, I'm going to be a world champion then, I just didn't set out those goals. I knew I'd be pro. My grandfather said that I was made for pro and he was so right. It was so right in time. I've got good at the I've beaten the American team I'd been on a nationwide metaphor and written all those things. But as a pro, I just keep getting stronger as the cycle goes on and he could see that he could see that in me as a kid.
Yeah, so you pair just like an absolutely tremendous amount of belief in yourself. And like you said, creating the person that you saw, way back then. But then you also do this through just a systematic accomplishing of goals. Like from starting with Australia, Queensland champion, Australian champion, and just your way up. Can you talk about how you out your goals, how you lay them out and then how you accomplish them?
Yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, like there's not many people, that have done it. Like I have in terms of Queensland title and then Aussie title then, then the continental title for me, like the area and then the continental title and then on to like put my way up to number one, then I can fight my way to be mandatory. And then, five world champions and stuff. So I've pretty much done what I needed to do all the way up to it. No, no jump from one to the other.
Some people get into the top 15 for the first time I might get a straight shot, but you know, for me, with the WBO I had to, you got to get 15 and 14 now 11, then eight can sit there and 6, 5, 4, 2, 1, and it mandatory. So I had to find my way all to rankings and get there. So for me it was everything, every single thing was I wrote it down and I would say it and I would sure say it and be like, as if it's happened, like I'm talking about it and feel it like, and really take it in.
And at the start early 2011, I went pro you started off in a little book that I had and I'd read it. I'd really get the energy up, because at that time, I haven't really won as a pro yet. So th two thoughts of even winning a title as a professional title really used to, used to get me taken, and get that feeling up. So I'd read about that. I'd read those like I am, and then everything is up in a couple of little changes I wanted to make as a person to be a better person. I'd be those two.
And all of those all started to manifest. And I started to see that and really started there. Then I had a shot for the Queensland championship. All these things started to happen. And I won my first nine fights in the first 11 months as a professional. So I stayed busy. I stayed active and I just got gone. I wasn't waiting around. I'd gone all in. I've never had this much energy before with it, as an Irish man partying, we used to take a lot of energy too.
And now I was there full-time pro athlete. And I couldn't believe that all I had to do was focused on the board. So that made me very happy and grateful to the more grateful you are when you're, when you've got affirmation that you can get that gratitude and you can be thankful for something before it happens. That's when you're going to manifest it. As you walk towards it, you got to do the work and you got to be able to feel it. And so that's what it was for me.
And it didn't take long before it was like, I looked at. I look at my wardrobe. And I had like maybe a stack of paper this much where I had affirmations moving on to the next, moving onto the next movement after the next then I even had like meditation and stuff that I would zone into. And there was this really good one where it would say who you want to be and for me that was world champion. And it brought you back. Like you reverse engineer your goals in a meditation. And that was really good.
I came back to a continental champion. And then you came back to Australian champion, but I mean, I brought so much energy into being an Australian champion. I wanted that so much when I got here and then I was very close to getting there until I, I hurt my neck it was a funny story actually.
So it was getting close to getting the Australian championship and then I had got offered a continental title before that I actually agreed to take the continental first was going to give you a top 15 more ranking, but I put so much energy in the manifests and the Australian championship that it didn't really, I started was a little bit like, ah, maybe can I go back and get out again? And at another stage, I don't really know, but it didn't feel right.
And then maybe four or five weeks out from that, I actually bulged a disc in my neck. And I kept trying to fight over it and train over a day until the fact that I couldn't lift my arm above my shoulder. I thought, right, this is really bad. I need to go and get this fixed. So it turns out that I needed surgery big time. Like it was right on the nerve.. So I had to take six months. I went back to Ireland, I got surgery.
I came back again and then I had two fights in quick succession in June, July the following year. And then all of a sudden, and that continental title wasn't up for grabs but then the Australian championship was, we ended up going in for that. And we ended up getting the title fight nearly straight away.
And I'm sitting there maybe this injury was to bring me back to, from the Vertin, from my original goal, and so I became very aware of that, that if you're putting energy into something for so long, the things you're putting energy into, life will bring you back. To get you to that point, if that's where your focus was. And maybe that's why the injury happened. The way I did was to get me back
Yeah.
do you know, what, to everything that I had my focus on. So interesting.
Yeah. that is interesting. You have all your energy focused on one thing, and then you're going to try to skip A stage so that it's like get injured.
Yeah.
Let me follow the plan back to where I'm at before. So you're doing like all this preparation on the mental side, in terms of, aligning yourself with believing, you're the world champion, tons of training physically, obviously I'm curious as to on the side of fear, like, I'm really curious a which fight for you where you kind of the most nervous for like what's. The Queensland or the Australia, one of the Irish title or world title.
And then what do you do to make sure that fear does not take center stage for you?
Well, fear for me, isn't in the ring because it's just like I've boxed my whole life. So it's not about that. The only fear you have is the fear of losing The biggest fear I have ever had was fighting Charlo WBC, middleweight world title. And that was because I had really overdone my train.
And the time before that because I had overdone my training was my first world title in Germany, where I had trained really hard, going really well, got to Ireland was a week out from the fight and they postponed the fight. So I'll have to keep training, go back to Australia, keep training, and then fly back to Germany. Again, after that, it's just so much flying so much training. I was cooked. I was fatigued. I was overdone.
And I knew that was one of the things I've learned that won't happen again, and even the fight in Mexico where everyone's thought that I won and that world championship, I was so on for that fight, it was ready to go. I walked out, I was feeling great and it was like a really close fight, like they give it against me, but I was like loving every bit of that. Everyone thought that they won that fight. So I then got offered a straight world title fight middleweight. I stepped up a way to do that.
And I started training and I was like training really hard and just doing so much. And then they end up calling me saying, well, you've got to be in New York several weeks out for the post-conference. Well, hold on. I've got to fly from Australia to New York to be there for a press conference and then fly back again and then leave here to fly back again, four weeks later. And they're like, yep. I'm like, get me out of this. Like, you've got to get me out of this.
Well, that could compromise a third of your winnings cause that's like about media obligation as like this happened. And again, I did it, I went over it all. What I had to do came back and an injury started to happen. The legs are locking up. It was all happening again. We're doing everything that I could do to try and cause once your body goes over that. The way I train, I usually do 24 rounds a day getting ready for a world championship fight. So doubly prepared.
For this, we were doing, we were doing 3x that. 36 some days, which was a bit crazy, but it was what my coach at the time was required. And then you've got all flying around the world on top of that. We got to Miami three weeks out from the fight. And by the time I got there, I had a spar and that was it. It was just, my body was breaking down. My bicep was ruptured and my ear was was partially perforated and this was all before the fight.
So I just remember that, usually when you start to taper off for a fight, the week of the fall, you taper off and you start to feel good eventually. And then you started itching to fight and you can't wait. And you're buzzing. That never happened. Unfortunately, when I was even trying to taper, my body just needed so much rest. The night before the fight, I was just like, I was trying to stay positive and I was doing the interviews.
I was doing everything else, but I knew that I got it wrong again. Even pulling up to the arena that night, all I wanted was for it to be over and over. And that's a sorry state to be working your whole life. And you screwed up. You really have. I didn't set out these things that these things happen. But as a person, all I can do is take responsibility for myself. I shouldn't have let that happen with my training.
I should never have jumped on the plane to go to Hong Kong and flight to New York from there 30 hour flight, their 30 hour flight. I should never have agreed to do these things. I should never have agreed to go back to Germany after that happened. You're told us what you have to do and you start to go with it. But at the end of the day, it was me getting into the ring, not as well as myself.
And it was me losing as well, not at my best, so, we've all seen me at my best, when you see the world, title fight of me in Mexico and see what I can do. You know what I mean? You see me well, those two times I really was not good, and that's all on me. And the same for my other loss for a world title eliminator against number one ranked Tim Tszyu having a broken nose and just fighting with a broken nose.
My nose was getting rebroken in sparring see, that's the biggest issue I've got to deal with. It's the way that I believe the things that I can do regardless. Like I keep feeling like, okay, this is happening now because this is going to be, if it was like a movie, this is your Rocky movie. That's how I feel about it. That's how I feel, but in reality, that's stupid. You know what I mean? It's like, no, make sure that you're a hundred percent ready for the fight..
These Rocky things don't happen. You're making poor decisions, pull up and make it right. But you know, that's just the person that I am. This is something that now I have people hold me accountable to that. I don't do these things anymore. And there may have been one, one big crack at it again. Cause I had nothing. I was off. I was just having a comeback probably last year. And, there was no one I wasn't ranked in anyone's top 15 or anything like that.
And all of a sudden I have a comeback fight. We get offered for the world eliminator and now I am back mandatory for a world championship fight. Once again, just on last year, I was just sitting nowhere. So it's obviously meant to be I feel. And now it's all I got to do is keep it simple. Just do the count right now. I need to do, Don't do anything stupid. Don't be a hero or anything. And I know I'll get a world championship wrap around my waist I've learned my lessons. It's fine.
We just keep it simple do it right,. And I'll get my rewards.
So along those lines, what, I mean, you definitely there's lessons and stuff. You've learned through that. What do you do in terms of recovery now? Potentially that's maybe different than before, or just in general, what does recovery look like to make sure that you're able to maintain that level of performance.
Well, first of all, it doesn't require that much work. If someone of my age I've done have been in the trenches for me, it's about just getting the rounds, making sure I'm at peak fitness. And for me, that's just doing 18 rounds. Now, 18 rounds a day, coming into the last half of the camp, 18 rounds gets me a hundred percent when, and that's now it feels easy for me now, but don't say. Easy. It's hard to work on its own in the comfort zone or compared to the stuff that I was doing before.
This is all I really need now at this point. And so my whole week now is I'll do two sessions a day around very gym or I'll do all my and ice packs. I do all my strength and a lot of my condition and my boxing gym is only 12 minutes from there. So, on a Monday, I'll get in early. I'll do lots of triggering and rolling and then activation, get my muscles ready to go. I'll do my session. I'll do a light bit of a warm down. I'll have some food. Then I'd go to Function Well get in there.
And I do all my trigger and again, and get ready. my cardio. There may be another strength session then I'll comeback, and I'll do all the roll in. I'll do my packs. I'll do saunas. then after that I go for either a massage or go to the chiropractor or see a physio,. Or any things that I need to do, I'll just see what my body is needing. Once a week also I do my salt, magnesium bath. I get a float, so I've got stuff to do all the time.
So it's worked out well now I don't just come on during the middle of the day, I get all that stuff done and I still come home and do another session, cause I'm feeling good and I can get it to him and, just doing all that stuff throughout the day and I'm making sure that my body is right at all times, it's really helped me.
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you just had a fight a couple of weeks ago that you did excellent in and you're onto the next one. What's next on the horizon for you? As far as the fight schedule?
Yeah, the other chaps still have to fight off. They don't want to fight off May 7th. That's been postponed. This is the problem with title. You got to play by the rule to the sanction and body. Cause I been getting up in the fight again, but now, because it's the world championships next, I got to wait for them to fight and then I'll fight the winner. So there's negotiations take place, but so I wasn't sitting around any longer.
I just come back in and start as sparring today, and started camp life again, I am a better fighter, all around when I stay active. So I started sparring again today and activating full-time both and just waiting for those other two guys to announce their fight and fight off so I can fight the winner.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Out of all the accomplishments and achievements and stuff that you've had in your life, which one meant the most to you?
Oh, are we talking about boxing here? We about everything
it. Open-ended I'll leave it. Open-ended you can answer it with boxing or you can answer it with just your life in general.
for me, it's like, so my number one value is actually accomplishment. So you know what I've accomplished in something in any area and that's when I am most fulfilled. And then, it took me a long time, I sat down, I did my values. I used to think it was boxing success I used to call it that, but I narrowed it down a bit more and I thought, when I chieve something I am very fulfilled, and that's my number one thing.
So, once I become a better at anything and I started to become more fulfilled in terms of in terms of everything, I am always looking to improve, like even in my family life I started to take even more inventory. And because I know that the more you focus in on one area of your life, the more areas sacrifice a little bit. Yeah. Me and my partner, we sat down and we actually brought everything together. We put our goals together, how all that would work in.
And we also put a little things that will come up in a relationship and might re-occurrent themes sometimes, little bit of not not seeing eye-to-eye and certain things. So we'll take inventory, and, who I wanted to be in a relationship like what I wanted to show up as, and stay accountable to that. And she spoke a little bit about that first to, admitting, like our shortcomings and what we felt we could do better in certain areas and what might work.
Well, you can start to talk about those things and slips away, but we took the time to sit down and write it out and look back and see after a period of time, is that what we're doing is that what's going on. I feel proud that I finally gone and done that, cause I've always known that it'd be a good idea. I've done seminars where people were talking about doing that. It was just for me, my success. And ultimately you feel like once everything's going right in that everything else flows.
Well, it doesn't, it allows for everything else to flow. We still have to show up and you still have to you still have to do those things if you want to become better and everything else. So we did that and that it's actually worked out quite well. So very happy that I did that. And that's a little accomplishment that I'm proud of.
Yeah, I really appreciate you mentioning that because a lot of the guests that I have on are just kind of, the focus of this podcast is around that. Sometimes we have this very myopic view of success, and then we sacrifice other parts of our life to get to that point. And there's always a cost, there's always a cost to achieve something. And I love how you brought that up.
Just saying like, yes, I have a tremendous amount of effort put into this one side, but I also go, wow, I'm really proud that I sat down and we made this list and we're working to improve this other area of my life as well. That's important to you and I have a lot of respect for that, and I really appreciate you bringing that up.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I will just tell you the way it's actually kind of came to a head, was after my last fight, which was done in Sydney to come back in Queensland, we needed self isolate for two weeks. And we found, I found that anytime I'd been away for a bit of a period coming back it was like, the tensions will be high and everything else. And we were trying to understand. So I thought, will it be good to mill this over? What is it? Why is it?
What's going on for both of us that this is happening. And so that's what sort of started off the process. And I know it's maybe being a little bit more honest than you would really expect it. I just think that sometimes these little things can be can lead us into doing these things. If they don't happen... Even if things don't come to a head a little bit, sometimes you're happy enough to just flow.
So sometimes if things do you can feel happy that they do, because now they're going to send you in the right direction to get up and do what's actually necessary.
Yeah. Again, I really appreciate that. And it's like your mindset when you're in the fight. You went okay this is what, well, this might not have gone as well. What can I do? To improve that. And instead of viewing that as like a failure, you're going like, oh, that was just an obstacle and I can get stronger. I can adapt. I can have different practices that then support a different outcome from that. And so, yeah, again, I really appreciate the honesty around.
Yeah. Yeah, no problem at all. That is the one thing in boxing when you're winning, it's very hard to improve because, if you're winning very well, which I usually do it's hard to pick out what you can do, and then when you're world ranked, like I have been since 2014, it's hard to get those people in for sparring. Now. I was very lucky that I spoke with Jeff Horn for last, since 2013, but it, he brought me on leaps and bounds. No, you do need that lead levels.
So I'm curious. I like asking you this question, just to see what people's responses are. I'm curious, how would you define
I think what's success is knowing what you want, right? Knowing what makes you happy overall, and striving for that and seeing results. And it doesn't even matter what it is overall because my boxing, again, being #1 goal, that evidently you go for. Everything else, like, my investment goals and all this, those things don't happen as quickly unless that happens. So I thought about a lot of energy, Wait a sec, well, what am I doing all that for?
Because I want to get myself set up and I want my kids to see what it is to set yourself up and look after yourself and feel worthy in life and to have that sort of self worth to go back to what it is happy and to do those things. I said, Yeah, but eventually, so we keep removing it and you keep removing it.
You bring it right back to you want yourself and your family to be happy, and you want other people around you and just take inspiration people that may not be in a position of you, or don't want to see it to take an inspiration from that and strive to be their better selves too. So really it comes back to that for me, you can say, I want to make this much money from a fighter. I want to get this title.
To come together and bring it back and back just to be happy and live a happy and fulfilled life.
Yeah, I appreciate you mentioning that too. Like looking actually the why behind, like, why am I, trying to be the world champion? Why am I trying to have this much money in investments? And then going it's for my family and like, why do I want to have this for my family? And it's like, no, that's what actually brings me fulfillment.
And that's why, even, like you mentioned, you're doing this work around the, relationship with your wife and, your kids and stuff as well to go like, this is actually what makes me fulfilled. So, yeah. Thanks. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, I'd say, cause, cause I do feel you can get too caught up going after the means, but not, look at it completely, all those years of just chasing after what it is going to do me. You gotta be also very mindful of why you are doing it and then in the present, you can spend that time with them. We sat down and we put kind of off peak on peak times. That I was going to be present and there for for the family. And that's actually worked quite well.
And we both manage expectations we just put a specific number and around that and it's asking it's just generally, and then we can all manage expectations and how that rolls. And that's worked quite well as well for everybody too. It's good.
Yeah, that's a, that's an important point too. Like the difference between the expectations and the reality is what causes like the frustration. So you have a certain expectation and you're like, this is what's happening. Oh, there's that frustration there where there's clarity around the expectations. They're like, okay. No, if you're, it's a hard training and peak training period.
Then I could expect to see less, and then if it's a lower time or more recovery time, then I can expect to see more and just having clear expectations around that. That's, just good communication.
Yeah. And then, if there's some times where, you have a conversation, then they're like, well, it's like, like maybe, someone might need fill in. And then just at the weekend, you just put in that little bit more time to do that. And let's just get the kids. We've done that in the last camp she's showing proper in a Saturday, Lauren's right down the gold coast, most beautiful beach on the gold coast. And we jump down and we just go for a nice swim as well on top of everything.
And then come back up again. And it's just once you have a gauge, you can do little things like that
yeah I really appreciate it. So where can people get, obviously follow you on any of that? Any of the places where your fights and stuff are, where they, where can they go in terms of social media and stuff, if they want to, if they want to keep track of what you're doing.
Okay, so on Instagram, it's #dennishoganboxing. That's my name on there on Facebook. It's just dennishogan. There's like an athlete page on on Twitter, dennis_page_hogan. So, you catch everything that you need to read across any of those platforms.
Yeah. Awesome. I really appreciate your time and your perspective on what it takes to perform on a very elite level and the mindset around that, how you work through the obstacles and the setbacks and the wins and the failures. But then also like you're talking about. How you can actually live a balanced life and what that looks like, and just kind of the ebbs and flows of that, you do well, you do not as well and you figure it out and you just continue to get better around that.
So appreciate the honesty. I appreciate your insight and appreciate the time.
thank you. I enjoyed it. So some good talking points there that I think are interesting. To talk about it. And if anyone hears anything that might, register with them, like I have heard many people say things that are registered with me. I think that's what it's all about. And it's all about talking about it and taking any gold gems that you can and see if the work
Perfect. Yeah. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the time.
you. Cheers.
Before you go, I would love it. If you actually just shared this episode with a friend, I'm sure. While you were listening, you know, someone just popped into your head and you're like, oh, they would probably like this as well. So it's really easy. You just click the share button on either the website or whatever podcast platform you're on and send it over to them. And chances are, they'll probably like it, too until next time, keep engineering your success.