‘I lost my mind’: How boxing helped Mazoudier out of his drugs and mental health nightmare

Just days ahead of his pay-per-view main event against Nikita Tszyu, Koen Mazoudier has opened up on his drug and mental health anguish and how boxing saved him.

Koen Mazoudier stands in front of a mural of Muhammad Ali at Blacktown PCYC. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Koen Mazoudier stands in front of the ICC Theatre in Sydney and looks up at his own face staring back down at him from the gigantic electronic billboard.

He’s come a long way.

Just five years ago, at the lowest point of his life, the Blacktown boxer was forcefully restrained by police and taken kicking and screaming to a mental health facility in Sydney.

It hardly seems believable that he’s standing here now looking at himself and reading his last name in lights ahead of his pay-per-view headline fight with Nikita Tszyu on Wednesday night.

BOXING: NIKITA TSZYU V MAZOUDIER | WED 28 AUG 7PM AEST | Order Now with Main Event on Kayo Sports.

But it’s this image – this exact moment – that helped the 28-year-old through those darkest moments.

Mazoudier fights Nikita Tszyu on Wednesday. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“Bro, do you know what’s crazy is that when I’d lost my mind, when I was in this mental health facility with people who were legitimately crazy, and they had me on schizophrenic medicine, the one thing I was still doing was shadow boxing and training,” Mazoudier tells this masthead.

“I was writing in my journal, ‘I will be one of Australia’s greatest and most influential boxers of all time’.

“I was writing that down and saying it to doctors. I was a shell of myself, but I’ve always had that belief.”

Mazoudier says his mental health struggles built up over time and were intensified by drug use and setbacks in the boxing ring.

“As I failed my goals in the sport and life, I started to take more and more drugs and to party more,” he says.

“It was a slow build, but there was a crap period where I was smoking so much weed, taking LSD and smoking DMT and it broke my mind.”

That’s when his partner called an ambulance.

“They asked on the phone if there was anything they should know,” he says. “She said, ‘he’s a professional boxer’ so now the police are coming as well.

Boxing got Mazoudier through his darkest moments. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“I remember the police taking me to this hospital and the doctors saying I’ve had a manic episode. I was thinking it was my partner who’d put me there, and I was yelling at her and telling her that I could never trust her again.

“It makes me sick to look back at, because she’s one of the most beautiful people ever.

“But the mind’s a funny place, man. It can take you to some dark places making you think your loved ones are against you.”

There were more dark times sitting alone in the soulless mental health facility.

“I’m sitting on this bed reading a book about boxing history in Australia and feeling normal, and there’s people around me screaming like demons – really mentally unwell,” he says. “I’m just sitting there like, ‘How the f**k am I here? How did I get myself here?’

“But I needed it at the time.”

His family, boxing and God helped him through those most testing times, and Mazoudier has since been in some of the best domestic fights in Australia.

Two wars with Wade Ryan, a pair of split decision wins over Joel Camilleri and two fights against Ben Mahoney and Benjamin Hussain last year make for an impressive resume.

The huge billboard outside the ICC Theatre in Sydney. Picture: No Limit Boxing

And on Wednesday he’ll headline his first PPV event against Tszyu.

More importantly though, he says he’s better equipped to handle the ups and downs of boxing and life more generally.

“I’m sweet now, I’m in a much better place than ever,” he says. “I found God, I do my sport and I just stay in my lane.

“I spend time with my family, I pray, meditate and eat clean.

“Since I’ve accepted Jesus Christ into my life, I don’t crave any sin anymore. My family and my loved ones know my deepest, darkest secrets – every single one of them.

“The world only knows the drugs, but there’s worse stuff that luckily I don’t have to reveal to the world.

“But since I’ve revealed it to my loved ones and confessed my sins, I don’t crave anything like that anymore. I’ve even given up caffeine.

“Life is beautiful if you allow it to be.”

Originally published as ‘I lost my mind’: How boxing helped Mazoudier out of his drugs and mental health nightmare