FORMER world champion boxer Anthony Crolla has relived the “nightmare’ of losing a gym to fire for the second time in 15 months.

On Saturday, June 5, a fire broke out at Vestacare Stadium on White Bank Road, which devastated the home of Avro FC.

Five fire engines attended the scene as well as an aerial appliance, an air unit and a command unit.

They remained in attendance into the morning, taking until around 6am to bring the fire under control.

The Fox ABC, a boxing gym owned by Crolla, was also damaged in the fire and used by amateur and professional boxers alike.

The White Bank Road gym was itself a replacement for a gym in Failsworth’s Morton Mill, which burnt down in an arson attack in March 2020.

And in an interview with The Oldham Times, Crolla described the moment of realisation he was going to have to start over again.

“It couldn’t have been worse timing,” said the former WBA world lightweight champion, who only opened the gym to the community in April.

“It was an utter nightmare.

“For a few days I couldn’t even process it.”

Crolla expects the gym to remain out of action for four to six months, denying The Fox ABC’s professional boxers a place to train and the community’s children a place to blow off steam at one of the gym’s weekly sessions.

The gym had even set up a booking system to cope with the demand for these sessions.

However, Crolla hopes to come up with a temporary solution.

“We’re trying our best to set up a marquee where we can have a mobile gym,” he said.

“It’s not the sort of marquee you’ll get at a family barbecue.”

Some of the equipment in the gym is thought to be salvageable, including the ring and boxing gloves.

And Crolla sees in the fire a chance for the gym to come back better than it was.

He is no stranger to adversity, coming back from setbacks inside and outside the ring over the years.

These include a fractured skull suffered while confronting two burglars in Chadderton in 2014, after which Crolla’s trainer said he was “lucky to be alive”.

“Any time you face adversity, you’ve always got to come back better,” Crolla said.

“We’ve had to do it before and we’ll do it again.”