Koen Mazoudier, only hours after meeting God, found himself locked down and ringing a little bell every time he needed to piss.
All around him too, people screamed.
“And as if,” the boxer says, “possessed by demons”.
Which isn’t exactly what Mazoudier had sought a day earlier when, alone, and more than a little upset with life as a fighter, he disappeared into the scrub behind his parents’ western Sydney home and, beside a tree he and the old man had planted together years earlier, laid down to smoke DMT.
BOXING: NIKITA TSZYU V MAZOUDIER | WED 28 AUG 7PM AEST | Order Now with Main Event on Kayo Sports.
“Or the spirit molecule,” Mazoudier explains of that most powerful psychedelic.
A drug which he now insists four years on, saw him “brush against a higher consciousness” – and even meet his spirit animal, a wolf — before then careening into what he recounts as a manic, schizophrenic episode.
One which saw wife Breanna so fearful of Mazoudier taking his life, she called an ambulance, who themselves called police – a group of whom arrived all batons and pepper spray before delivering the new dad, still in a heightened state, and insisting he’d solved, among other things, the Matrix, to a mental health facility for violent offenders.
Which is where for almost two weeks Mazoudier remained locked up among those screams.
“Pretty dark s***,” is how he recalls it now, chatting this particular Thursday morning after another tough session at his Central Coast gym, Complete Boxing.
“And not being the most comfortable thing to talk with you about.
“But every time I hear Nikita Tszyu talking about the darkness, talking about dark things or whatever, I’m always thinking ‘mate, I’ve been to some f***ed up places, too’.”
Take, for example, his taking liquid fantasy while at work.
Nikita amusingly chats Mazoudier clash | 02:27
Or being sprawled out bawling, and completely broken, on the floor of a mate’s home.
All up, part of not so much a comeback story, or even a resurrection, as simply a wonderfully unique tale involving one of the most likeable, and thoughtful, fellas anywhere in Australian boxing.
A yarn that sees this affable father of two, and with a third due Christmas Day, go from battling depression and schizophrenic episodes, plus incarceration inside a Sydney mental health facility, to right now challenging the biggest surname in Australian boxing right now.
Already ranked among the most exciting fighters in Australia’s super welterweight decision, 28-year-old Mazoudier is now readying to throw down against Nikita Tszyu sibling atop next Wednesday’s stacked No Limit Pay-Per-View.
For Mazoudier, the fight not only represents biggest opportunity of his career, but the continuation of an incredible journey for a fella who – while he may be dubbed ‘The Barbarian’ — lives a life involving hours of meditation, days of fasting and, soon enough, baptism in his new church.
Elsewhere over the course of 40 minutes, Mazoudier talks through not only spirituality, his growing library, or even giving up all those old cravings, including coffee, but his new role as a fight trainer, that impending third birth – “absolute blessing” — even Sam Goodman’s dog eating a buckle right off his favourite sandals.
Yet know, too, Mazoudier can also tell you about that night he laid on the floor of a mate’s house, so furious with himself, and some of the things he has done while using recreational drugs, “I wanted to peel off my skin”.
Yet instead, he removed all of his clothes.
A situation which, coming not long after his incarceration, and eventually solved, in part, by a slap to the face from his best mate and father Dean – “wake the f*** up, Koen” — is also part of what he now carries to the ring against ‘The Butcher’ on Wednesday.
Indeed, while Tszyu is increasingly being marketed as this dark, brooding soul who eats snake heart and gets aroused by blood, Mazoudier is himself fueled by a past which included “smoking weed 24-7” and taking drugs while smack bang in the middle of talking to clients on an office phone.
Again, which isn’t easy to talk about.
Especially given, around the height of his depression, and subsequent drug use in 2019, this Blacktown boy almost lost his marriage, job, fight career, everything.
Or put another way, “took me to hell”.
Quizzed specifically on that DMT trip in early 2020 – an episode he recalls as “one of my rock bottoms” – Mazoudier now admits it came not so much from chasing enlightenment as depression from his first professional loss months earlier, against Tasmanian southpaw Luke Woods.
“At that point, I was already smoking weed 24/7,” he recounts. “Taking psychedelics in heavy doses too, and far too regularly.
“I was drawn toward psychedelics because I’d been wanting to know more about God, and become closer to God for a long time.
“I wanted to understand who we are, why we’re all here floating around on this rock …”
And while that night, layed out on his back in the scrub, Mazoudier feels like he did brush against a higher consciousness, and maybe even God, “it wasn’t in a manner that was earned or deserved”.
‘Keep it in your pants’ – Tszyu is WEIRD | 01:27
Instead, he stresses, the moment that “came with all my ego attached … and so, I received a back hander from God as well”.
Which, put simply, was close to a fortnight locked up among violent, mentally ill patients.
“And I can still remember,” he says, “sitting there one day reading my little book about Australian boxing history while, all around me, people were screaming as if possessed.
“I also remember looking at a picture of my son Miles, back then a newborn, and thinking ‘How did I get here? What am I doing?’
“The room, it was just this square, white box.
“There wasn’t even a bathroom, whenever you needed the toilet you had to ring a bell …”
None of which Mazoudier is chasing sympathy for. Or even regrets.
Doesn’t have time.
Especially given the three, sometimes four hours it takes each day to get from his family home in Riverstone to his new west Gosford gym, then back again.
For all of this year, Mazoudier has been training with Joel Keegan, the popular Coast coach who has also helped Goodman rise up to become the mandatory for Japanese megastar Naoya Inoue.
An overhaul so intense, and all encompassing, Mazoudier has even taken to bunking down in the spare room at Goodman’s new Ettalong Beach home between late night and then early morning sessions, midweek.
“And Sammy is a decent chef,” the fighter admits
So no issues?
“Well,” Mazoudier cackles, “his dog did eat the buckle of one of my sandals I like to wear”.
Call it one of the few downsides to a new partnership where, under Keegan, “my workrate, intensity, even the hours I spend in the gym are literally five times greater”.
“There is also structure and professionalism,” he adds. “So while Joel has simplified things for me, he’s also refining how I fight while bringing me up levels.”
Yet what worries Tszyu most about his rival? It’s his ‘why’.
“I feel Koen’s family are a strong motivation for him,” Nikita admitted this week. “They’re his driving force.
“Which is why I feel our fight, it’s like life or death for him”.
Speaking with Mazoudier however, and he goes deeper again.
With the Sydneysider explaining how more than simply fighting for wife Breanna and their children – Miles, now 5, daughter Bowie, 3, and that third bub due Christmas Day – it’s for everything his being a success allows them all, in turn, to be.
“Creating,” he says, “a freedom to move how we want, and around whoever we want”.
Which is why, while it may be tough to talk about, his past has also armed him.
“Because everything I’ve gone through,” Mazoudier stresses, “every single one of them has shaped me.
“Made me.
“That’s why when Nikita Tszyu talks about knowing darkness … wait until he looks in my eyes on fight night.”
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