Fighting for money doesn’t hold nearly the same fear as fighting for your life. Reuben Muston is better placed than most to make the distinction.
‘I’m just happy to be here,’ he says, and it’s a summary that serves only a modicum of justice to a remarkable tale.
You see, Muston became a professional boxer this month, which is common enough. But where his situation differs is the background – no British fighter before him has crossed to the paid ranks after undergoing a stem cell transplant.
He will explain the gravity and science behind that situation in his own words. And why he would most likely be dead if it wasn’t for a nosebleed that ran for the better part of five days.
But to get there, Muston first goes back to February 12, 2022 and a leisure centre in Barnsley. It was the semi-final of the England Youth Championships and Muston, a lad of 17 from Reading and one of the country’s best amateur flyweights, was up against Mikie Tallon. Big fight, big opportunity.
‘I was quite clearly up on the scorecards but towards the end of the second round, we clash heads,’ says Muston. ‘I go back to the corner and there is blood everywhere from my nose.
‘I’m just happy to be here,’ says boxer Reuben Muston (pictured with his dad Danny), three years on from the pair’s stem cell transplant that saved his life
Former world champion Anthony Crolla is one of the informed cohort of observers who believe Muston could make waves in the sport
‘The third round, it’s still bleeding. OK. Well, the ref stops us a couple of times, gets the doctor to take a look and then, with about 30 seconds left, he tells me, “I can’t let you go on any more”. Honestly, the ring, me and Mikie were covered in blood.
‘It shattered my heart. That championship was meant to be my break and I’m devastated. So I go home that night and for some reason my nose is still bleeding. Bleeding on me, my dinner, everything. It hadn’t stopped by the time I went to bed.’
As it transpires, packing his nose with tissue wasn’t the solution. Muston recalls: ‘When I got up it was like a murder scene – blood all over my sheets, all up the walls.
‘My dad took one look at me and said we’re going to A&E. They did hours of tests and after a while a doctor took us to a private room. They suspected it might be leukaemia, but under the microscope it didn’t look how it should.’
That meant more tests. Many of them. Across the span of three days, specialists of all denominations came and went. While this was happening, the bleeding did not stop.
Eventually, one of the tests, a biopsy on his bone marrow, zeroed in on a reason – aplastic anaemia. Exceptionally rare, it’s a life-threatening blood disorder that causes the marrow to stop producing enough new blood cells and affects between two and six people per million. Muston was exceptionally unlucky, save for one fact – the good fortune of a nosebleed that led to the diagnosis.
Muston: ‘The most basic way of explaining it is what I was told. So your platelet count should be between 150,000 and 400,000 (per microlitre) and your haemoglobin should be between 120 and 150 (per litre of blood) but I had a platelet count of 1,000 and my haemoglobin was 55. Below 50 and you can go into cardiac arrest.
‘The doctors said, “In two weeks, you could have had a massive brain haemorrhage or cardiac arrest and you would have been dead”, essentially. Really, the nosebleed saved my life.’
After days of tests, Muston was eventually diagnosed with aplastic anaemia – a rare blood disorder that affects just two to six people in every million
‘The doctors said, “In two weeks, you could have had a massive brain haemorrhage or cardiac arrest and you would have been dead”’
It did. But the first challenge of this second chance was finding a stem cell donor. Plans to go to university were parked, boxing was impossible, and Muston instead joined the Anthony Nolan stem cell register, searching for a match.
‘We started hoping for anyone who would be a 10 out of 10 match, but we found two people who were a nine out of 10, one of them in Brazil. After further testing, we saw they couldn’t match us.
‘We tried everything. My mum has a rare bone marrow type where only a couple of hundred people in the world could match. My dad’s was even rarer, but he was a five out of 10 match for mine. In the end we decided that was the best option.’
After five days of chemotherapy to prepare his body, Muston received the stem cell transplant from his father, Dan, three years ago today. Despite uncomfortable odds, it worked.
The next year was spent on a regimen of 40 pills a day, two to three blood transfusions a week, and almost total isolation at home to shield from infection, with the lingering fear that ‘a common cold could kill me’. He would ultimately sit his A-levels at the dining room table and went jogging only when he felt up to it, but precisely 12 months after going into isolation, he ran the London Marathon.
Today, those strides have extended to a place that once seemed highly unlikely. Or impossible, based on one of the first conversations Muston had soon after his diagnosis.
‘I remember I was three weeks away from boxing for an English title and my first question was whether I would box again,’ he says. ‘He looked at me and went, “No, I don’t see it”. That was really hard to take, but I wasn’t going to give up.’
Muston has had 12 fights since his transplant, winning 10 of them and collecting two national titles
‘Three years after the transplant, I’m feeling good. This whole time has really taught me I didn’t know about myself, about how deep I can dig’
Since his transplant and recovery, Muston has had 12 fights, won 10, and collected two national titles. Frank Warren is among the promoters with whom he is discussing his professional career; the former world champion Anthony Crolla is part of the informed cohort of observers who believe he could make waves.
‘One of the harder parts in it all was learning that I was about to be added to the England squad when I fell ill,’ he says. ‘You have to get over that and wow, I feel like I have a chance to show what I can do.
‘Touch wood, I’m cured. You know nothing’s ever definite, but three years after the transplant, I’m feeling good. I want to get going. This whole time has really taught me I didn’t know about myself, about how deep I can dig. I’m excited.’
Time will tell on how that all goes for Muston, who has chosen ‘Miracle Man’ as his ring name. It carries less bluster than most in his line of work.
After having a stem cell transplant through Anthony Nolan, Reuben is working with the charity to encourage more young people to join the register. People aged 16-30 can sign up to the register at Anthonynolan.org.
