British former undisputed world champion announces shock retirement aged 34 only two months after last fight
The Scottish star once held all four undisputed title in the 140lb super-lightweight division.
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But he was beaten by Ekow Essuman in his return to the ring and welterweight debut in May.
And after three losses in a row, the British boxing star has announced his retirement.
He captioned the post: "End of an era. I have lived my dream for the last 10 years & conquered Mount Everest.
"Thank you to every single one of you for the support through what has been this mad rollercoaster of a journey.
"Boxing is all I've ever known but now let's see what life has to offer on the other side of the ropes."
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If you saw Black Sabbath's first ever gig, you wouldn't have recognised in 1968, they had the decidedly less sinister name of The Polka Tulk Blues Band, and came complete with a saxophonist and bottleneck guitar player.A year later, they'd slimmed down, found a new name and invented heavy metal. Few bands are so inextricably linked with a musical genre, but Sabbath set the template for everyone from Motörhead and AC/DC to Metallica and Guns 'n' the way, singer Ozzy Osbourne, who has died at the age of 76, became one of rock's most influential figures, with an electrifying and unpredictable stage presence and an almost mythological intake of drugs."If anyone has lived the debauched rock 'n' roll lifestyle," he once admitted, "I suppose it's me."So how did these four working class musicians from Aston, Birmingham rewrite the rules of rock? 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That opportunistic streak also steered them towards their signature just so happened that the band's rehearsal space was directly opposite a cinema that showed all-night horror audiences flock to these shows, the band conjured a plan."Tony said, "Don't you think it's strange how people pay money to get frightened? Why don't we start writing horror music?" Osbourne told music journalist Pete Paphides in 2005. "And that's what happened."The musicians metamorphosed into their final form: Adopting the name Black Sabbath, after a low-budget Boris Karloff film of the same name, they started writing lyrics that dabbled in death, black magic and mental suit the material, the music needed to get heavier, too. Ward slowed down the tempo. Iommi turned up the volume. Osbourne developed an aggressive vocal wail that always seemed to be teetering on the precipice of it was Iommi's guitar playing that really set Sabbath apart. His riffs leapt from the amplifier and hit the audience square in the chest with taurine was a sound he developed by necessity. When he was 17, Iommi was working in a sheet metal factory when he lost the tips of his two middle fingers in an industrial accident. Although surgeons tried to reattach them, they had gone black by the time he reached hospital. It looked like the end of his guitar career. Obituary: Wild life of rock's 'prince of darkness'Did Osbourne really bite the head off a live bat?'There will never be another Ozzy': Rock royalty pays tribute "The doctors said: 'The best thing for you to do is to pack up, really. Get another job, do something else'," Iommi wrote in his autobiography, Iron to prove them wrong, he melted down a fairy liquid bottle to make protective thimbles for his fingers, and slackened his guitar strings so he wouldn't have to apply too much pressure on the fretboard to create a months of painful practice, he learned a new style of playing – using his two good fingers to lay down chords, and adding vibrato to thicken the sound. That stripped-back, detuned growl became the basis of heavy metal."I had never heard that style of playing," said Tom Allan, who engineered Sabbath's self-titled debut album in 1969."I couldn't really fathom it. I didn't really get it. You never heard anything like that on the radio." The record was grim and sludgy – partly because the band had recorded it in just two days, with limited weren't sure what to make of it. 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Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, meanwhile, was written as a furious critique of a music industry that had written them off."The people who have crippled you / You want to see them burn."After 55 years, and hundreds of imitators, the revelatory shock of Sabbath's sound has dimmed. How else do you explain Osbourne and Iommi performing Paranoid at Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee in 2002?But the power of those songs, from Iommi's brainsplitting riffs to Osbourne's insistent vocal wail, is he inducted Black Sabbath to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Lars Ulrich of Metallica said, "if there was no Black Sabbath, hard rock and heavy metal would be shaped very differently"."When it comes to defining a genre within the world of heavy music," he said, "Sabbath stand alone."Writing after the band's penultimate farewell show in 2017, Osbourne said he was humbled by the acclaim."I never dreamed we would be here 49 years later," he said."But when I think about all of it, the best thing about being in Black Sabbath after all these years is that the music has held up." Five essential Ozzy Osbourne songs 1) ParanoidWritten as a last-minute "filler" for Black Sabbath's second album, the group accidentally created their biggest hit: The story of a man battling his inner voices, set to one of rock's most powerful riffs."Every now and then you get a song from nowhere," said Osbourne. "It's a gift." 2) Crazy TrainThe song that launched Osbourne's solo career, it's almost atypically upbeat - shrugging off Cold War paranoia and declaring: "Maybe it's not too late to learn how to love." It's only the maniacal laughter in the fading bars that suggests this outlook is the purview of a madman. 3) Sabbath Bloody SabbathSabbath's reputation for darkness means their melodic capabilities were often overlooked. But Osbourne was a passionate admirer of the Beatles, and you can hear their influence on the pastoral chorus of this song, before Tony Iommi powers in with a growling guitar line. John Lennon would undoubtedly have approved of Osbourne's seething critique of the music industry, summed up in the line: "Bog blast all of you." 4) ChangesSabbath revealed their soft underbelly on this 1972 piano ballad, written about a break-up that drummer Bill Ward was experiencing. "I thought the song was brilliant from the moment we first recorded it," said Osbourne, who later reworked it as a duet with his daughter, Kelly, and scored a UK number one the week before Christmas 2003. 5) Mr CrowleyInspired by notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, this track from 1980's Blizzard of Ozz allowed Osbourne to play up to his mock-satanic image. But is also helped him escape from the shadow of Black Sabbath, with a swirling, heavy-psychedelic sound, capped off by a blistering solo from his new foil, guitar virtuoso Randy listening: War Pigs and Iron Man are all-time classics; while Diary of a Madman and Suicide Solution are crucial chapters in Osbourne's solo songbook. Also check out Patient Number 9, the title track of his final album, which ended his career on a high.
