Boxer turns poker pro

After winning a satellite competition online Leron Washington not only won a seat at a WPT event, but he also won it beating 566 players along the way

For two years Leron Washington had a career as a professional boxer and wasn’t doing too badly, then one day he had a lucky opportunity which gave him the chance to go down a completely different career path.

Washington, from West Virginia has always enjoyed an occasional game of poker for fun, one night he was playing online and decided to enter a WPT online poker satellite though the online poker room Club WPT.

He managed to win the ‘World Poker Tour Celebrity Invitational’ package and last March he went off to the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles where he met and spent time with a number of poker professionals and Hollywood celebrities.

The WPT event began and Leron Washington found himself in a tournament which began with a total of 567 players, however, two days later it was down to six and Leron was at the final table. This success story ended in true style as Leron took the $100,000 first place as well as a $25,000 WPT Championship seat which started him off nicely along in his new career as poker player.

When asked about his win Washington said, “To win it man it was just like, everything flashed in front of me, right before my eyes in like three seconds, everything that I had worked for since I sat at the first tournament table and to up to that point, I said wow this is it, this is my break.”

Washington has said that he believes his true “calling” is to player poker for a living and he says he has no desire to return to the world of boxing and risk ruining his “pretty face” when he can “probably make millions” playing a game that he really loves.

Howver, Leron does think that there are some similarities to be found between boxing and poker, “Boxing is a sport where you have to be on your toes at all times and you have to think a lot, but in a small period of time…I knew my skills and I’m a respected poker player…I just needed the opportunity to get out there.”