“I trained in body armor, they wanted to kill me.” Confessions of Dillian Whyte

Former contender for the world heavyweight title (over 90.7 kg) Briton Dillian Whyte (28-3, 19 KOs), who will return to the ring this Saturday against the unbeaten American Jermaine Franklin, gave
interview for streaming DAZN.

In the show Off the Cuff Dillian spoke about a difficult childhood when he lived without a mother, as well as more severe times of living in shady places and activities associated with crime. The boxer admitted that there were attempts on his life more than once, he received bullet and stab wounds, but in general he was smarter than ordinary guys and owned a powerful knockout blow.

“I don’t remember anything good from my early life. Honestly. I don’t remember anything except suffering, pain, stress. And then I was on my own, was abandoned by people. My mother left me to look after me, send money for this “People got money, they used it, and I was basically mistreated. I just suffered. I tried to survive since childhood. I learned to cook when I was about 6 years old. It’s both good and bad that as a child I I had to deal with it. It made me a strong person. That’s why I’m able to come back from defeats without any warm-up fights. I can come back after a knockout and use “physics”. Not to come back and try to box, move around the ring – no. Come back after a knockout and use “physics” more – throw it on him and stomp on it. These things in my life have done me good, but these are also tough times. You can only accept it, accept it and move on. It’s just a mixture of emotions, most of which are sad . But that’s life.”

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“My mother went to England to make our lives better. Do you think, ‘Why me?’ “I was angry. She made me realize that she made a difficult decision to make our life better. It did not work out the way she wanted, but this is life. Now we have a great relationship, we communicate. My mother is a friend to me and at that same time hero.”

“I came to London at almost 13 years old. And a little later I became a father. I survived and looked after myself for a long time, and at this age I already thought like a 17-18-year-old. I worked, plowed, stole, robbed and made different things to survive. I went to nightclubs and stole bottles and sold them. I worked in shops and stole and robbed. I was very old at that age. I got into trouble, bad trouble from that time.”

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“I got into a fight for the first time at the age of 9 with a guy who was 13-14. He bullied my friends. He just took food from friends. He came up to me. I got up, closed my eyes and just threw out a powerful right overhand. I was afraid that I’m about to be killed I opened my eyes and the guy was on his back [смеётся]. I’m like, “What?” And from that time on, I knew who I would touch – he would be knocked out. And that carried over into my career. When I was growing up, I knocked people out. When he “stood at the door”, he knocked out 3-5 guys over the weekend. I fought older guys who knocked out others. As a child, I knocked out men because I grew up on the street. In my era, I was known for fighting. I just knocked people out with one punch.”

“By accident, I changed one life for another. But even now, it’s not so difficult to provoke me into a fight.”

“From the age of 13 to 18 I lived in South London. Then I had a lot of problems, many attempts on my life. I got shot, I was cut many times, I fought and fought and fought. It was so bad that when I began to go to the hall … The hall was here, and I lived here [показывает]. But I had to go around for half an hour. Because if you go straight, there were 4-5 gangsters. They lived there and were interested in me. So anyone could kill me at any time. So I had to make this long detour to get into the hall. I’m used to going to the gym prepared. I wore a bulletproof vest in the hall. The first year I trained with body armor under my shirt. It was serious. For a long time I did not leave the car near the house. For many years I did not enter the house through the front door. I’m used to jumping over the fence. Get used to coming at different times. I could leave the house for 2 days, because I knew that someone was grazing me. I traveled to different places or tried to make my next steps unpredictable. Because I then lived such a life. Even years later, I advise my family not to do this, but to do this, to be afraid of this. I don’t trust many people. I trust friends and family. I lived like this for a long time. When people try to kill you, when people are waiting for you to kill you – I mean like that. I’ve always been a little smarter than the average guys. Where I lived, many guys ended up there.”

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