DILLIAN WHYTE
From the streets of Jamaica to the back alleys of Brixton, Dillian Whyte has always been a fighter. Here, he tells Paul Wheeler why the fight never ends
We visit the Brixton heavyweight, who opens up about his life and career
IT is a bitterly cold morning in Brixton, and Dillian Whyte is suitably attired. The 29-yearold heavyweight, who calls this part of South London home, is wearing a thick black coat, zipped up as high as it can go. The padded jacket serves to make his already imposing 6ft 4in frame seem even larger. It is safe to say that the weather here is a world away from back where he grew up in Jamaica.
We meet at a café just across the road from Miguel’s Boxing Gym, where Whyte trains from Saturday to Monday during camp, before relocating to Loughborough in Leicestershire from Tuesday to Friday to use the local university’s impressive facilities. After shaking hands, we make our way to the gym, which is nestled within a railway arch, next to a car mechanic garage. The smell of oil and exhaust fumes fill the air, before being replaced by the distinctive scent of sweat and strain as we approach Miguel’s.
A narrow graffiti-splashed alleyway leads to the gym’s entrance, where we are greeted by a spray-painted mural of Muhammad Ali After negotiating the various tyres that are splayed across the floor, and dodging the multitude of heavy bags hanging from the ceiling, we find ourselves in an unoccupied room next door to the main gym area. We perch on a stack of exercise mats, while the muffled sound of gloved fists striking pads seeps through the wall.
Despite having lived in the UK for the past 17 years, a Caribbean lilt permeates Whyte’s speech, which is fused with South London tones. “I was 12, almost 13, when I came over here and reunited with my mum,” Dillian thinks back. “At that stage I hadn’t seen her for about 10 years. She’d been over here working and trying to secure a better future for me and my family, as there weren’t a lot of options available to us in Jamaica. It was very hard growing up there, especially without my mum. My dad and my older sister were with me, and my dad’s mindset about living in Jamaica was, ‘If you’re not dead, then you’re doing OK.’
“My dad was quite old-school – tough mentally and physically. That’s how he brought me up to be as well. Sometimes we’d go without food for three or four days at a time. It was the definition of hardship, but it was life. It made me a tough man, so I can’t complain.”
Upon moving to Brixton, Whyte’s character-building upbringing was soon put to use, as he was forced to stand up for himself when the other children at school mocked his Jamaican accent. The tempestuous youth responded in the only way he knew how – to fight.
“As a kid in South London, I was getting in fights and knocking people over all the time,” Whyte recollects. “I got into a lot of trouble because of it, so a friend of mine introduced me to a kickboxing coach when I was about 15 or 16, just to burn off some energy. I went on to win British and European titles as a kickboxer. I also had four or five MMA fights to fill out the space, because sometimes the kickboxing fights weren’t there for me. I’d jump in the cage and have it. I was just a young kid with lots of rage and anger who wanted to fight.”
During his time as a kickboxer, Whyte would visit the boxing gym in order to improve his hand skills. It was there that his boxing coach, Leroy Harris, noticed that he had a talent for the sport. Harris would throw Dillian in at the deep end during sparring, just to test him out. When he saw that Whyte could more than handle himself, he advised him to have a couple of amateur boxing bouts. It was then, aged almost 21, that he began to focus solely on the noble art.
I’D JUMP IN THE CAGE AND HAVE IT. I WAS JUST A YOUNG KID WITH LOTS OF RAGE AND ANGER WHO WANTED TO FIGHT”
“I was sparring the likes of David Haye, David Price and Dereck Chisora, and I was doing alright,” Whyte remembers. “I thought to myself, ‘I haven’t got any boxing experience and I haven’t had any proper boxing tutelage, but I’m giving a good account of myself with these guys. So if I dedicate my time fully to boxing and train properly, I can be good at this.’ Leroy took me to meet [trainer] Chris Okoh at Chadwell St Mary Boxing Club and it all kicked off from there.”
Whyte would go on to have six amateur contests, winning them all. One of these fights in particular – the very first in fact – has gone down in British boxing folklore.
“Chris was having trouble matching me,” Whyte recalls. “I remember he said to me, ‘There’s this guy called Anthony Joshua from Finchley [ABC]. He’s got four knockouts in four fights. I’m not sure if you want that sort of work for your debut.’ When he said that, it p**sed me off! Back then I was young and volatile. To me, that felt like a bit of disrespect. So I said to Chris, ‘Listen, I don’t care who he is. Make the fight.’
“When it came to the fight, I just mowed him down [Whyte scored a knockdown en route to a points victory]. Life is funny. That was only an amateur fight – I didn’t care who he was and he didn’t care who I was – but it led us both to where we are now. That loss to me changed his life and his career, just as my loss to him [as a professional in December 2015] changed my life and my career. He knew he had to get bigger, stronger and fitter after losing to me. And when I lost to him, I knew I had to get in better condition and take my career more seriously.”
The seventh-session stoppage reverse to which Whyte refers remains the only defeat of his pro career so far. But it could have been so different, as Dillian had Joshua on the ropes – both metaphorically and literally – following a huge left hook in the second round.
“I thought I had him in the second,” Whyte states. “But when I hit him my AC [acromioclavicular] joint completely shattered. The pain shot all the way down my left side and I sort of buckled a bit. Johnathon Banks, who was my coach at the time, tried to pull me out at the end of that round. I said to him, ‘Listen, I’m a warrior. If you take this away from me I’ll never be able to forgive you or myself. Let me fight like a man and go out on my shield.’ And that’s what I did.”
Having reigned as British champion and overcome notable names in Chisora and Robert Helenius since losing to Joshua, a possible rematch with his old rival is bubbling beneath the surface. While admitting that a return clash with the current world heavyweight king could take place in “one or two fights’ time”, Whyte’s focus at the moment is all on one person. That man is unbeaten 38-year-old Australian Lucas Browne, whom he meets over 12 rounds at the O2 Arena in Greenwich this Saturday (March 24).
In preparation for Browne, Dillian has been “grafting and digging deep” in the gym under the guidance of trainer Mark Tibbs, whom he linked up with after the Joshua setback. Despite acknowledging that Browne is a “big, strong, powerful guy”, Whyte is reluctant to compliment someone he describes as a “nasty, ignorant bully.”
There was certainly no love lost between the pair at the press conference to announce their matchup, where they frequently exchanged insults. More often than not, these slurs related to the positive drug tests that each have posted in the past (Whyte for methylhexaneamine in 2012, and Browne for clenbuterol and ostarine, both in 2016). Dillian received a two-year suspension from UKAD (UK Anti-doping) who, despite accepting that he did not knowingly ingest a banned substance (it was contained within an overthe-counter pre-workout supplement called Jack3d), were of the opinion that he did not do enough to check that the product’s ingredients were permitted for use during competition.
Although UKAD deemed his use of the prohibited stimulant as inadvertent, Whyte still finds that – having served a doping ban – people are quick to make unfavourable judgements on his character. This is something that he has come to accept.
“Opinions are like a**eholes – everyone’s got one and they all stink,” Whyte passionately declares, moving the Dictaphone closer to him as he speaks. “You can do everything right, you can prove people wrong, but at the end of the day, they’re still gonna say stuff about you. If they don’t like you, they don’t like you.
“The whole experience made me more knowledgeable. It made me do more research on the supplements I use. People can say what they want – it doesn’t matter to me. All I care about is winning titles and cementing my legacy in this sport as someone who wasn’t scared of anyone and who fought the best. “As someone who came from nothing – the bottom of the bottom – I want to inspire my kids [two sons and a daughter]. I want to inspire youngsters in Brixton and all around the world. I want to inspire them to get up and try. I want them to know that you can have a dream, you can chase it and you can achieve it.” The dream that Whyte is chasing is the same one that consumes the minds of all boxers when they first get into the sport – to become a world champion. As the number one-ranked contender in the WBC heavyweight ratings, Dillian is tantalisingly close to a crack at that organisation’s crown – on paper at least. However, such is the unpredictability of the boxing business, he is not getting his hopes up just yet.
“I’d like to think I’ll get a shot at [WBC titlist] Deontay Wilder if I beat Browne, but we’ve just got to wait and see,” Whyte concedes. “The way heavyweight boxing is at the moment, there’s so much going on. The landscape is a bit uneven, as there’s a unification fight looming [between WBA and IBF ruler Joshua and WBO boss Joseph Parker on March 31]. Hopefully the WBC will do the right thing and enforce me as the mandatory challenger to Wilder, but even then that doesn’t guarantee he’ll fight me. The good thing is there’s lots of other options for me, so I can’t complain too much. I’m not going to sit around and wait for a world title shot – I’m going to keep fighting.”
One way or another, that is all Dillian Whyte has been doing his entire life… Fighting.
OPINIONS ARE LIKE A**EHOLES – EVERYONE’S GOT ONE AND THEY ALL STINK. IT DOESN’T MATTER TO ME”