MUM'S THE WORD FOR WHYTE
Whyte’s world title mission is in honour of mum who inspires him
MUM has always been the word for Dillian Whyte.
The Brixton heavyweight faces former WBO champion Joseph Parker at the O2 in London tonight and his mother Jane will be ringside.
This bout is a fight she knows about, but growing up Whyte kept many of his dark deeds hidden from her.
He was a father at 13 and he has been shot and stabbed. He has been kidnapped and also spent time in prison.
Now he stands on the brink of a world title shot and has sold out a 17,000-seat arena.
But Whyte, 30, admits he is lucky to be here.
“Growing up, I never knew I would even be alive at this age,” he said. “A lot of people I grew up with are dead or doing long stretches in prison.
“Sometimes I think about some of the things I have done or been through and think, ‘I was lucky there’. But when I got into a boxing ring, I knew straight away that I would be a world champion.”
Because of his troubled younger years, Whyte was cast as the bad boy of British boxing, especially when he faced golden child Anthony Joshua in 2015.
It is a tag he is keen to shake off. But he only truly cares what his mum thinks about him.
Respect
She is a nurse who left Jamaica for Britain for a better job when Whyte was two – but he was reunited with her in Brixton as a teenager.
“You can think what you like about me, as long as my mother is happy with me,” Whyte said.
“My mum is happy with me, even without being a world champion. She’s happy that I’ve turned my life around, I’m alive and doing something positive.
“My mum didn’t know half the stuff I got up to because I always kept it away from her.
‘‘I was scared of my mum but not out of fear, out of respect.
“Whatever I was doing, all the stuff I’ve been through, I didn’t go to hospital because I didn’t want my mum to find out because of fear of disappointing my mum.
“I was always the bad boy but when it comes to my mum, she would come and be like, ‘Come inside’, and I’d be like, ‘All right, yeah. Okay, mum’.”
That respect was drilled into him in Jamaica, where he was born, and runs so deep he felt he had to respond to the scenes in New York last week when Joshua’s mother was insulted by the American fighter Jarrell Miller. Joshua was promoting his September fight against Alexander Povetkin when Miller stormed the stage to taunt the champion by saying his mum “looked good in a Sunday dress”.
Joshua squared up to Miller and told him to “shut the f*** up”.
Hopes
But Whyte said: “Joshua is a punk because if he had said that about my mum I would have just gone off there and then. “Some things I just wouldn’t do and one is disrespect someone’s mum. ‘‘In Jamaica, where I come from, if you said that about someone’s mum, they will kill you – 100 per cent.” Whyte hopes a win tonight will put him in the frame for a rematch next year with Joshua – the only man he has lost to in 24 professional outings.
He tipped the scales at over a stone heavier than Parker, weighing 18st 6lbs 9oz to the New Zealander’s 17st 4lbs.