Dillian Whyte speaks about his tough upbringing in Jamaica and in London, an assassination attempt and knocking grown men out as a kid
He has been shot, became a father at 13 and most of his childhood friends are dead or in prison – so it is not hard to see why Dillian Whyte insists he is immune to Tyson Fury’s mind games.
Fury has taken to calling Whyte the “invisible man” in the build up to their heavyweight world title fight at Wembley Stadium on Saturday night but as the Brixton fighter details his torrid childhood and the violence of his later life, Fury’s barbs suddenly do not have much impact.
“I can’t remember anything good in my early life, to be honest,” Whyte says. “All I can remember is suffering, pain and struggle, and being left alone.”
Whyte, now 34 and the WBC’s mandatory challenger, is opening up on his formative years in Jamaica when he was simply “trying to survive”.
His mother had left to come to the UK “to better our life”, sending money back to Whyte and his siblings that he “never saw”. He would eventually come to Britain in his early teens.
“I remember doing bits and pieces with my dad and brothers and sisters and then it’s just a lot of suffering and hunger and rage and abuse and violence and stuff like that,” he recalls “Did my mother abandon me? What did I do? As a kid I shouldn’t have been dealing with that but it’s made me a tough person. That’s why I’m able to come back from defeat [in boxing]. All those things played a part in my life. I had to accept it and move on. It’s a mix of emotions but mainly sad ones. That’s life.”
‘Working, hustling, robbing and stealing because I needed to survive’
Things are different for Whyte now, who stands on the cusp of becoming a world champion in boxing’s blue riband division. Well, most things. “No matter how big I am, that doesn’t stop her giving me a piece of her mind and telling me to stop doing this or that. She tells me straight. She don’t care. She says you can be whatever you want to be out there but you’re still my child.”
Whyte became a father at 13, soon after joining his mother here in the UK. “I’d been surviving and looking after myself from a young age so by that age I was probably 17 or 18 from my mindset point,” he says, attempting to explain a situation which is incomprehensible to most people in the UK. In Jamaica, he adds, he had been “working, hustling, robbing, and stealing, because I needed to survive”.
Whyte’s late father also instilled a toughness in him in other ways. “Jamaica is a dog eat dog, hard country. I was getting in bad trouble. My dad was a crazy guy. His mindset was always, you good? OK, see you later. The only time I saw my dad was when I needed to get an a— whooping. If I did something bad, he’d beat me. My dad taught me a lot of lessons, but the wrong ones – the same thing his dad did to him.
“My dad showed me a lot of love at the same time because I’m his child but he taught me things the hard way. I’d have a fight and lose and go home and he’d beat me. I’d be like, why beat me? I just got beat up outside. He’d go, don’t ever come home and tell me you lost a fight. I learnt. Every time I lost a fight I’d go home and say I won. He’d say why have you got all these bruises. I’d say yeah the guy was bigger than me. It was tough.”
If the Whyte story makes you stop in your tracks then the violent world inhabited by Whyte snr is barely comprehensible.
“My dad’s a tough man,” he adds. “I’ve seen him go through stuff. I remember once being in Jamaica playing cards and dominoes and drinking and stuff like that and he was winning and doing his thing and this guy came from behind and cut his throat. He cut it and there was blood squirting everywhere. He still punched the guy and knocked the guy out. But he was bleeding everywhere and about to pass out.
“He took the money and put it in the front of his pants and they wrapped his neck with a plastic towel and something else. He went to hospital and I remember saying to him, why are you putting money in the front of your pants? He said nobody is going to go in the front of my pants to take the money. I thought that’s pretty clever actually. It was funny. My dad really was a crazy guy.”
‘I knew anyone I touched would get knocked out’
Like many of the great boxers, Whyte’s informal education in the sport began fighting to survive. What sets Whyte apart was just how young he was. “The first time I had a proper fight I was nine years old. I fought a guy who was like 13 or 14. He was bullying some friends of mine. He was taking their lunches and stuff like that. It just felt wrong to me.
“We’re all in the same situation. It depends on what your family can afford but this guy is taking everything he wants and he’s got whatever. He got to me and I just stood up and threw this massive overhand right. As I threw it, I was thinking I’m going to get killed. I moved my hand and the guy was on his back.
“From there, I knew anyone I touched would get knocked out. That played into my career. Growing up I was working the doors and knocking out three or four or five guys every weekend. I was fighting all the time. I was knocking out grown men as a kid because of where I was from. In my area it’s known for fighting.”
Fist fights as a nine year-old in Jamaica were small fry compared to what awaited him in London. His teens and beyond were marked with violence, gangs – and an attempted murder by a man wielding a sub-machine gun. “There was an assassination attempt on my life,” he recalls.
“I was shot, and stabbed multiple times. I finished working at a club [on the door] and came home and a guy jumped out of a bush outside my house and started letting off a sub-machine gun. I had to just run. I’ve been shot many times. I was always fighting. It was so bad that when I started the gym the gym was here and I was here but I had to go 30 minutes around and then up to get to the gym. Because here and here were four gangs I wasn’t well with. Any one of them could have killed me at any time.”
Life as a prizefighter – and Whyte has risen exponentially in the last five years – pales in comparison to many of the hard punching heavyweight’s life experiences. On Saturday night, Whyte will earn over £6 million as he challenges Fury for the heavyweight crown.
“It’s just another danger and this danger is nothing compared to the things I’ve survived on a daily basis. It’s a fight. I didn’t expect to still be alive after the age of 20. Many of the friends I grew up with are dead or in prison. For me, all of this is a blessing. For me, from what I’ve come from to where I am and where I’m going, I don’t care about Fury, any of these guys. I don’t care.”
Dillian Whyte spoke to Gareth A Davies for the DAZN series ‘Off The Cuff’