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i don't do a lot of interviews like this so there's not a lot of people that do get to see this side of me chris eubank jr the biggest fight of his life growing up i was always chris eubank son a lot of people would say you're trying to steal your son's limelight to a certain extent maybe he was i have to do something here to where people know me for me i got myself into this gang some kid had gotten my number he was like wait till i find you i went into school with a baseball bat to find this kid i take the baseball bat out that changed the path of my life [Music] the first time i went to dubai there was a young guy there and offered to train me that was your brother i just started crying man it was you know one of the worst days of my life i knew my brother was in dubai and i didn't go and see him that would have been the last time i would have saw him before he passed um a man named nick blackwell he got taken to hospital he actually died on the way to hospital he had to revive him with an adrenaline shot those types of incidents are what put things into perspective and make you think about what you're doing have you ever had this conversation with your father about your emotions this is too much so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] chris one of the really remarkable things about your story that i was that kind of broke the mold a little bit was someone that comes from a family as you described where you did have comfort because your father was very very successful in his career it seems like a little bit of an anomaly that you had such discipline and appetite for struggle and pain because usually that comes from typically stereotypically that comes from a background of intense hardship so i guess where my question is like
where did that come from in you and is that something you saw in all of your siblings i always had that very competitive uh personality you know and before i found boxing i was heavy into sports in school cricket rugby football athletics swimming um and i i just got a high off of competing and winning just just competitive that's all i all i want to do was test myself against other guys and then obviously when i found boxing i quickly understood that this was the ultimate form of competition you couldn't get anything more intense more hardcore more pure than two guys putting gloves on getting into the ring and and going until somebody can't go anymore did you have that from your dad at all was he ever pushing you in those early years before you even knew he was a boxer to be competitive to win and that that was important or was it more just innate in you you know it's funny my father actually he was the opposite in terms of supporting or you know pushing me towards boxing he he banned me from going to boxing gyms for a couple of years he didn't think i'd be tough enough you know so uh you know i was begging him all the time let me let me go to the gym let me let me let me go and spa let me go and train and he he would just tell me no no you're not going stick with your athletics stick with your rugby stick with your football stick with your studies that was a big thing for him you know because he didn't have that education growing up um boxing's gonna be too tough you know you've got so many look at look at where you are you're in a mansion you go to
private school you know you've got everything you need and want here why do you need to go down to the gym and and get your ass kicked every day so um you know it took years of me nagging and begging let me do it let me do it um finally he gave in and i guess the rest is history now we're here when i was younger i remember my older brothers could all eat really spicy food and remember someone saying to me at the table maybe one of my brothers maybe my mum she was like don't give that to steve he can't eat it when i heard that it sounded like a challenge to me now when you said that about your dad it almost sounded like a dare it sounded like a challenge did you receive it like that him saying you're not tough enough to do that absolutely you know as a kid um when you're told you can't do something you want to do it ten times more do you think he was aware of that he's a smart man you know what i've never thought of it like that i've never thought about that like was he was he trying to bait me you know was he saying this or stopping me so that when i actually did start i would go so hard that i would actually you know make might make something of myself in the sport i have no idea if he did then that's that's a hell of a you know a thing but um no i mean i i genuinely think that he he did really think i wasn't tough enough i mean world champions the best fighters in the world generally come from poverty from hardship from broken homes and they fight because they have to fight there is there's no other option for them if they don't win if they don't succeed in boxing they don't eat you know they don't have a home to go to they can't pay the bills um so that's what fuels them to to make it they have no choice uh whereas me i had
i have many choices so in a way i see it as i i see it as actually more of a an accomplishment because i didn't have to go through everything i went through to get to where i am today 34th of fights 32 wins the pain the hardship the sacrifice the suffering i didn't have to do any of that i could have stayed in school i could have kept the rugby up all the or the or the football or the cricket um you know and i i would have made it in any sport that i wanted to make it in i know that why just just because of my passion and my my drive you know once i once i zone in on something i want to do nothing else matters and i will i will do it and i will get there by any means necessary people that don't know about boxing or don't know how to fight they think that you got to be big and strong and mean and full of hate and that's what enables you to be a great fighter or to be able to to win in the fight game and sure some of those things are going to help you you know speed power all of that stuff plays a big part for sure but the biggest part of being able to be a great fire is is this and a lot of people don't realize that or don't know that it is in my opinion i don't know 70 80 mental you know the balls and the the grit that you have to have to you know walk through crowds of that thousands of people and while you're walking there knowing that you know once you get to that ring and walk up those stairs you're gonna have to take off your jacket the bell's gonna go and you're gonna have to fight somebody you're gonna have to get hurt and you're
gonna have to hurt somebody in front of thousands of people and millions of people around the world that in itself that that walk most people on the planet could not cannot do that just the walk let alone the fight part it takes a lot of mental strength it takes a lot of of guts a lot of heart you know mental strength it's a huge thing in boxing it's a big thing in life even outside of boxing right in business and in all i think great endeavors do you think it's something that you can from what you've seen in the gym something you can teach or train i think you can have you seen it talk to someone that didn't have it i've seen fighters improve you know i've seen fighters over the years become more confident and in their abilities and you know that does transfer for that just transfer over to their performances in the ring i think to a certain extent you do have to have that strength that that belief and that courage and that that mental fortitude to fight it can be enhanced in some ways but only to a certain extent because at the end of the day there are going to be times in training inspiring and definitely in in the fighting where you're going to get hurt you're going to be in a position where you're questioning yourself what am i doing here am i gonna be okay can i beat this guy um should i give up should i find a way out this is too much every fighter experience is that that that moment you know have you experienced that yeah in a fight there's one time where i was close to giving up one time i went to cuba before i turned pro out there obviously they have the olympians and you know their their olympic
training is second to none you know these guys are animals they're monsters um in cuba they have this thing called technical sparring which i had never done and i never did ever again until maybe up like two years ago but technical sparring is basically um you're sparring but you're not aspiring to hurt the guy you're aspiring to work on technique you know so it's like an agreement all right listen i'm not gonna go all out here you know we're gonna work on the jab today or we're gonna work on foot movement um we're not trying to bang each other out you know they they they're big on that they're big on technical sparring i had never done anything like that my my whole mentality was if i'm going to spy you i'm going to try and get you out of there because that's how my mentality is going to be when i'm in a real fight so i i need that's just how i need to be um the cuban olympic heavyweight representative walks up the stairs and gets into the ring i thought he was coming into the ring to to shadowbox and warm up for his sparring session with somebody else he said no no you guys you guys are going to spa i was like uh dude he's about three times the size of me what do you mean he's like yeah yeah it's okay it's okay we you know he'll work with you he'll work with you technical sparring so i thought sure that's fine let's go first round goes first bell goes this guy sprints over to me and just starts laying into me the biggest shots bang bang bang head up moving out the way dungeon running around the ring and he's just coming at me and i can't get this guy off of me he knocks me out of the ring he punches me i i fall out of the ring i drop down it's like a three four foot drop onto
concrete my knee hits the hit hits the concrete my leg goes dead right this is the second round that this happened i still have one more round afterwards so i'm getting up legs completely gone i'm looking up in this heavy weights like leaning over the the ropes looking at me looking down at me and i have a decision to make do i get back in or do i say listen my knees bad you're too big i've got a concussion let me know let me just take a break so i'm sitting there i'm looking around everyone's looking at me my dad's there i was like you know what let's [ __ ] go let's go walk back up knowing knowing what i was about to receive once as soon as i got back in the ring and that's like what happened crack click uh you know clapped us back in just starts laying into me again for another another another two rounds but my whole thing was i have to finish the three rounds why because i said i was gonna do the three rounds i said i would bar him three rounds i'm not leaving this gym with everybody knowing that i quit why not why not because uh i couldn't i couldn't live with myself i've gotta i've gotta go home and go to sleep how am i going to go to sleep with that on my mind you know i can go to sleep with getting my ass kicked by a guy who's three times bigger than me i can i can sleep like that i can't go to sleep knowing that he another man made me quit made me run out of the ring no so i got back into that ring and i took my beating like a man and from that day on i was never scared again so that was the worst experience of my life in terms of boxing but it was also the best experience because i knew
i knew what i was capable of i knew i had it inside me to not give up i knew i could take a shot i knew i had what it what it would take to make it if he can't make me quit who's gonna make me quit nobody so that stuck with me for the rest of my career something really interesting which i i gained from that which is like we basically create a personal like philosophy or story with ourselves and in that moment when you're looking up at stepping back into that ring with that massive guy in there it's like you're you're writing or making a story about yourself one that will probably follow you forever and i think about this sometimes when i'm on my own and i'm on my like peloton and i'm either exhausted or knackered and i know there's seven minutes left and i know i can just get off it but this thing in my head goes but then steve you're changing your own personal story which is that sometimes steve quits when it's hard and the thought of having to live the rest of my life with that per and it sounds like a very strange thing i've never said before but the thought of having to live with that personal story that personal philosophy that that's who i am is never worth getting off the bike because okay it's seven minutes today but it's a lifetime of thinking that's who i am and it sounded like that in that moment you you had a choice about who you were going to sit you know and it's a self thing i know there's other people there but sometimes when i'm sure you have it in the gym or whatever where no one's around it's just you and you yeah you have a decision to make about who who you are right happens a lot in training i imagine as well right no that that's actually when it happens the most you know there are times you know i'll be i'll be on the treadmill where i'll be running and you know i'll get a cramp in in the uh in my calf yeah i've still got eight minutes to go because you said you were gonna do because i i've set the timer for 40 minutes on the thing so i'm on i'm on 32 minutes the cramp starts going
you're on the treadmill yeah you got you got eight minutes to go and i'm i'm running like this now but i'm not getting off the treadmill because i've got to do the eight minutes why no one's there nobody's there but if the treadmill can make me quit what happens when i get into the ring with a guy who's hit me and i'm hurt yeah he's gonna make me quit too so i'm i'm on that treadmill for eight minutes like that just try and just try and not try not to get the pressure on this leg but i'm finishing the 40 minutes now that is you know it it's huge because it teaches you to believe and to know that you know no matter how hard things get you will find a way you'll find a way it doesn't matter who's watching you know you know because yeah no one's around right now so no one would know if you took that break but what happens when you're in a situation where the world is watching and you're in that same position of pain or of of un you know uncertainty about you know so you got a big speech or you you know some something's happening and everyone's watching and you don't know you don't really want to keep going you know then you'll get that same feeling you know what i'm going to do it not oh well listen i'm i'm i'm done i just this is too much you don't ever want to put that uh that spirit inside yourself you know you got to you got to keep those demons out you know and they are demons you know and if you and if you let them in enough they take over i don't let anything like that inside me i always beat what it is uh that's in front of me what it is whether it's mental whether it's spiritual whether it's physical um i always make sure i come out on top one of the ways we learn about who we
are and i was i guess that self story that i was talking about there is by looking at others we can sometimes compare ourselves to our peers or those around us or whatever it might be and say i know that i'm different because everyone around me isn't like this thing they're not like they don't have this trait or quality or think in this way that i do when i look at your career and what you've done it is remarkable because as you said you had so many other choices but you chose what i consider to be the most tumultuous struggle-filled one and so i when i when i sit here i go what is it about you that's made you where you are today in this this great champion the character traits the attributes what is it i've always had a strong mind i've always had a strong soul i've always known what i wanted to do uh and that i was never gonna stop until i did it um i had a lot to live up to you know growing up i was always chris eubank's son you know from an early age i was like yeah but that's not my i'm not chris that's not my name my name is chris he made it even harder by calling me chris he made it even harder this guy um but i knew that that's not i couldn't go the rest of my life as that as just being the son of oh that's chris you know i have to do something here to where people know me for me that was a big driving factor becoming my own man doing something that people would be proud of and that my family would be proud of and that i could say was my own now some people would say well then why did you go into boxing with which is you know the same sport your dad did um you know it's a good question i mean i guess that you know i guess that competitive
uh soul inside of me maybe wanting to see if i could be better than what my dad was see if i could be better than the guy who said i i wasn't tough enough um i'm sure that was in my mind in the early stages now that i've done so much it's it's not at all you know i don't ever compare myself to my father people do all the time you know who would win in a fight if you you and your dad fought or you know did would you ever spar with him um i don't i don't think about any of that you know i just have to be the best fighter i can be um because at the end of the day um especially in boxing you know you know you you're only going to be competing with yourself that's how you that's how you elevate that's how you get better not by focusing on other people and i think that that goes for you know any industry if you if you're constantly looking at other people and what they're doing and you know why they made it or why they didn't make it you know you you're losing out on on you and what you know and on what is best for you and how you're going to progress i never looked up at anyone and said i want to do that and i want to be there i just i always just thought to myself you know what this is going to be so hard as it is i don't want to put any added pressure on myself i don't want to you know can i can i get as many wins as my dad or you know can i be more famous or make more money like all that stuff would it's just it's a it just messes with your mind so you just have to focus on day by day week by week fight by fight just being the best you can be and that's what i did and i just built that up over the years until you know until i had made my own name and made my own uh path um my father's always been there he's
always been there to support me and guide me i think he's now taking a back seat a lot a lot a lot more than he was originally he was frightened and said at the beginning of my career you know you you look back on youtube at the at the the press conferences and the weigh-ins he was right there you know and he'd be talking on my behalf sometimes a lot of people would say you know oh you you're trying to steal your son's limelight um to a certain extent maybe he was or maybe he i don't think he was doing it consciously like oh i want to i want to steal a sunset but it's just he's such an entertainer he's such a people person he just couldn't help himself you know he'd have to get up in the middle of a press conference and do some poetry or or talk [ __ ] to my opponent or he had to he just that's just who he is um and early on i actually didn't mind it because i was so hell-bent on just becoming a good fighter i didn't even really want to talk to the public and i and i i always got and i still do get a lot of uh trolls online social media so it gave me like kind of like a bad taste for publicity and and media and and so i didn't really even want to deal with that i just wanted to fight i just wanted to get my record up so that people could start saying okay yeah this kid's a bad boy that's all i cared about so it was actually him he actually did take a a lot of pressure off of me by him kind of doing the talking for for a certain amount of years um now that i'm established now that i am you know where i am in the sport uh that isn't needed you know i'm 32 years old now i can't have another man at my press conferences
speaking on my behalf it's just this it's just not gonna fly so for the last few years he hasn't been doing that i'm comfortable in front of a camera now i wasn't comfortable at the beginning in the beginning i was very and i looked back and i looked back at the all these pictures i used to take with fans and interviews and i was always very serious and stone-faced and not fun to really listen to in interviews and people would say oh yeah i met you i met you uh you know i met you in in 2013 2014. look look here's a picture and then and then and i'd be sitting standing up some like this what was that you just you just had a bad opinion of that no i just i was just so serious i was just so obsessed with boxing like and for me when i'm in the fight i don't play you know some guys you know they they walk they walk in into the ring you know manny pacquiao's and joshua's in the high-fiving guys and smiling and you know dancing to the music i'm not that guy i can't i can't be like that if i know i've got to fight i'm a barbarian you know i'm it's wartime um and even though i'm light outside of the ring now as an adult one even now i i still want this fight time i'm not smiling i'm not a nice guy now as at the start of my career i guess i couldn't i couldn't separate the fighter from the guy in the street they were the same guy so whether i was in the ring or i was taking a picture with the fan i i wasn't smiling i was a serious dude now as you get older you you know you understand you can't you can't be like that around normal citizens because it's it's it's just weird you know you you have to be able to smile i i smile at all my pictures now because these pictures they have them for the rest of their lives
and and they show them to their friends their family um and what do you want do you want that or do you want oh he's a nice guy or oh he's an [ __ ] he couldn't even you couldn't even smile he looked so serious he didn't look like he didn't want you want to be there you know that's one thing i've learned it's very important being in the public eye you have to give people time and you have to be happy about it uh because you know one encounter is not just one encounter if you meet somebody you're actually meeting their friends their family their son their daughters you know that one person it's a spider web so that one person is actually a thousand different people and it's either gonna be he was a really good guy he was a cool guy he said he took he took a picture and he spent you know he spent time and talked to me that's that's the story that goes out to the thousand people or what an [ __ ] what a wanker um which one of those stories do you want being spider webbed out into the universe you know and it all comes back around because you meet the friends you meet the family you see the tweet yeah you see the tweets you know it all comes back around so good energy positive vibes give people your time you know because those pictures and those stories stay with them for the rest of their lives and becomes your karma and becomes your karma it becomes how people treat you that you've never met before you know you really got to be aware of the power of your energy towards other people if if you give off bad vibes and then you get bad vibes if you're a good person if you give people time it all comes back around there's been this kind of perception because of that because if you're very
stone-faced that you're unemotional sure you've heard this before yeah what's the truth in there are you unemotional i've heard that i've heard that word many times throughout the years with girls i've dated that's always been a really bad or hard thing for them to to get past is that i'm not an emotional guy apparently i'm very hard to read when i'm in a relationship or on a date or whatever it is um you know they don't know if i even like them um am i emotional no i'm not i have emotions obviously but you know like for you to upset me is it's damn near impossible and you know i will never sh i i don't think i've i can't remember the last time i shouted at somebody i don't have that emotion to you know if you if you do something wrong to me or to disrespect me or okay and then i just never see you again i i don't get that like you know what are you doing you know like that so many people get i don't have that in me i don't know why you know if i knock somebody out in the ring i stand there i look at them while they're on the floor that's it you know 99.9 percent of fighters they they knock a guy out [Music] jumping up onto the brink high fiving people crying you know i don't i don't have that emotion it's like yeah i knocked you out this is what i said i was gonna do this is what i've trained for for my whole life so yeah that's what happened um do you ever worry though that that's gonna get in your way a little bit in terms of especially romantic relationships women are a little bit more emotional than men
um they're more in touch with their feelings i mean the data shows that quite clearly so do you ever think that's gonna inhibit you from forming romantic relationships i mean i've never really thought about it and it's not because she said you wanted kids i remember hearing you say that of course yeah i mean who doesn't um well i mean some people don't but eventually i do want a kid but you know the woman i'm going to have a kid with is not going to be a woman that needs an emotional man you know some women don't need that um was your father emotional no no your mother yeah yeah father emotional at all no affectionate i knew he loved me and that you know i knew i could i knew he wanted the best for me um [Music] he was emotional enough to for me to know that uh that's my dad and i would do anything for him and i love him you know some some people don't have that relationship with their dads you know i love my dad i res but i respected him and i feared him um i did fear him so and that was you know he was very strict growing up i couldn't get away with anything i think that's sometimes about myself i think you know i i actually grew up i still to this day called my mum and dad by their first names never called them mum and dad and then i think there was a lack of affection and emotion in my child in my childhood so i had to kind of learn growing up how to be affectionate and emotional i remember someone calling me their best friend and me feeling this like internal repulsion like the [ __ ] and then when i would when i'd get into a relationship with well no this was even worse when i'd find someone that i fancied and i'd pursue them the minute
they showed interest in me i'd reject them and so until i realized that was going on and i had this like weird thing in me it controlled me and it meant that 27 i had my first proper relationship so yeah that's uh i'd learn a bad model of affection relationships and emotions so i feel like i've become a little bit more emotional as i've gotten older you know before nothing could phase me you know doesn't matter what would happen nothing would phase me up until a few years maybe maybe over the last like two or three years there's been a few times where i've watched movies and i'd get this like you know something sad would happen and i'd get this this feeling you know like and i i never cried you know but you know that like that start of like i might cry um [Music] and i was like what what the hell is this you know like this is weird and that's only have started happening over the last couple of years so i don't know if i'm becoming more mellow or i don't know but i'm just i'm just not an emotional person you know i haven't cried you know the last time i well i was the last time i cried i was i was 12 years old and then i cried again when my brother died last year so you know that's that's 20 years in 20 years i've cried once so yeah i mean i guess you could say i'm not emotional but that's what i needed to be to do the things i've done in the ring that that that was that was my journey that was that was how i was able to do it um i had to get my emotions out to be able to perform ice cold you know some guys use their emotions to help them fight more that was my path you know if i ever if i ever felt emotions getting involved
in you know whether it was hate or anger or being afraid i would i noticed that it affected my fighting negatively i would make mistakes you know if i went into a sparring session i really didn't like the guy you know and i went out there and really tried to hurt him i'd actually hurt him less than if i was just cool calm cold and calculated you know i'd make mistakes i'd attack when i wasn't supposed to attack or i would i'd move and i would do certain things which i'm just i'm only doing because i just want to get him you know and it's like boxing is a chess match you know at the highest levels you have to think about everything that you're doing the guys that think while they're in the ring not just react those are the guys who who make it to the top of the top have you ever had this conversation with your father about your emotions about dealing with emotions suppressing emotions whatever because i don't know i struggle to believe that you're not emotional as you've seen you does come out in you but it just seems like you've learned how to suppress and not express those emotions i have never had this conversation with my father no we've never talked about emotions or feelings i'm not gonna say he's not that type of guy because he actually may be now at this stage in his life you know he's he's found god he's very religious now um so maybe i actually could have this conversation with him but you know 10 years ago 20 years ago there's just no way i could never sit down with him and and talk about my feelings you know he'd be like feelings come let me take my belt off and show you about feelings you know really it was not you know very strict very um [Music] yeah very
uh you you i got away with nothing as a kid you know but i i think i needed that because i was very boisterous i was very i had a lot of energy you know i got myself into this gang when i was a kid and you know i was going around i was fighting i was you know skipping school um [Music] the only thing that somewhat kept me in line was knowing that if i got caught or if i went too far my dad was waiting for me at home do you really think he would have taken his belt off if you tried to chat with him back through here i'm exactly i'm exaggerating that part yeah but listen the belt came off many times but when i stepped out of line as a kid yeah um you know that strictness those that punishment uh stopped me from going even more overboard than i already did and i did go overboard you know you can go on to youtube right now and see a video of me street fighting at 16 years old in the car park in brighton and i was doing that every other week you know so imagine what i would have been doing if i could if i could just have free reign if i had nothing stopping me from doing anything it would you know i'd be in jail 100 percent um [Music] you know we're jamaicans we're built differently you know we're there's just something in our dna which uh you know we we we have this thing where we you know we we like to cause trouble man i don't know why um my father was the same you know he got into all types of trouble as a kid you know stealing and getting arrested and fighting you know that's just i don't know we just we we come from a a bloodline of
of uh of ruffians you know it's just how we are i'm a lot more um refined now as an adult you know i look back at some of the things i was doing and i'm just like what what was i thinking i remember i went to college for maybe a month or two before i ended up moving to america some kid from this uh the school that was opposite from the college had had somehow gotten my number and i had i got in a fight with his brother and these are these two really big kids um and he he got my he called me like 2am woke me up he's like yo who do you think you are i'm gonna [ __ ] you i'm gonna do this i'm gonna eat you i'm gonna do this stuff to you you know watch wait till i find you watch hung up the phone i i knew who the kid was because i heard i knew his voice right the next day i went into school with a baseball bat in in my gym bag so i have the gym bag so obviously no one can see it lunch bar rang went picked up my bag started walking across to the other school to find this kid and when i say find him i mean like i was walking in and out of classes i was opening the doors and seeing you know the teachers looking like who are you what are you doing don't worry about it so i was walking from classroom to classroom to classroom to classroom on your own on my own yeah to find this kid with the baseball bat in my bag and you know um i thank god i thank the good lord above that i didn't find him that i didn't see him because you know i walk into a classroom or i see him on the football field i take the baseball bat out i hit him with it finished you know one i could kill the kid i'm in jail for the rest of my life
um you know i would i would have been banned from going to america so my my whole my whole foundation uh everything that i learned going over to the states as as at 18 years old having my first amateur fights training with floyd mayweather and his father that would have all been washed away i would have never i would have never done it so i would never have done anything in boxing because that was that was that start was what built me up you know you know i just so i just thank god that he wasn't there that day because that could have changed the part of my life you know and i just look back at that like how what were you thinking like how stupid could you be but obviously as a kid you you're not thinking about consequences or america you know you you know you're just upset that some kid called you up and and called you an [ __ ] and said he's gonna mess you up the next time you see him you're not thinking about traveling and getting bands and going to prison and you're just thinking i want to be a big man and and show everyone i'm hard you know so it's just you know you have to have that's why i say i thank god for my father as well for how strict he was because you know there were other times where there were things that i was going to do but i didn't do them because i didn't want to suffer the consequences of my old man so um yeah you talked earlier about your the death of your brother sebastian the first time i went to dubai i went to the gym there and there was a young guy there that came over and offered to train me and he trained me for about i think two weeks individually i was your brother
got loads of photos hundreds and hundreds of photos of him training me on the bags there i remember him as being just the most generous pure pure is the word that i always come back to giving person he did not ask me for any money he never asked me for a thing he trained me on the bags both times that i came to um dubai and i wasn't he didn't necessarily know who i was or what i was doing but he did that out of the goodness of his heart and then he continued to message me and speak to him on instagram about superfoods and we talked a lot about that obviously he there was a tragic accident and he passed away from that what can you tell me about that incident and the lasting impact that's had on you and those those around you i mean you know this is fresh this is this only happened a year ago um and i never had to i've never dealt with anything like that in my life um i told you i'm not an emotional guy the last time i cried i said i was 12 years old but the day i found out i cried the whole day i cried the whole day i cried for like two days straight um yeah yeah my so my dad actually i had covered i had covered when i found my dad came to my house uh he woke me up he said come outside and i thought i'd done something wrong because he had he had a look in his face which was uh i don't know i just couldn't i can't describe it but it was i knew something was wrong um so i thought that you know i don't know i i i wasn't sure what what i was about to hear he took me outside my little brother my little brother joseph um he's he lives with me and i have an
outhouse uh so he lives there he went and got him and he sat us down and he told us and um you know i just started crying man it was you know one of the worst days of my life and um you know it's just it's so crazy to to think that somebody that is so healthy you know like you said he's telling you about the superfoods and you know he trains every day you know peak physical condition um can just you know have a heart attack and just gone just still just blows my mind you know um i thank god that you know he didn't suffer he didn't he didn't really feel anything he just went um and i also thank god that he had a son his son was born maybe a month or month before he passed and he raheem and he looks just like him so we have that you know um we have raheem to carry on his legacy and i thank god for that every day um you know he's just now starting to walk learning how to walk he has a seven or eight teeth he's he's a great kid very good looking kid um i guess that one instance i feel like that has made me more of an emotional person since that's happened um it makes you think just like how before something that happens to you you hear about all that stuff on your news and to other people and you see it in movies and it's just like well whatever you know it doesn't it doesn't really register but when there's a death in your family then then the next time you hear about someone passing away then you get that immediate feeling of what you dealt with and then you start to sympathize and empathize and with the people that it's happening to that you don't know um and i never had that emotion before until until this happened um
and it just you know like i said i had covid and uh that meant that i actually couldn't make it to his his funeral which is you know it's just crazy like i was in florida for the whole of covert right and when i say that these guys didn't care in florida like the beaches were full no one's wearing masks i i remember going to the beach and i would walk along the beach thousands of people and i'd be wearing a mask this was like peak covered and people would be looking at me like what are you wearing a mask for like they did not care i was in i went to texas i was in dallas for a month i was partying every night never got covered and then the day my brother dies i have covered and i can't get on a plane and fly to dubai for his funeral because i have covered and in the muslim religion they have to bury him as quickly as possible um they couldn't wait i thank god that my family were able to go out i had to stay um you know i don't i don't believe in regrets um i believe what's meant you know what's meant to be will be and you know you should be happy with whatever happens in your life you know but i would say there is one regret i have in my life uh and that was i actually went so i hadn't i hadn't seen my brother for quite some time and uh i was i had a holiday this was i don't know maybe three or four months before he passed away i stopped off i had to stop off in dubai and i stopped off in dubai for like a couple days before i flew to this destination and um i didn't want to i didn't want to see anybody
nobody knew that i was making this trip i knew my brother was in dubai and i didn't go and see him i just i didn't want people knowing i was in dubai so i just i stayed in my hotel room and i didn't see anybody and then i left and i went to the next destination that's that's probably the one regret i have in my life now is that i didn't go and see him you know because that would have that would have been the last time i would have saw him before he passed um [Music] you know and these things it just teaches you you've got to appreciate and you've gotta um you know you don't take anything for granted nothing is guaranteed you know the people you love be with them as much as you can appreciate them enjoy them don't get into fights you know don't do things which just wasting time because one minute they're there and one minute they're gone and then you've got to think about all the things you could have done with them or should have done with them that you didn't because you know you're you're too busy or you you know i'll see them again another time you know it's uh it's crazy how the world works but yeah i appreciate everyone at all times and you know family is family is number one you know don't let anything ever get in between that don't take it for granted that's one thing i've learned you know investing a lot of time in your relationship with rheem absolutely yeah we're on the phone all the time i've got a million videos of him on my phone my my uh my brother's wife seb's wife salma she send me videos every day of raheem um they're coming over to england actually in uh in a month or so and yeah so raheem is is now my son you know that's that's how i feel um
you know it actually makes me want to have a kid i was never really planning on having a kid until after my career and i still may not but um i want raheem to be able to grow up with my son you know i don't want them to be too far apart um you know me and my brother said we were you know a year and a half apart so we were very close you know we did everything together um so i want i want raheem to have that so you know within the next few years we'll uh we'll see what happens one of the things i couldn't quite ascertain from googling was if you uh if you are in a relationship or if you're dating you keep all that stuff very private i don't blame you to feel this but i couldn't quite ascertain where you're at with that um most things said you weren't but is it a part of your life absolutely yeah one thing i've learned is that relationships and social media don't mix um i've just i've seen social media mess up so many relationships uh that i just you know i decided a long time ago that whoever i was with uh is not gonna be it's not gonna be a public relationship my life is public people can see what i'm doing every day i want something that's for me uh you know and you've got so many girls out there who you know they're they're just clout chasers you know they they just want they want to say that you know that look at me look at these pictures we went here we went there um i don't need that in my life you know i've got enough clout i've got enough attention on me so i i keep my private life private so much so that i've actually seen comments online saying that i'm gay you know this guy's never in pictures with girls
he's never gotten he's got no girls on his instagram i think he's gay i've seen that like multiple times and just you know i laugh my ass off whenever i see that but yeah i just i just don't i don't believe in mixing the two i don't i don't see any positives from it you know people see something if they see something if they see people happy some most people yeah that's great but there's there's a large p percentage of people that if they're seeing something happy they they want to try and make it unhappy that's what is as crazy as that sounds that's what some people do you know so uh i'm not gonna let anybody take shots at or try and muddy my relationship because i've seen it happen before it will you know and it happened it happens all the time i believe a private life should be private and that's that's how i've chosen to to keep my relationships it's good to hear i agree i'm not gay you talked a bit about um seb there and his approach to like health and fitness i actually looked back through my conversations with him before you came and all of our conversations were about health and fitness he'd asked me a few things about social media and some advice there but did that incident also impact how you viewed the health implications of the sport that you do because you know you can get one one hit in boxing and it can be it can cause really bad damage right has that brought it more into the spotlight for you that your the fragility of your health and you know i hear a lot of boxers talk about not overstaying their welcome tyson fury this weekend after he won the fight talked about that as well has that is that front of mind for you when you you think about your career i wouldn't say that what happened with seb has um no it hasn't hasn't affected how i think
about boxing um you know i've been doing this game i've been in this game for a long time i've been in fights where you know i've hurt people to the point where they you know have been in a coma i've fought a a man named nick blackwell years back and you know he he uh he got taken to hospital he actually died on the way to hospital and he had to revive him with an adrenaline shot and he was in a coma for two weeks um you know that that was national news um you know those types of instance of incidents are what really put things into perspective and make you think about what you're doing and the risks and the implications as a youngster you don't think about it you know when something like that happens then you do think about it and you and you think about even more as you get older because as you get older especially in boxing you you're affected more by the punishment you take i feel like when i was young it's like i could do anything and i never get hurt you know at 32 you know you pick up sick little injuries and you know you the shots you take you feel them that little bit more than you used to you start forgetting things you know um do you think that's correlated that forgetting things so what you'd forget like a name or something and you'd yeah and you'd like my recall is is a lot worse than it used to be so you know in my 20s um if i couldn't remember something i'd sit there and within five seconds i get it you know you do that thing when you think about it oh yeah yeah now it's ten minutes you know i i it's it's it's really embarrassing to say but i forgot the name of somebody one time it took me a week every day sitting there
like throughout the day whenever i would remember what was the name what was the name and then a week later bang just came to me i just i couldn't i was just nuts you know because now now i force myself to remember because it's like you're training your brain it's called recall so i'll i'll force myself if i'm if i you know i could easily just go on my phone and what was the name again google oh yeah that was it but now i now i force myself to pull it out of my mind um and that there was one particular name and it took me a whole week before it just snapped back do you have recall apps on your phone i read that somewhere that you had like a an app on your phone to help you train so i have an app now it's called um elevate and it's basically going to the gym but for your brain you know so i've got here so you've got like spelling recall eloquence precision um you know you have it's games it's games that you play you know vocabulary uh math equations you know just little games to play each day and it just keeps your mind working your mind your brain is like a muscle you know if you keep using it the more you use it the better it gets right the stronger it gets and i think it's important you know especially because as you get older you you know i do i know i notice it you know i'll i'll go into a room and i'll put my phone down somewhere and then i'll walk off and then i'll and i'll walk around the room looking for the bloody phone it's you know and it's like i'm think it shouldn't this should not be happening um [Music] is that from getting hit in the head i don't know is it just i'm getting no i don't know um sounds like me to be honest and i don't get hit in the head i don't drink you know you know i got i got friends they drink every night you know and they're very smart guys you know they're in business they're in economics they're you know they
they're in tech they but they drink a lot sometimes so it's like and i feel like you know drinking kills brain cells right just like a punch would but they seem to be okay i don't know so maybe maybe that maybe that impact is is just it's just different i don't know i am so excited to announce our new sponsor for this podcast and that is blue jeans by verizon for any of you that aren't already familiar with blue jeans they are a video conferencing and collaboration tool who offer an immersive communication experience that drives pretty unparalleled employee and customer engagement experiences me and all of my teams across all of my portfolio companies switched over to blue jeans a couple of months ago and we have not looked back the best thing for us has been the totally frictionless experience no glitching no sound issues no delays or any of those things that usually make virtual meetings really really frustrating we use blue jeans anywhere on any device at any time and it's perfect for my small businesses that just have 10 or 20 people to some of my bigger businesses that have hundreds of people i'm a big fan as you can probably tell so i've been quite excited for for some time to announce this partnership and in the coming weeks i'll explain the features and really why it's perfect for you if you haven't considered using or switching over to blue jeans yet but if you can't wait head over to bluejeans.com to learn more honestly it's been one of the real sort of game changers in my business we talked about feelings earlier right um and how there's been a lot of sort of generational changes around men expressing their feelings and one of the big changes i think i've seen in the last 10 years from 10 years ago when i was well for 19 to now is this topic of mental health and men and i think it's really been pushed to the forefront because the stats around mental health in our country you know you've heard them we've all heard them that the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 is themselves and a lot of people point and go well
why is that a lot of the mental health charities cite that men don't express themselves enough they're not emotional they don't talk and we've had all the campaigns about talking and um those kinds of things have you ever experienced anxiety or depression or any sort of mental health um ailment that's one thing that i do thank god for is that i've never experienced any of that um it's hard for me to relate to uh hearing about people with depression and anxiety like i've just never experienced anything like that um i know it's a thing um [Music] but i'm i'm just an extremely happy and content person and i'm not saying that to you know pick myself up that's just how i am it's like it doesn't matter what happens i'll find the bright side or if there's something bad going on in my life i'm i'm able to just cut it off and move on deal with it to the to where it stops being an issue um i've i've never been the type of person that will let something affect me um you know from day one in my career i've had i've been i've been a target i get a serious amount of [ __ ] online to this day uh haters doubters non-believers i have like a whole army dedicated to just sticking it to me on a daily basis online it's unbelievable um and the funny thing is if i walk out into the street it's pictures it's autographs it's love none of these guys are around why is that i you know i i got it at the beginning well actually i didn't get it at the beginning it really got to me because you know i'm young i'm coming into the game i'm trying to be the you know trying to do the best i can
and i've got people constantly coming at me oh you think you're you're old man you're a copycat you'll never be as good as him uh you're a wannabe you know and when i when i saw when i first started experiencing this uh this hatred and this um you know this trolling it did affect me um i didn't get depressed because i'm not that type of person but angry you know why are these people saying these things what what have i done to them um i couldn't understand it you know maybe that is why i had for so many years that kind of that stone wall when i was taking pictures of doing interviews because i'd seen so much so much negativity online you know um but then after a while i i don't know it just it just switched one day and i was just like why am i getting upset why am i getting pissed off with these random guys i don't i know what it was some guy wrote something uh i think on my facebook i think i just had a fight and he said um terrible performance you're an embarrassment to your family name i hope you get knocked out in your next fight you scumbag right i'm i'm a 22 year old kid i've got some and you know i'm looking i'm like jesus like you know it's just nuts i clicked on his profile i was like i've got to see who said this i mean who is this guy he must be some amazing guy to be saying this to me and uh you know it was this fat bloated just nobody you and he was sitting on his couch with a with a beer that was his profile picture and he ended and he had his cat next to him and he was in shorts and like a wife beer um or what you guys don't say wifi that's my american thing coming out uh tank top
um and i was like hold on this is the guy that just called me a scumbag i'm letting this guy affect my day nah nah this has got to stop and from that day on i just realized it's not it's not even me it's they're unhappy with themselves they're not happy with me you know the people that are trolling you know they've got whatever they've got going on in their lives they're upset they're unhappy they and they're projecting that onto other people who are who they see as doing them doing well for themselves and they you know oh he's look at him he's you know he's got all that and you know let me see if i can bring him down you know i'm upset so let me see if i can make him upset like that sounds crazy to me to do that but that's what i've come to understand that some people do you know they're unhappy so they want to make other people unhappy with them as soon as i realized that i i never i never worried about trolling or bad comments again i actually and now i actually enjoy them you also must know that it's profitable for you absolutely mayweather taught us that absolutely yeah i mean in in boxing that's another that's another thing which made me stop worrying about it because i knew after a while i started i started seeing these trolls at my fights you know i'd be walking to the ring you're gonna get knocked out what are we i'd hear all this stuff walking to the ring right and i thought hold on a second that guy bought a ticket he paid to be there to to shout at me as i walked past and i'm you know i'm getting a percentage of that ticket what am i upset about all right he shouted at me but i've just made some money off the guy so then then i understood right you have to be a villain or you have to be a a hero in the sport of boxing love or hate you can't be in the middle i have a lot of fans
and i have a lot of haters both buy their tickets both buy their pay-per-view subscription to watch on tv both get online and talk and build the profile the guys that are in the middle they're the guys who don't do well because when you're neutral in the spot of boxing people don't tune in they don't talk they're not interested it doesn't matter how good of a fight you are if you're not a character that can inspire emotion whether good or bad then on a saturday night when you get into the ring you know the people will be sitting there when they get off work or wherever they are oh yeah he's fighting tonight but there's this really hot girl and she's going to be at this club yeah i'm going to go to the club i'll watch the replay or i'll just i'll find out what happened the next day yeah i don't need to that's what happens when you're neutral or when people aren't really that interested if they hate you forget the forget the girl in the club i'm going to that fight to see him get knocked out let's go let's go forget everything else and if they love you forget the girl in the club i want to be there when he wins those are the guys love and hate that will tune in that will watch you every fight that will talk about you so that's one thing i learned early on you have to be you you have to be a character you have to be something that people can either get behind or get against and that's very much i feel what i am um at the beginning most people were against me because they saw me as a gimmick as somebody was just trying to make a quick buck use my name to get a better profile have a few fights and then probably go on love island or big brother or whatever it is and you know whatever but then obviously as the years went by
win after win after win a lot of the haters turned into fans um there's still a lot of haters left but you know we're working our way to making them into fans uh slowly but surely quick one we bring in eight people a month to watch these conversations live here in the studio when we're here in the uk and when we're in la if you want to be one of those people all you've got to do is hit subscribe do you feel like your career is complete and if the answer is no what do you think is required in terms of your boxing career with the knowledge that as you said before we started that there is a window of time where you you get to do this and you get to do at the highest level what is required if the answer is no to make you feel that your your career was complete it's an absolute no um i've had a lot of great fights i've had a lot of great wins but um there's still so much more left you know there's still so many more big fights out there for me to to take part in and to win um you know i want to capture these world titles you know i've been a world champion at super middleweight i'm back down at middleweight now um and you know the the you know the map is wide open there's there's a lot of great fighters and they have belts and i i can get in with these guys and i can beat these guys um you know boxing you do have a short window but i live my life uh correctly i live the boxing lifestyle boxing is not just a sport it is a lifestyle um you know outside of a fight camp i'm not drinking i'm not doing drugs uh i'm not overeating and blowing up in weight which so many fighters do and then they have to spend weeks or months cutting that weight back off to make
whatever weight they're going to be at on fight night i don't do any of that i stay in the gym i stay dedicated i stay healthy i stay responsible so that being said i will be able to fight until i will be able to fight effectively and i would say until i'm 37 38 39 years old um i'm 32 now you know my father retired at they too i'm so i'm retirement isn't even close to what i'm thinking about you know i am financially stable but there's still so much more money out there to be made there's still so much more accolades out there to collect um and i still have a lot left in the tank so to answer your question no my career is not um complete far from it even even though i've had 34 fights you know more fights than a lot of fighters have had and 32 wins is still not complete there's still so much more i'm gonna do and the next few years are the money years and they are the years where i need to fight the best beat the best and really cement my legacy we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks the next guest a question they never know who they're writing it for they said hello which is the first time anyone said hello but hello i was wondering what you believe happiness is and how it can be achieved um well as i said before i'm an extremely happy person i may not look it at times but i'm very content um i don't get angry i don't shout i don't put other people down i don't wish bad on other people um if someone's successful if someone's doing better than me i look up to that i praise that i respect that you know other people they see people succeeding or doing better than them and they think oh you know i wish he would trip up you know why has he got all that why is
why is she doing that and i can't do it don't be like that you can never be happy if you're constantly comparing yourself to other people and you know not wanting the best for everybody including yourself you know it's a mirror life's a mirror you know whatever you're projecting is is projected back to you if you if if you're negative that's what your life is going to be and that's whether it's thoughts so that's whether it's tweets that's whether it's what you're saying to people everything comes back around you know so happiness is is positivity is being a good person is being a genuine person um you know don't lie to people if if you think something's wrong say it you know if you if you think that somebody's doing something wrong or that they're on the wrong path help them because you're helping yourself you know be positive that's the key to happiness chris thank you for doing this it's been a huge honor and i can't wait to see what you do over the next couple of years in your money years in and outside of the ring and i thank you for giving me the opportunity because yeah there's not a lot of people that that do get to see this side of me you know all they see is the big bad guy in the ring he's throwing punches you know i don't do a lot of interviews like this so yeah i appreciate you uh putting me on here and hopefully the fans get to see a different side i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast my girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when i was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein shake which lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you get your 20 odd grams of protein you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete in the protein
space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something that is nice especially when consumed just with water and that is nutritionally complete the salted caramel one if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it in a blender and you try it is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market just mixed with water it's been a game changer for me because i'm trying to drop my calorie intake and i'm trying to be a little bit more healthy with my diet so this is where heel fits in my life thank you for making a product that i actually like as you might know crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewelry brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewelry and this piece by crafted when i put it on for me it represents courage it represents ambition it represents being calm and loving and respectful and nurturing while also being the antithesis of that seemingly the antithesis of that which is um sometimes a little bit aggressive with my goals and determined and courageous and brave the really wonderful thing about crafted jewelry is it's super affordable it looks amazing the pieces hold tremendous meaning and they are really well made [Music] [Music] you