Wind up Dillian Whyte, and watch him go. “In 1988, a hurricane blew the roof off my mum’s house while she was giving birth to me,” he tells one publication on this Zoom call. “I was eating food from trash cans,” he tells The Independent. And so on. “I’ve got about 15 dogs altogether and they just had some puppies, so 16… 17… 18… 19… 20… 21… I’ve got 22 dogs now.” “Sometimes I’m borderline obese.”

Whyte, unintentionally, is full of quips. One, however, stands out as the most apt ahead of his upcoming fight with Moses Itauma, the most highly-touted heavyweight prospect in years. “As a kid, my dad used to say random stuff and it didn’t make sense to me, but now as I get older…” Whyte starts. “He used to say: ‘Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.’ Long story short, I believe in myself.”

• Buy Whyte vs Itauma on DAZN now

You can take this as a metaphor, if you wish, for Whyte’s final push towards an elusive world title, with 20-year-old Itauma standing stubbornly in his way in Riyadh. Despite Whyte’s vast experience, and Itauma’s lack thereof, the 37-year-old is the betting underdog for the bout on 16 August. Whyte genuinely does not seem to care. “You guys are the experts, the professionals,” he says repeatedly, tongue pressed firmly against the inside of his cheek.

“Today, he’s the next Mike Tyson, he’s amazing, they’re talking about him fighting [Oleksandr] Usyk. If I go in there and blow Moses out in one round, what are people gonna say? He’s not good anymore? That’s what the media will say. ‘Moses Itauma was overhyped.’ No, that doesn’t mean that; it just means he fought a good fighter and got caught. He hasn’t been tested, hasn’t been hurt, everything’s going great in his career. He’s got that blissful ignorance. But [my] experience doesn’t really matter unless I make it matter.”

When Whyte discusses experience, you get the feeling he’s not just talking about in-ring nous. In his own words from July: “I’m a born sufferer, and I’ve been a lifetime sufferer.”

“Like I said, I was born in a hurricane,” he tells The Independent. “My dad’s from mixed heritage, Irish and Jamaican; back then, those were probably two of the worst races to be, volatile. My dad only knew one way of raising kids: the hard way. ‘You ain’t dead, so why are you complaining?’ My mum left when I was a kid, went to England to build a better life for us.

“Sometimes I was left with no one to take care of me. I was out on the street, surviving – stealing and robbing to get by. Not robbing people, just robbing food, eating food from trash cans. Working as a kid, I remember selling the glass Fanta bottles. I’ve just been suffering. My whole life has kind of been like that.

“I never thought I’d be a heavyweight boxer, a heavyweight champion. I got in trouble, started doing a little bit of training to stay out of trouble. It fell in my lap, it saved my life. Then things [were] getting good, getting bad, getting good, getting bad. I was like: ‘F*** me. Damn, man. I just want a f*****g break. I’m trying to do things the right way.’

“I just feel like I’ve been swimming against the wave forever. Some people have it a lot easier, but there’s people that have it 10 times worse than me. I was meant to be dead or in prison when I was in my 20s, but I overcame that, raised a family myself, I’m teaching my kids stuff. There’s more negatives in my whole life journey than positives, but I just try to focus on the positives.”

At one point, Whyte is wound up the wrong way, when talk veers towards his failed drug test before a cancelled rematch with Anthony Joshua in 2023. Whyte was cleared, just as he was after a failed test in 2019, although he did serve a drug-related ban earlier in his career. “Can we move on? It’s a bit of a dumb question, but thank you for your time…” he tells one reporter. “This guy’s kind of p***ed me off, I’m a little bit irritated.”

Clearly, it is a topic Whyte wants to avoid, and talk soon turns to Derek Chisora “avoiding” a fight against Itauma. Whyte draws parallels between himself and the British veteran, whom he beat twice, but points to a difference. While he and Chisora, who recently admitted to opting against a bout with Itauma, have taken on many undesirable challenges throughout their careers, only Whyte has stuck by that approach until the end, he claims. He goes as far as to call Chisora, 41, a “coward”.

Then again, Whyte himself does not care to be judged by others. “You can do everything great, donate to charity, save puppies from rescue centres, help old ladies cross the street and get things from the top shelf at Tesco, and someone’s gonna have an opinion on you,” he says, “because you have a different opinion to them.”

Right now, most opinions suggest Whyte faces a hard, hard night on 16 August. He does not care: “I’m a proper dog expert, so whether I’m an underdog, top dog, bottom dog, front dog, side dog… as long as there’s a dog involved, I’m all in.”

Whyte vs Itauma will air live exclusively on DAZN pay-per-view, at a cost of £19.99, on 16 August. A subscription to DAZN is available here.

Boxing on Yahoo! Sports – News, Scores, Standings, Rumors, Fantasy Games