Dillian Whyte: 'I have been depressed, but I know how to be brave and how to fight – those are the things I’m good at'

For Dillian Whyte and his entourage, this week’s foray to the Arabian Peninsula has produced quite enough drama already. Dean Whyte, a member of the boxer’s South London crew, who postures as his brother but is understood simply to use the name as a pseudonym, helped to avert catastrophe on board a British Airways flight to Riyadh by restraining a passenger trying to wrench open an exit door at 35,000 feet.

While Dean grappled the man to the ground, Dillian leaves little doubt as to whether he would have shown the same self-control. “I was disappointed he didn’t hit the guy,” he says. “I would have just knocked him out, because that’s no joking matter. I probably would have hit him on the floor as well.”

Whyte’s inclusion on the undercard for Saturday night’s “Clash on the Dunes”, for a clash with Poland’s Mariusz Wach, has not come without controversy. He returned an adverse analytical finding from a drugs test ahead of his July bout against Óscar Rivas, but was still cleared to fight by the UK Anti-Doping Agency and the British Boxing Board of Control. The complication is that the World Boxing Council provisionally suspended Whyte as their mandatory challenger, leaving the boxer in limbo, and in such exasperation that he has contemplated quitting the sport.

“There were a few times when I thought, ‘Forget boxing, I’ve had enough,’” he reflects. “I was just going to run off into the night, because it has been so stressful. I’m a very strong person mentally and physically, but without my team, I would have walked away from boxing, without a doubt. You would not be interviewing me today.”

Whyte, 30, endured the types of extremes in his younger days that conditioned him against adversity. During his childhood in Jamaica, his father tried to toughen him up by pushing him out of a sailing boat and ordering him to find his way to shore, even though he could not swim. In his wilder days on the streets of Brixton, he was shot and removed the bullet from his leg with pliers.

“I have been drawing on my upbringing my whole life,” he says. “Boxing is a place of very dark, muddy, murky waters. One day you’re floating and the next day, you’re sinking. I’m not someone to talk about my emotions, but I have been down and depressed. At the same time, I have learned a lot of lessons from boxing. It has made me stronger as a person and given me a better life. In the end, I haven’t got any other choice. Two things I know are how to be brave and how to fight. Those are the two things I’m good at.”