“I had a bit of a difficult childhood,” is how Briton Ishmael Davis describes how the difficulties he faced as a child and teenager led him to boxing.
The boxer, whowill face Sam Gilley for the British and Commonwealth super welterweight titles, told BBC Sport that he had his first contact with boxing at the age of 12, when he first entered a gym and months later participated in an unlicensed amateur fight.
But he could not maintain that relationship with the sport because at the age of 14 he was expelled from school and shortly afterwards became the father of twins. “At that age I was living with the mother of my first children, then I moved to a hostel until I was 15 and then I got my own flat.”
However, he ended up breaking the law because he had no options to make money. “Because I had children young, I started selling drugs,” he says, so he ended up in jail when he was 18 or 19 years old to serve 11 and a half months in prison.
Role models are very important for a teenager, and what you see, you imitate. I grew up seeing gangs, drugs, cars, clothes, alcohol and marijuana, so that’s what I imitated
“When one of his friends and his cousin were jailed for murder, the Briton thought ‘I don’t want that’, so I dedicated myself fully to boxing,” Davis recalls. “Role models are very important to a teenager, and what you see, you imitate. I grew up seeing gangs, drugs, cars, clothes, alcohol and marijuana, so that’s what I imitated.”
After being released from prison for the second time, Davis left Chapeltown to avoid falling back into old habits. He took refuge in boxing and made his professional debut in 2018. The Briton, who is now a father of six, is focused on the fight for the British and Commonwealth super welterweight title, as well as setting a good example and contributing to his community. “Now that I’m older, being a role model and being able to talk to people about a different way of life is something that’s very important to me and something I want to do,” he says.
Davis has fought on some major events in the past 14 months, including the preliminary cards of Daniel Dubois vs. Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk vs. Tyson Fury.
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