Viddal Riley had spent years learning how to fight. Then he taught a YouTuber, and that became the story.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the Londoner defends his European cruiserweight title against unbeaten Frenchman Seydi Coupe at Wembley Arena, with a world-title shot within reach.<\/p>\n
Yet it was his work with social media star KSI that first brought him mainstream attention, training the YouTuber for his fights against Joe Weller and Logan Paul.<\/p>\n
From a corner of boxing where popularity can secure a headline fight before a punch has been thrown, Riley, 29, arrived with credentials few of his new audience knew about.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t do all that hard work from such a young age to just be known as a trainer of a famous person,” he tells BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“I can’t push away something that’s part of my story. I just wanted to make sure that’s not the only thing I’m known as and I’ve managed to do that.”<\/p>\n
Riley, unbeaten in 14 professional fights, first entered a boxing gym aged six and was national champion at 11.<\/p>\n
He collected eight titles in the amateurs, representing Team GB and captaining England before meeting KSI at 19.<\/p>\n
English, British and European titles have followed as a professional. He thought beating Cheavon Clarke might win over the sceptics, but the influencer tag has proved hard to shift.<\/p>\n
“I’m pretty much giving up on trying to convince a purist of what I am,” he says. “If you can’t read facts and figures to convince yourself, then you’re in your own world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Viddal Riley had spent years learning how to fight. Then he taught a YouTuber, and that became the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":969071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-969070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/969071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}