Essex, who grew up in Chigwell, said he had always been interested in the sport and looked up to his uncle and his dad, a former boxer.<\/p>\n
“It was only a matter of time before I stepped into the ring,” he said.<\/p>\n
“With my TV work, there’s never been a gap where it’s fitted, but I feel ready and confident.”<\/p>\n
After Towie, Essex became a well-known face on the reality TV circuit, including sports and endurance-based shows Splash! (diving), The Jump (winter sports) \u2013 which he won \u2013 and Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins (quasi-military training).<\/p>\n
He also showed a more serious side by exploring his grief in a BBC Three documentary after his mum’s suicide.<\/p>\n
“With all these shows, I always put 100% in \u2013 I put myself through pain and discipline,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This [boxing] is just another level of grit and discipline.<\/p>\n
“A lot of people know me as being silly and joking around, [but in the gym] I like to keep it serious.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Essex, who grew up in Chigwell, said he had always been interested in the sport and looked up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-74868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}