Whether it was watching Heaney or his own father, hard graft is a valuable skill Litherland has learned along the way.<\/p>\n
A world away from the tens of millions of pounds Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua expect to make if their fight goes ahead in December, small hall fighters have to cover a lot of their own costs and even sell tickets.<\/p>\n
“I probably walked away with no money,” Litherland said of his most recent fight against experienced Honduran Jayro Fernando Duran in July.<\/p>\n
“But I don’t care about the money at the moment, I just want to get my name out there.”<\/p>\n
What made it even tougher was losing his grandmother in the run up to the fight.<\/p>\n
“On Tuesday we were burying my nan, and on Saturday I was fighting,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I was very close to my nan. She went to all my [amateur] fights. Ones she didn’t go to, she would phone me straight afterwards.”<\/p>\n
He said during the fight he kept his emotions in check, but it all poured out after the win when he went over to his fans.<\/p>\n
The music for his ring walk even turned into a tribute to his grandmother, even if it was an accidental one.<\/p>\n
Having already chosen Freed from Desire by Gala Rizzatto, a friend found video of her singing along to the tune at his sister’s wedding.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got to stick with it now, haven’t I,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whether it was watching Heaney or his own father, hard graft is a valuable skill Litherland has learned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-786144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786144","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=786144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}