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Dalton Smith has made numerous sacrifices since becoming a boxer.<\/b><\/p>\n
They include nights out with friends, holidays abroad and forgoing all the other indulgences young men in his home city of Sheffield regard as rites of passage in their transition from youth to adulthood.<\/p>\n
But arguably the greatest concession of them all has been deeply personal. So deep in fact that, before Saturday’s pivotal bout against Mathieu Germain, the 27-year-old reveals it involves his own sense of self and bond with his father and trainer, Grant.<\/p>\n
“Boxing is a sport that completely takes over your identity. I’ve been doing it since I was six and I’m labelled as a fighter,” Smith says.<\/p>\n
“Every fighter will only be able to tell you who they really are when their career is over.<\/p>\n
“I’m talking about the person, not the fighter.<\/p>\n
“You can’t really know who you are as a person, what you’re all about, until you give it all up and decide to do something else.<\/p>\n
“Right now, all I know about me is what I’m like as a fighter. And to be honest, that’s the only thing I need to know at this stage of my life.”<\/p>\n
Smith, who has already claimed the British, Commonwealth and European crowns, faces the visitor from Canada at the Canon Medical Arena in Sheffield this weekend.<\/p>\n
The venue is located only a short walk away from the gym where, under the watchful eye of Grant, Smith has chosen to give up another aspect of his life in order to pursue greatness.<\/p>\n
“I won’t have my dad as just my dad until the day I retire,” he admits. “We can’t have the kind of relationship we’d love to have until I stop fighting.<\/p>\n
“We can’t view ourselves as father and son. We have to see ourselves as boxer and coach because I’m a fighter, I’m a warrior, and I have to prepare to go to war. We can’t have the attachments we’d like to have until I stop.<\/p>\n
“It’s not easy. It’s far from easy in fact, but I wouldn’t have it any other way because being a fighter has given me the kind of opportunities that I’d never have been able to have in another career.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n