Daniel is a very introverted man. He’s not somebody who goes out boasting, and I know he’s taken some stick this week because of that quiet nature.
I am protective of him. I always try to talk to him before we go into any media event, prepare him.
He just doesn’t enjoy that part of the fight game. He’s really not into all the verbals.
Whoever you are, you look at how people behave and what their make-up is. That’s if you want to get the best out of them.
You have to be clever, not sly, in how you deal with it. Good interviewers do that. Daniel does all his talking in the ring.
I don’t think he’ll ever change. His dad is his mentor and that’s all he knows – he’ll look to his dad before answering the question and still usually does.
That family is a tight unit. Some boxers, as they get successful, go partying but he doesn’t do any of that stuff.
After he beat Anthony Joshua, he just wanted to go home.
I had to literally push him into the press room so the world could see him after that magnificent performance.
Our job as promoters is to find something you can bring out and get it to the public, so they want to be on this journey with this fighter.
Sometimes it’s difficult. With Prince Naseem Hamed, for example, it was easy. When I first met Naz, I knew exactly what I was going to do with him and how we were going to promote him.
So some guys are easily promotable, others it can be hard work, but that’s the business we’re in.
But Daniel has come out of his skin a bit lately. The funniest thing for me was when he did the head-to-head with Filip Hrgovic a few fights ago.
Hrgovic said Daniel had no heart, and Daniel just said he was going to knock him out – using an expletive I wouldn’t like to repeat.
I had never heard Daniel even swear before!
Everybody there was like: ‘What is that?’ It was like getting the vicar to swear. He found a voice from within himself.
