DENZEL BENTLEY HAS REVEALED that he went through the torment of reading social media ‘comments’ following his loss to Felix Cash in April last year.
Battersea boy Bentley was brutally stripped of his prized British title at York Hall, the very venue that hosts the first defense of his second coming as British champion against Marcus Morrison this Friday, live on BT Sport.
In the first of a new series of special features as part of Unibet Lowdown, Dev Sahni presents ‘One-on-One’, which tells the life story of the charismatic middleweight.
The 27-year-old, who reclaimed his title in a convincing showdown with the previously undefeated Linus Udofia in May, tells us about his next challenge from Morrison, potential future matchups against fellow promotionals Hamzah Sheeraz and Nathan Heaney, as he recalls being dropped on Ghana by his parents at the age of eight. He also talks about growing up as a young black man in London, the feeling of being stereotyped and pulled over by the police since he was 11 years old.
“I feel like I’m a crazy, realistic guy and I know it was a bad loss,” Bentley reflected on his breakdown of Cash. “Two of my friends stopped by the scene and after I tried to fool them and look the other way, they asked me if I was okay and then said ‘don’t look at that man’.
“Little by little, the whole family started to slide up and I was literally trying to slide out. After that, one day I was laying in my bed and I posted something on Instagram. I was going through the comments and people were telling me that me out, go back to the fans and learn this and that.
“I was burnt out and wanted to respond, but I was like ‘no, I’ll be here all day.’ Going through that, some people were telling me I’d be back and some were rinsing me off completely. After going through Instagram I was like ‘ok great, let’s check Twitter’.
“I tapped on my behalf, I saw all the abuse, then I went through the fight and the abuse was crazy. It was crazy. I don’t know if it was upsetting, but it upset me.”
“I got to the last of about 300 comments and said ‘it’s done’, now there’s nothing going to drive my emotions either positive or negative.
“You could say that I have taken emotional strength from it and now, when I see things, I laugh.”
