Kubrat Pulev hopes to defeat Anthony Joshua this weekend in homage to his late father, who taught him to box when he was just a one year old.
Pulev’s father had plenty of boxing pedigree himself and was successful in his own right.
"You need to understand my father," Pulev told the Daily Mail.
"He was the Bulgarian heavyweight champion. And he was a boxing maniac – he loved boxing. A crazy love. He wanted boxing champions for children but his first child was a daughter. He then had two more daughters before he got a boy."
Pulev’s mother died when he was 10, and his father died in 2007 at the age of 80. He recalled the boxing lessons he got from him at an extremely young age.
"My first words with my father, it was about boxing," he said.
"I have a picture at home of me in gloves – they are up to my armpit. I think I was one year old. At four, another picture, the same.
"I remember saying to my father once, 'Father, me and my brother, we want to go and play with other children outside.' But it was, 'Nah, nah, nah, I just want to show you something,' and then we are hitting his hands in the basement. That was my life.
"My father talked always about boxing, about how me and my brother would be fighters. He said to us, 'You will be big champions and everyone will say this is Kubrat, this is Tervel,' and we were small children when he said these things. I thought maybe my father is crazy, does he believe this?
"We were just little children, absolutely normal family, not so much money, the same as everybody in a small country. He would say, 'You will have money, respect, people will know you.' When me and Tervel talk now, it is amazing how much has become fact."
The heavyweight veteran puts his mental resilience down to his earlier struggles, including his mother’s death.
"Losing our mother made us all stronger characters, hardened us mentally," Pulev explained. "You don’t choose it. But we grew up without being pampered, without being spoiled and without being over-satisfied. It does make you in a different way. As fighters, Tervel and me are people who realize the value of every second God gives us."
"I have been born for this," Pulev continued.
"My father died when he was 80, before I had this chance. But he will be watching and I will make him proud."