The majority of people’s most formative memories are of their early school days, learning to ride a bike or some other run-of-the-mill childhood experience.
Alex Arthur Jr’s could not be more different.
His earliest memory is of stepping into the boxing ring to celebrate his dad winning the WBO super featherweight world title in 2007.
It is, perhaps, no surprise that’s the moment that stuck in Arthur’s mind.
“I was just a five-year-old kid,” says Arthur of that night.
“My dad was fighting Koba Gogoladze in Cardiff for the world title and after he won it, I went into the ring with him.
“I can still remember that night now, it was pretty amazing.”
As a child, despite his dad’s success, Arthur had zero interest in boxing.
Indeed, growing up, it was his youngest brother, Machlan, who developed an obsession with the sport and was touted as the Arthur who would follow in his father’s footsteps.
Not a soul, Arthur Sr included, thought Arthur Jr had any inclination to don boxing gloves and step into the ring.
This seeming absence of a fighter’s mindset was apparent in another of Arthur’s early memories - and was one of the many reasons it was presumed that boxing would never be the career path he’d embark upon.
“I remember being at home one day and my dad took my two younger brothers and me, plus a pair of boxing gloves, out into the garden,” the 23-year-old from Edinburgh recalls.
“I was the oldest so I had to go first. I put the gloves on, stood there and my dad punched me. I didn't punch him back - I just ran away crying. Then he put the gloves on my middle brother, Liston. He punched Liston, and Liston ran away crying.
“Then he put the gloves on Machlan, punched him and Machlan was the only one of us who punched him back.
“Back then, I didn’t have the courage to hit back.”
Growing up, football was Arthur’s sport.
And it was a fleeting comment from his football coach at Spartans FC that would end up changing Arthur’s life.
“My football coach said I needed to lose a bit of weight if I wanted to keep playing at the level I was,” Arthur says.
“My dad suggested I come down to the boxing gym to do a bit of training - there was no suggestion of competing or anything, it was just to get fit.”
No one, especially not Arthur himself, expected his sessions in the boxing gym to lead to anything other than the loss of a few kilos.
Quickly, though, it became apparent that he had an undiscovered talent.
“After about two or three weeks of being in the gym, I started sparring with the guys there - they were good fighters. And I realised I was way better at boxing than I was at football. I'd only been doing it for about three weeks and I remember my dad saying to me, that I could be so good. And I thought, yeah, he's right,” Arthur says.
“I went back to football training and told the coach I wasn't coming back.”
Arthur’s first competitive fight was at the Scottish National Championships and even after a narrow first round defeat, he’d caught the bug.
A successful amateur career began to unfold, with Arthur winning the 2024 Scottish title.
He began, though, to feel stale in the amateur ranks and so, despite having had less than three dozen fights, decided to take the leap into the professional ranks.
Arthur is, he acknowledges, something of a novice compared to his peers - although the advantage of this is his body has taken a fraction of the beating many other young pros have - but this has done little to dent his confidence ahead of his professional debut, which is now just eight weeks away.
On May the 24th, on the undercard of the Josh Taylor-Ekow Essuman fight at Glasgow’s Hydro, Arthur will make his professional debut.
It will be quite a moment for both Arthur and his father, who will be in his corner.
Arthur Sr has coached his son from day one and has guided him, almost flawlessly, to this point in his career.
Being coached by one’s parent doesn’t always make for the easiest partnership but the pair appear to be navigating this potentially rocky road astonishingly smoothly.
As anyone who knows Arthur Sr can attest, the former Commonwealth Games gold medallist and WBO world champion is quite the character making for, Arthur Jr admits, an unpredictable life. The positives of the relationship, though, are numerous, with Arthur Sr never having forced the sport that made his name upon any of his children, and particularly not his eldest.
“My dad’s really not pushy - it was me who came to the realisation that this is what I wanted to do,” he says.
"Being coached by my dad is quite something, though. It's eventful, that's for sure .
“I turn up to training not knowing what to expect - sometimes he's absolutely delightful and then sometimes he's there in the gym like Rocky Balboa's coach, Mickey Goldmill. So that keeps me on my toes.
“My dad was the first person I ever sparred with and he decked me in that first sparring session. He was saying, are you sure you want to keep going with this? But I got back up and we continued sparring. And I think that's when he thought, okay, maybe he is ballsy.
"We have a good separation between the father-son relationship and the coaching relationship.
“When we're in the gym together and talking about boxing, it's very much coach and athlete. And I listen to everything he says, I would never talk back to him in the gym.
“I take in everything he says because I know for certain he's always got my best interests at heart - whatever he tells me to do, I know there's a reason behind it.”
Given Arthur grew up as his father was nearing retirement - Arthur Sr fought for the final time in 2012 - he was exposed to the downsides of life as a boxer.
His memories of the final years of his father’s career have ensured he’s in little doubt as to what he’s letting himself in for as a fighter but even this has failed to deter him from taking this path.
“I have memories of the last few fights of my dad’s career,” he says.
“There's a few bad experiences I can remember with him making weight. Sometimes he’d send my mum, me and my brothers away on holiday for his last few weeks of training camps before a fight because he was struggling so much to make weight and it was best for us not to be there to see it.
“But the vast majority of my memories of him fighting are positive.”
Arthur’s immediate focus is on making a winning start to his professional career in May but already he has aspirations of following in his father’s footsteps by contending for the very highest boxing honours.
“If all goes to plan in this first fight and there's no injuries, I'd like to be back out fighting again around July-time because I want to keep the ball rolling,” he says.
“In my first few years as a pro, I've got a wee bit of making up to do having not had so many amateur fights so it'll be good for me to fight regularly and experience different styles.
“Ultimately, the dream is to be fighting for world titles. The more involved I get in this sport, the more that's what I want to do.
“What's so great about having my dad in my corner and as my coach is the blueprint's there of how to get to the very top.
“When I started boxing, I didn't think I was ever going to win a senior Scottish title, never mind anything else. But look where I am already.
“So who's to say I can't make it as a pro?”
