YouTube star Deji's brother KSI made a secret phone call on the eve of his fourth boxing outing which pushed him towards his first win inside the ring.
The social media sensation went 0-3 in the YouTube boxing world, including suffering humiliating stoppages against Jake Paul and male model Vinnie Hacker, before landing his first victory this summer. As recently as this March, he hadn't clicked with a style or team, and had lost to Alex Wassabi by split decision, much to his brother's disappointment.
KSI, whose real name is JJ Olatunji, is the perennially successful older brother whose constant successes have made Deji's defeats seem all the more crushing. He didn't let his brother lose a fight without a scolding public post, and decided to take a softer approach heading into his third bout this summer against Yusef 'Fousey' Erakat on his undercard in London.
"There's a lot with the Fousey fight that I need to mention as well," Deji explained during an appearance on the True Geordie podcast ahead of his fight with Floyd Mayweather next month in Dubai. "Because before that fight as well JJ called me. He said one thing that just relaxed me throughout the whole day, he said 'you've got nothing to lose so just go in there and have fun'.
"That's all he said and I was like 'wow'. Literally he said that and I was like 'woah, alright cool' and literally throughout the whole fight week of the Fousey thing I was like 'alright, yeah I'm going to go through this guy'."
It was a stark contrast to how he felt in the lead-up to his bout with Wassabi back in March. Deji headlined Wembley Arena for the debut of Showstar Boxing in what was viewed as a make-or-break bout for his boxing career - which he lost on the judges' scorecards after an improved, but lacklustre, showing.
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At one point, Deji called his mother Yinka and declared that he couldn't fight, before deciding to go through with the bout after a lengthy phone call and prayer. He didn't get the victory that night, but under new trainer Daley Perales he had a new lease on life in his boxing career and insisted that he would return quickly.
"I called her and I literally said 'I can't do this'," he recalled. "I was just crying on the phone 'I can't do this' and she started crying back too because I was crying and then obviously she's religious so she started praying for me and while she was praying for me I was shadow boxing just to psyche myself up and cool myself down being like 'you can do this, come on Deji' and it did help.
"But then when it came to my ring walk for that fight, it was like that feeling where you can just cry? I got that feeling again and I was like 'woah, what am I doing here?' I was like 'I don't want to be here, literally'."
