SOCIAL SKILLS
I didn’t really clock it. I thought it was the waiter.” Whittaker laughs sheepishly at the absurdity of the situation. A Brazilian soccer star in the stadium where he is adored, essentially fanboying a local boxer who has no idea who he is. But Cunha had also been talking excitedly about the crucial third actor in this meeting of sporting worlds – Brazil boxing icon and former two-weight world titleholder Acelino “Popo” Freitas. During the Graidia fight, Whittaker was admonished on several occasions by referee Sean McAvoy for his signature elaborate showboating. Quicksilver defensive skills were also on display, and an expected marking-time fight against a veteran French journeyman was suddenly a viral sensation. Among those to see Whittaker online and share approvingly was Freitas, who is still beloved by the boxing community in his homeland. Whittaker is now aware of this, having established that Cunha is a fellow elite athlete and not a man hoping for a generous tip. “I found out that ‘Popo’ is one of the biggest Brazilian legends out there, and for him to post me and talk about me, it really raised my profile. I don’t know if it’s skin color or hair or texture, but for some reason a lot of the fans thought I was Brazilian, so that helped as well.” It paints a curious picture of how a modern sports star breaking into the public consciousness can look in the fragmented media landscape of 2026. The days of a boxer stopping traffic in Times Square might be gone for good, but a 28-year-old Englishman who has never fought in Brazil or competed against a Brazilian professionally now has a very solid online following in the sports-mad South American nation because a cult-hero from a couple of decades ago liked what he saw. Whittaker has also captured attention in Japan and the United States, where he fights for the first time as a pro in March. The former can be partly attributed to his Tokyo silver
with social and digital impressions on par with the Chris Eubank Jr. (969,000 Instagram followers) vs. Conor Benn (2.3 million Instagram followers) rematch. “It’s out of my hands, to be fair. I’m just being myself,” Whittaker says. “Even in that fight when I was on the ropes, doing this and that, spinning around, I didn’t think, ‘Oh, you know, I’m gonna get some likes and follows.’ It was just me expressing myself, and I think the fans get that it’s authentic. I’m not trying to force it.” All of this might make old-school hardcore fans shudder. All the flashy stuff is fine, but where are the accomplishments to back up the Olympic medal? Referring back to the post- mainstream media age Hearn describes, fleeting attention is the most common currency. Those dealing in it might already have dismissed Whittaker as a style-over-substance pretender. Hearn speaks of the unbelievably driven, kind- hearted man of faith who he wants to bring to a wider audience over the coming months and years. And the fighter’s flair under the spotlight should not obscure a man deeply immersed in a sport that gave him a purpose as a child. “I went to a school where a lot of the kids get kicked out and stuff. I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I felt embarrassed because it was classed as a disability and I didn’t want to be classed like that,” he says. “But I said to myself, ‘Look, do not be embarrassed.’ For me, [ADHD is] like a superpower. “For some reason, in the school classroom, I couldn’t switch on. I was all over the place – here, there and everywhere. But if you can find something that you go into, your mind will just switch. Boxing was like my classroom. It’s where I really focused. It’s where I really switched on and turned on. It’s my driving force. I think I’m a person who gives 100% or nothing. There’s no in-between, and luckily it’s boxing that I put it all into.” It’s not a trait to package up for
Whittaker stopped Liam Cameron in the second round of their rematch.
medal, but mostly to Whittaker being immersed in the world of anime and posting about this on his socials. Eleven fights into a career in the paid ranks where the levels of achievement do not yet come close to his considerable pedigree, Whittaker is a lot of things to a lot of different people and fan bases. But one word comes up repeatedly: superstar. “Because the broadcast structure and system has changed, the mainstream doesn’t really exist anymore,” says Eddie Hearn, who signed Whittaker to Matchroom Boxing in 2025, having come so close to snaring the blue-ribbon amateur in 2022 that a
and digital presence,” Hearn continues. “The traditional mainstream is not necessarily your first choice of the market to hit. I want the digital mainstream and I want that age group. “My daughter is 16. When I signed Ben Whittaker, she came up to me and she went, ‘Oh my God, you’ve signed Ben Whittaker.’ She’d never mentioned him before. ‘Oh, he’s sick’... that’s the word she used. Because she’d seen the clips. “If you look at his socials, it’s completely different to anything you will see from any other fighter. Who produces content like that? And I’m not talking about in the ring. It could
be stills. It could be promos. It could be anime. He’s just developed this wonderful niche within the sport, and I’m so excited about the future. We haven’t even had a real fight yet.” Whittaker had 3.7 million followers on Instagram in January 2026, a little more than Oleksandr Usyk and almost a million ahead of Terence Crawford. In the U.K., he’s behind only Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury. The reel of his showboating performance against Graidia has 3.1 million likes. When Whittaker dished out a brutal first- round KO against the overmatched Benjamin Gavazi on his Matchroom debut, Hearn reported “huge” numbers,
Matchroom promotional video had already been filmed when the fighter signed to Ben Shalom’s Boxxer. Although it might return, Sky Sports and its huge platform of linear television pulled out of boxing last year, but the riches on offer at the time were vast. “The money was mad,” recalls Hearn. “Even I looked at the offer and went, ‘I actually don’t know how you turn that down.’ “What exists now is really virality
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