Asif, 42, and his family emigrated to Britain from the mountainous Kahuta region of Rawalpindi, the same area former world champion Amir Khan, now retired, and unbeaten super-middleweight Hamzah Sheeraz’s families are from. “There must be something in the water,” Asif says.
With his grandfather toiling away in Sheffield steel factories, the first decade of Asif’s life was spent sharing a five-bedroom house with 24 members of his extended family.
“There were five or six of us in a room,” he recalls.
Searching for an identity, to feel a part of a group, Asif fell in love with football aged 14. Today, he holds a corporate box at Sheffield United – but in mid 1990s he attended matches at Bramall Lane without the approval of his father.
“My dad would say football is full of racists. He was a taxi driver and all he heard was the p-word, being told to go back home,” Asif says.
“He was one of the abiding generations who didn’t want any trouble, kept their head down and accepted it.”
Asif got involved with “the wrong type of people” on the terraces and was thrown out of college after a confrontation with a teacher.
But sport provided the defiant youth with an outlet. Asif spent his childhood playing cricket, featuring alongside future England skipper Joe Root for the renowned Sheffield Collegiate team.
Then in 2002 he discovered boxing and the 6ft 4in cruiserweight would go on to make his professional debut before retiring in 2012.
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