On a night that should have been purely celebratory for Ben Whittaker, the British light heavyweight stopped Benjamin Gavazi on Saturday in Birmingham, England, only to be met with disconcerting news upon walking through his front door.
Whittaker, 10-0-1 (7 KOs), arrived home from the bp pulse LIVE Arena only hours after his win to learn that he had been burglarized.
“Highs and lows of the sports,” Whittaker said in a video he posted to his Instagram account only hours after his first-round knockout of Germany’s Gavazi. “Come back, house has been burgled.”
In the video, Whittaker, 28, was calm, smiling and even punctuated a graphic that read “House robbed after the win” with a tearful laughing emoji. If he seemed relatively unfazed by the intrusion – almost bemused, in fact – perhaps it’s because he already had a plan.
“But, Wensbury, I got a big, big reward,” he said. “Find these people, let me know.”
Few additional details were provided, though Whittaker briefly turned the video camera toward what appeared to be a kitchen window with broken blinds that seemed to have been used to gain entry. Whittaker also indicated that his IBF light heavyweight international title belt had been taken in the incident. “What they gonna do with that?” he asked.
Whittaker didn’t offer any specifics about the proposed reward.
“Let me know,” he said. “Hit me up in the DMs. Big reward. Love.”
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.
