It isn’t by accident that David Whitmire was given the nickname “The Body Snatcher.”

His trainer, former middleweight title challenger Andrew Council, took one look at the adolescent teen who was ripping his opponents to the midsection and immediately assigned him the ring name that was most famously carried by former three-division champion Mike McCallum. Council also assigned him some homework.

“Coming through the amateurs he started stopping people with body shots. I said I’m gonna give you this nickname ‘The Body Snatcher’ but you have to live up to this so I’m gonna give you some film of a guy named Mike McCallum, and you’re gonna learn from him,” said Council, who first put gloves on Whitmire when he was 12 years old. 

Now 20, Whitmire has been living up to that nickname as a professional. He brings his 9-0 (6 KOs) record to the ring on Saturday night when he faces the rugged Mexican brawler Roberto Gomez, 5-4 (5 KOs), at Maryland Live Casino in Hanover, Maryland. The six-round welterweight fight will be part of the latest installment of ProBox TV.

Whitmire, who hails from southeast Washington D.C., says his favorite body punch is what they call “the five,” or a left hook to the body, a punch that he says was best perfected by McCallum and Gerald McClellan.

Asked what drew him to being a body-first attacker in a sport that glamorizes head shots, Whitmire says it just felt right.

“It’s just when I used to be sparring or fighting, when things get rough, that’s just what I would automatically go to,” said Whitmire. “Of course they’re gonna teach you those punches but for you to go there and do that yourself, you gotta be willing to do stuff like that. I’d back people off of me. It made me stop people so I just stayed with it and kept doing it.”

As naturally as he’s taken to boxing, it wasn’t his first sport. Whitmire’s first love was basketball, playing on recreation and Amateur Athletic Union club teams around the D.C. area. His mother wanted David and his younger brother Dayvon to be able to defend themselves. She took her son to Council, whose fights she used to attend, and David fell in love with this new dynamic.

“Just the fact that it’s one on one, no team, no nothing. You got a team but they’re outside the ring. You can’t look at anybody to blame so that’s what really made me gravitate towards the sport,” said Whitmire, whose last fight, a shutout over the previously unbeaten Angel Munoz, was on the undercard of Gervonta Davis vs. Lamont Roach Jnr at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York last month. 

Whitmire estimates that he had an amateur record of 47-13, highlighted by a national title at the 2019 Eastern Elite Qualifier in Columbus, Ohio, but Whitmire found that his style didn’t fit for the amateurs, where the scoring priority often is placed on scoring points instead of hurting your opponent. Whitmire had his last amateur fight in December of 2022, stopping a boxer named Brent Foster. Within two months, he stopped Keith Foreman in two minutes in San Antonio to win his professional debut.

“The amateurs wasn’t benefiting me any more. Me and my coach, we had a long talk. My style, which is breaking people down, it wasn’t fitting the amateur criteria and sometimes that would make me lose fights because I’m working the body. Everybody else is throwing 1000 punches per round, light taps,” said Whitmire.

Council, who has also trained former unified junior middleweight champion Jarrett Hurd and junior middleweight prospect Travon Marshall, knew that Whitmire’s best days would come as a pro.

“He fights with his mind. He’s not a young man just out there throwing punches. So when I saw that I was like, this young man is ready to do something. But I also knew that, fighting with his mind, he was going to be a better pro than an amateur because the amateur system, you just gotta throw a lot of punches,” said Council, who also has featherweight prospect DWayne Holmes Jnr, 9-0 (5 KOs), on the card in a six-rounder against Dominique Griffin, 5-8-2 (2 KOs).

Against the 33-year-old Gomez, Whitmire is facing a fighter with losses in four of his last five bouts, though his record is deceptive. Gomez has never been stopped, with three of his losses coming by majority decision, while his last fight, a unanimous decision in January of 2024, was a unanimous decision loss to 2024 Olympic gold medalist Erislandy Alvarez. Gomez’s biggest win came in 2022, when he broke down and knocked out Quadir Albright in five rounds.

Whitmire isn’t taking the challenge lightly.

“He’s a tough, rugged fighter so I have to use my distance and reach to beat him. I know he’s gonna come forward throwing looping punches,” said Whitmire.

Whitmire knows all about tough. He has seen his parents, including a father who works in the HVAC field, and a mother who is a mental health technician at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus, wake up early in the morning for work each day to keep food on the table for their two children. Whitmire hopes that he can continue to be successful, and eventually give them a chance to sit back and enjoy life.

“Seeing them wake up at four or five o’clock in the morning, when it’s still dark outside, it’s rough to see. They’ve gotta work 8-12 hour shifts, all I gotta do is go to training. I don’t want them to keep working like that all their life, so if I can make it doing this, I’m definitely gonna keep pushing,” said Whitmire.