Delicious Orie: Against all odds 

After winning Super Heavyweight gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Delicious Orie is being touted as the next big thing in British boxing.

The 6-foot-6 man-mountain is aiming to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, before turning professional and following the same path as his first hero in the sport, London 2012 Olympic gold medallist Anthony Joshua.

“I want to go as far as I can in the amateurs, which means completing the Olympic Games, winning a medal and accumulating rounds against all the best boxers in the world,” Orie, 25, told Olympics.com in the run up to Birmingham 2022.

“After turning professional I’ll take them on again over the longer rounds of pro boxing and I know by that time I will be ready to go all the way at the world title level.

“I'm playing the long game; this is investment economics. The experience will accumulate and the interest will be paid back over the next few years.”

If Orie doesn’t sound like your average heavyweight boxer, it’s because he isn’t.

The Wolverhampton-based fighter is humble, quick on his feet, and has a first-class university degree in Economics and Management.

But while his rise in boxing has been meteoric, his achievements are the result of constantly overcoming barriers since the age of eight.

Delicious Orie's upbringing in Russia

Born to a Nigerian father and Russian mother, Orie was initially brought up in Moscow.

His father struggled to fit in and subsequently found employment opportunities hard to come by.

It’s a time in the boxer’s life that he still remembers well.

“I grew up in a very loving family. All my mom's side live in Russia and I was just a Russian lad,” he continued.

“The biggest thing I remember is being quite different physically. I embraced the culture but I was different from other kids in terms of my skin colour, my hair, little things like that.

“Dad wanted a better life for me and my siblings and looked for a way out.”

Orie’s father decided to move their family to Wolverhampton, near Birmingham, in England - which would fittingly become the scene of his son’s Commonwealth Games triumph 17 years later.

Upon arriving in the Midlands, Orie Junior couldn’t speak a word of English. It was the start of what was to be a difficult journey.

“Ever since I was eight-years-old, life has been like an uphill battle,” he revealed.

“It started off with the language barrier. I had to learn English from scratch at the age of eight. I remember thinking how difficult it was to make new friends in a completely different culture that I had to now embrace.”

But sport, initially basketball, helped Orie to integrate to his new surroundings and he soon began to master the language.

However, just when life had started to settle down, the next set back reared its head.

Orie’s aim was to get a basketball scholarship for college in the United States, but his complicated citizenship status proved a hurdle.

And without a British passport, his American dream drifted away.

He needed a new plan. After watching Joshua - who also has Nigerian roots - in action on TV in 2016, Orie became inspired to try boxing, and quickly fell in love with the sport.

Orie: Training with Anthony Joshua and Olympic medallists

The young pugilist quickly rose through the British ranks and enrolled at Aston University, where he achieved a first-class degree despite his intensive training commitments.

During this period, Orie got the chance to spar with then world champion Joshua, as well as other British stars like Rio 2016 silver medallist Joe Joyce and Frazer Clarke, who won bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

And it was at university where he met the lawyers who ultimately would work with Team GB and the Home Office to get the papers he needed.

That hard work, and discipline when avoiding the temptations of student life, paid off when Orie’s British passport finally arrived in 2021. A year later, he won bronze for England at the 2022 European Championships.

That achievement secured his place at the Commonwealth Games, where he went on to take out his first major gold medal in front of a raucous home crowd at Birmingham’s NEC Arena.

When Orie reflects, the trials and tribulations that Orie had to overcome en route to the top were undoubtedly a vital component of his success.

“It's not unusual for me to come past these things and face these things, which I've been doing for all my years as an early teenager and young adult,” he said.

But while Orie is keen to inspire others to overcome their obstacles, he is also steadfast in his message that good boxers don’t have to come from difficult backgrounds.

“I want to change the stigma that all boxers need to release this anger, because for me, it’s all about individuality,” he said.

“Everybody can bang, everybody can get a good shot on them, but not many of them have the ring craft and the IQ. That's why I want to differentiate myself.

“As a kid, I always steered away from commotion and fights and stuff like that. You don't have to be this guy off the street in order to make it.”

Concern for family in Russia and Ukraine

In recent times, there has been another hurdle that Orie has had to overcome outside of the ring.

With many family members living in Russia and Ukraine, the conflict in that region has never been far from his thoughts.

“All of my mum's family live in Russia, and I've actually got family that lives in Ukraine as well,” he said.

“So it's literally a torn family. My mum's always told me that Russia and Ukraine are like this (crosses fingers)."

The conflict in Ukraine and the global shut down during the pandemic taught Orie to savour every moment of his boxing career.

Not only that, but he wants to use the sport to inspire others, and provide joy in their lives.

_"_When I go in into the ring it's about being the best version of myself.

"The feeling of walking into the ring is difficult to put into words, but given everything that's happened, I make sure to live in the moment.

"It's about working as hard as I can, bringing people together, and celebrating the sport of boxing."