Brian Norman Jr. was a carefree 7-year-old when he first pestered his dad about trying boxing.

Brian Norman Sr. was a single father, raising four kids by himself, still trying to make something of his own boxing career. His oldest child, DeAndre, was an amateur boxer, but Brian Jr. was his “baby” and Brian Sr. was determined to avoid the same mistakes he’d made with DeAndre if Brian Jr. was going to take this dangerous sport seriously.

“When I asked the question about boxing,” Brian Jr. told The Ring, “he said, ‘Are you sure?’ Because you see a lotta people walking out with brain damage and things of that nature, so that was his biggest worry. He didn’t shy me away from it. He said, ‘OK, you’re gonna do it, we gonna make sure you master defense first.’

“So, he made sure I had feet and I had defense. That was the main thing. Then, after that, it was, ‘OK, let’s go out here and do some damage.’ Then we started working on offense.”

Seventeen years later, Brian Jr. has done plenty of damage.

The unbeaten WBO welterweight champion produced one of the sport’s most spectacular knockouts of 2025 in his last fight. His left hook knocked Japan’s Jin Sasaki unconscious in the fifth round June 19 at Ota City General Gymnasium in Tokyo.

That vicious victory propelled Norman into the biggest fight of his career Saturday night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Norman (28-0, 22 KOs, 1 NC) is set to make the third defense of his 147-pound crown versus former undisputed lightweight champ Devin Haney (32-0, 15 KOs, 1 NC) in the DAZN Pay-Per-View co-feature of “The Ring IV: Night of the Champions” card at ANB Arena.

The Normans are one of four father/son training teams scheduled to compete on this stacked card. They’ll compete against another one, Bill and Devin Haney, but they’re the only pair guided by a father who fought professionally.

The Normans agree that they’ve ascended to this prosperous position in large part because Brian Sr. experienced everything wrong with this brutal business as a “B-side” fighter from 2003-11.

Brian Sr., a native of Decatur, Georgia, had four kids by the time he was 21 and was their sole caregiver at 26, after he and his wife, Tricia Jackson, separated. The super middleweight/light heavyweight worked full-time at AT&T and had a lot of responsibility at home. He crammed training into an extremely busy schedule, took fights on short notice and sometimes fought undefeated favorites on their promoters’ cards.

His biggest opportunity came in December 2007, when Brian Sr. lost a 10-round unanimous decision to eventual light heavyweight champ Jean Pascal at Bell Centre in Montreal. Quebec’s Pascal was 19-0 at the time they fought for three regional super middleweight titles.

What was later diagnosed as vertigo caused him to retire following a sixth-round, technical-knockout defeat to then-undefeated Dominic Wade in January 2011.

Brian Sr. returned for a grudge match against Greg Hackett nine months ago. The 46-year-old Norman (18-11, 5 KOs) was reminded during that six-round unanimous points win over an opponent who entered the ring with a 3-23-1 record that he should let his son do the fighting these days.

“Me putting my all into it and not getting out of it what I wanted was very discouraging for me,” Brian Sr. said. “But clearly, it wasn’t meant for me because what happened to me was not what I would say normal. I caught vertigo at an early age and I just physically couldn’t do it no more. So, for the style of fighting that I had, I couldn’t do my style of fighting.

“And I ain’t nobody’s punching bag, so I ain’t fittin’ to go in there to get beat up. I don’t care about the money. I can make my own money. So, it came full circle and the things I learned from that, and even after that, they came together with what Brian Norman Jr. is today and what made him so good.”

Brian Sr. focused on his auto repair shop and towing and trucking businesses after he stopped boxing. He kept training Brian Jr. after DeAndre, who was more naturally talented than his younger brother, walked away from the sport late in his teens without turning pro.

Brian Jr., who will turn 25 on Sunday, had over 150 amateur fights, at least 135 more than his father. The Conyers, Georgia resident made his pro debut when he was 17, but the Normans were careful, based on Brian Sr.’s struggles, in choosing business partners.

They finally felt comfortable with Jolene Mizzone and Adrian Clark, the respective president and CEO of Fighters First Management. The company was founded by David Basha, who owns numerous car dealerships in Georgia and Alabama.

Mizzone and Clark helped secure Norman’s promotional deal with Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc. late in 2022. He signed a contract extension with Top Rank over the summer, after agreeing to face Haney as part of a pay-per-view show scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. GMT in the UK (£24.99) and 3 p.m. ET in the United States ($59.99).

“He’s not just a dumb dad, if you get what I mean by that,” Brian Jr. said. “He’s about hard work, but he also about smart work. And that’s on his end. On my end, it’s about not letting the outside get to me, as in, ‘You need to leave your pops, man. There’s better coaches out there. You can do this, you can do that. This guy could help you get here. This guy could help you get there.’ It’s like, ‘Nah, this guy helped me get here. He will help me get there as well.’ Also, we know dads are protectors. They know what’s going on. We may not know, but they’ve been here before, so they know about situations.

“So, he already warned me about these things, about people trying to come in and take us away from each other. And they don’t necessarily like him because of that. They don’t like the fact that I’m smart. They don’t like the fact that I don’t bite my tongue. They want me to just get away from him because he teaches me too much. ‘Get away from him. Come over here and let me just rob you. Let me give you this bad contract,’ and things of that nature. But he is preventing that, so of course they’re gonna try and take him away.”

Brian Jr. maintains a relationship with his mom, who resides in Alaska and attends his fights when she can in the United States. He and his father are “cool” with her, but Brian Jr. is thankful that his driven, “alpha” father hardened him into the man he has become.

Their relationship in and out of the gym is based on mutual respect. Brian Sr. constantly reminded his son that completely committing to boxing would require his full focus, something he never gave the sport because DeAndre was born when Brian Sr. was just 15.

“He did it by himself,” Brian Jr. proudly said. “Imagine that – he did everything by himself. He overcame being a single father, four kids, everything. And still, till this day, we always talking about how far we done came.”

Nagging hand injuries corrected by surgeries and subpar performances against Jesus Antonio Perez Campos, Quinton Randall and Janelson Bocachica temporarily prevented Norman from becoming the type of fighter he displayed earlier in his career and during a spirited sparring session with undefeated five-division champ Terence Crawford that quickly became folklore within the boxing industry.

Beating Haney would transform Norman into a star. Haney will make his debut as a full-fledged welterweight, but the Oakland native is the most accomplished, skillful opponent of Norman’s seven-year pro career.

Now that another arduous training camp is behind them, Brian Sr. looks forward to his son showing different dimensions to his game against an elite-level challenger. Win, lose or draw, Brian Sr. has found fulfillment in how they’ve evolved together, both as father and son and trainer and fighter.

“I raised four kids by myself, but this was my baby,” Brian Sr. said. “I got one more after him, [a daughter, Brilynn] 13 years later, but Brian Norman Jr. was my baby. And everybody knows how we are about the baby. Everybody in the family knows how you are about the baby. I kept my baby close to me. I learned from the mistakes I made with my first son. I learned from the mistakes I made with my first three kids. I came back and I tried to fix it with my baby. It worked out.”