Kevin Mitchell reveals Anthony Joshua paid for his brother Vinny's funeral

Vinny Mitchell tragically passed away at the age of 31

On April 1st 2019, news broke late in the evening of Vinny Mitchell's tragic, untimely death after he was involved in a road traffic accident in Dagenham.

The boxing world descended into mourning for the popular professional boxer, with hundreds paying touching tributes for Vinny, the younger brother of world title contender Kevin Mitchell.

When discussing Anthony Joshua in a recent interview, Kevin revealed, "Let me tell you something, I've not really said this to anyone before, but he paid for my brother's funeral, Josh.

"He knew my brother, he knew me, and he knew my mum. He rung me up, we was in the chapel of rest, it was in Dagenham East, and he said 'Kevin, how are ya?', I said 'Joshua, you alright', he said ''you're a strong bastard aren't ya', I said 'you have to be Josh, it's life mate'. 

"And he was like 'is your mum there?', I said yeah and he said 'can I speak to her please?'. As we were all sitting around the table, through grieving bad happens, we're all about to kick off, so we're gonna bury my baby brother, how will we get money, we got all the mortgages to pay, no one's working, so the bills have still got to be paid.

"So we're all aggressive, we're all hot tempered, so your emotions are like that when I was stressed and under a lot of pressure, and he went [to my mum] 'Alice, do you mind if I get it?' We was like 'what do you mean?' and he said 'to pay for Vinny's funeral', and my mum didn't quite hear and he said 'I'm gonna pay for Vinny's funeral, Alice, if you don't mind', and he paid for it."

Anthony Joshua conquered the world at amateur and professional and next steps into the ring on July 25th against KO artist Kristian Prenga in Saudi Arabia.

Vinny won 12 from 13 fights as a pro after a stellar amateur career with West Ham ABC, where he won the ABAs. His sole career defeat was a rematch with John Baguley at Wembley Arena in February 2010. He recorded two knockouts in his 12 wins and won his last fight as a pro on points against Daniel Thorpe at Upton Park in 2015 on the undercard of brother Kevin's world title fight against Michael Katsidis.