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Dillian Whyte says he owes Anthony Joshua one -- and he is not just talking about having a rematch. Ahead of Saturday's clash with Lucas Browne (25-0, 22 KOs) at London's O2 Arena, Whyte is grateful for the IBF-WBA titleholder's influence on his career and admits fights against him in 2009 and 2015 were life-changing moments. Following his first professional defeat to Joshua in December 2015, Whyte is now following his rival's blueprint for success after adopting a scientific approach. "My whole career I've been training by myself," Whyte told ESPN. "I looked around after that fight and I realised my conditioning wasn't the greatest but I'm more scientific now and less of the caveman -- you have to be in this day and age. "I work with the strength and conditioning team at Loughborough University and they had a ridiculous amount of gold medals at the last Olympics. "Science and facts work and it shows what I was doing was wrong. When me and Joshua clashed he had all the science and backing behind him from the English Institute of Sport [in Sheffield]. "But I was doing it all by myself. When you are coming up against someone like that it does make a difference to have all this support. "I've been trying to assimilate what he has been doing in my own training. I've got a garage with bags and a ring in it for the boxing side of it. It works." Whyte has registered six wins since losing to Joshua, lifted the British title and beaten the likes of former WBC world title challenger Dereck Chisora and former European champion Robert Helenius. Whyte's revival has earned him No. 1 status in the WBC and No. 4 with the IBF and WBO governing bodies' rankings. 'The Body Snatcher' is hoping for a shot at either WBC champion Deontay Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) or the winner of Joshua (20-0, 20 KOs) unification bout against WBO champion Joseph Parker (24-0, 18 KOs), who fight at Cardiff's Principality Stadium on March 31. "The plan is for a world title fight this year and I've got to keep working towards it," Whyte told ESPN. "I'm a tough man with true grit and I refuse to give up and go away. I keep fighting back. "There's all sorts of talks with rematches and fighting for world titles but I'm just trying to focus on what's in front of me -- I'm trying to give Browne that credit he deserves. "I'm in the top ten with all the world governing bodies. All the fights are within reach for me. Deontay Wilder makes sense and that's the fight we will push for but the rematch with Joshua could come up as well as we and will look at that too." While Whyte's boxing future has the potential to be an exciting one if he beats Browne, he believes he would have ended in jail had it not been for the sport. He claims he was stabbed and shot in the leg in his youth. "I got into some major trouble at 15 and was about to throw my life away," said Whyte, who was born in Jamaica but brought up in south London from the age of 12. "I was one of those kids growing up that was written off and meant to be in prison by a certain age. I was getting into trouble for fighting and being a bad kid on the street. "I found kickboxing and MMA and that kept me occupied and when I got into boxing I became serious about it. It kept me out of trouble because I was too tired to do anything else."  When the time came for Whyte's first amateur boxing bout, it was an interesting one that is still being talked about. "Chris Okoh, who used to be a Commonwealth champion, trained me early on -- I was getting out-boxed all the time by amateurs," Whyte told ESPN. "I found it difficult at first. "Then they asked me if I wanted to box on a show above a pub in north London. They said there's a guy from Finchley ABC who's looking for an opponent. "They told me he's tall and big and everyone was raving about him. They had big plans for him but I didn't really care about that, I was a street kid and just wanted to fight. My coaches weren't sure about it for my first fight but I got annoyed about and I told them to give me the shot. "Eventually they made the fight against Anthony Joshua and at the time I didn't know who he was. He was just an opponent, a kid from north London, but my coach knew they had plans for him." Joshua, who was competing for the fourth time as an amateur, was floored during the bout that took place above a pub in Tufnell Park. Joshua recovered but Whyte won a three-round points decision. "We were both raw, there was not a lot of boxing in the fight from me -- it was crude, I was just brawling but I put him down and he will never forget that," Whyte told ESPN. When they met again as professionals in 2015, Joshua, who had since won gold at the 2012 Olympics, came out on top after surviving a second round crisis to flatten Whyte in the seventh round. It was a pivotal moment for both: Joshua was crowned world champion in his next fight and Whyte realised he needed to make changes to how he prepared for fights. "It's funny, fighting AJ was a turning point for me as an amateur and a professional because it made me realise what I needed to change and what I had to do," Whyte told ESPN. "And after he lost to me he realised what he had to do and got bigger and stronger and started doing really well in the amateurs, going on to the Olympics."
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