LONDON -- Mark Prince knows all about stabbings in London.
Prince carried a knife when he was a fool in the 1980s, when he felt threatened, when he needed to threaten. When he needed to stand tall on dark and stupid nights in Tottenham. His father kept a machete under the bed. Life was hard.
Years later, he fought for the light-heavyweight world title in Germany. Prince lost that night in 1998, but it was a miracle he was even in the boxing ring. It was Prince's only loss in 24 fights.
Prince had put down his knife before his baby boy was born, lost that wretched urban item, that notorious status symbol, lost it long before the boxing ring saved him. And boxing did save him, and having found it, he went on his seemingly impossible mission -- from crack pipe to fighter and from criminal to challenger and an inter-continental champion.
In 2006, Prince lost his son.
Kiyan Prince never carried a knife, never had the desire, never had the same fears, threats, weaknesses and hard life his father had. As teenagers, Mark lived nightmares and Kiyan had dreams. In May 2006, Kiyan, who was just 15 and signed as an aspiring footballer with Queens Park Rangers, was stabbed and killed outside his school. The boy that killed him was just 16, and the weapon was a Swiss Army knife, not an 18-inch hunting knife.
"My body froze when I heard he had been stabbed, every organ froze," Mark says now. "The only pleasure I had back then, during those days and weeks, was the pleasure of knowing I was going to kill the guy that did this to my son."
That is not the way it turned out. Instead of another murder, Prince went looking for change and another miracle: an end to senseless knife crime. He formed a charity, the Kiyan Prince Foundation (KPF).
"I soon realised that the hate was killing me," he added. "I wanted something more lasting."
He has been running the KPF for 12 years, mostly in isolation and, until recently, with very little financial or professional support. He told me he has spoken to 84,000 people in schools, excluded units and prisons.
"It has not been easy to get here and get out there and talk -- it's been a slow road to recognition," Prince said.
"It has been a slow road to getting people to even listen to ways to end the violence. When I sit with these kids, they don't want to hear about knife crime; they want to hear about their potential, about being inspired. They are hurting and lost and don't need to be reminded of what they know."
He has to pause as he speaks, a giant silence as he composes himself and gazes off for a second before continuing.
The momentum is finally there now: He received an OBE (Order of the British Empire) last Tuesday for his work spreading the word about the savagery of knife crime and the heartbreak left behind. On Tuesday night, he held a reception at the Old Bailey, directly outside the court in which his son's killer was sentenced.
"The great manufacturer has a sense of humour. Who would have thought 12 years ago I would be back here celebrating?" said Prince. It was a solitary joke, the audience of 200 mostly silent as he talked.
"He's an inspiration," Harry Redknapp, one of the congregation on Tuesday and a former Queens Park Rangers manager, told me.
There have been times during the years since the murder when Prince was on his one-man mission and had to sleep in a boxing gym, other times when he begged a sofa. A return to the ring at 44 was blocked by the British Boxing Board of Control.
"We needed that money from the fights to keep the foundation going; that was the only reason I was trying to fight again," Prince said.
It has been hard, often crisis to crisis, since he got the news his son had been stabbed.
The transition from grieving father to inspirational talker and an OBE recipient has been accomplished against the odds. There is nothing slick; there has never ever been anything slick about Mark Prince. You get what you see and hear -- a father fighting for change and desperate for your ears. He is still a broken man, a father slowly putting himself back together one day at a time as he spreads his urgent word. His book, published last year, was called "The Prince of Peace," and it is raw like the fighter. Prince does not believe in makeovers.
"When I first met with a group, I had nothing prepared. I was scared. My son was in the ground, and I knew I had to face all of the fears and talk to these young people," Prince recollects.
"I knew what I believed in -- I had lost my son -- I had so much to say, and I just let it all come out. I just opened up and reached out for the hearts of the young people. At the end, parents came up in tears, kids hugged me and I thought: There is something here. That was a long, long time ago," he added.
It was a long time ago, but Prince believes that his work is just starting; there certainly is no shortage of young people in need of his message. And too many who have missed it. U.K. Home office statistics show that the number of knife-related homicides in England and Wales was a record 285 in the 12 months from March 2017 to March 2018 -- the highest figure since 1946.
The numbers are astounding, and Prince, after 12 years on the trail, is an expert and veteran worth listening to. He finally has the mission, the dream that he missed when he was young and on the streets.
To find out more, visit the Kiyan Prince Foundation.