A year ago, Tony Harrison was asked what life would be like if he took the WBC junior middleweight title from the hands of Jermell Charlo in their December 22 bout at Barclays Center.

“I’m actually gonna carry it around like I’m JR Smith and walk around with no shirt and just the belt on my chest for a whole month,” he said.

He beat Charlo by unanimous decision that night in Brooklyn to become a world champion for the first time. The question is, did he keep his word?

“I kept my word,” said Harrison on Monday, days before he defends his title for the first time on Saturday against the man he took it from. “I carried it everywhere I went.”

Shirtless?

“Sometimes inside the bars, but I wasn’t walking outside like that,” he laughed. But after those first heady days of scoring one of the biggest upsets of the year and bringing a championship back to Detroit, he says his mentality changed.

“The belt was no longer something I had to wear to show the world I earned it,” he said. “The people that love me, the people that are diehard boxing fans, they know exactly who I am. So I felt like it was one of those things where I didn’t have to carry it around or parade around with it or show it off. We earned it and nobody can take that away from us in Detroit.”

He’s right. No matter what happens in the rematch with Charlo this weekend in Ontario, California, Harrison’s name will always be etched in the history books as a world champion. And that win wasn’t just for himself, his children or his city. It was for those who couldn’t be there that night, people who believed in him and his potential like his grandfather Henry Hank and his mentor and co-trainer Emanuel Steward.

“It was a surreal moment for me, just recapping everything that happened to me and wishing that all the good people that were in my corner were there to see it and be there with me,” Harrison said. “I thought of everything that happened to me that was f---ed up and I told God I understood why he put me through those things and I understood that he knew that I would get through it and would never lose faith. I was thanking him for all those times, all those moments that made me me. It was never the good moments, it was always the bad, me being resilient through those moments and me taking that message out of every moment that everything bad happened to make me that man that night to win the fight.”

That’s a lot to put on one night in one life, especially when Harrison will be asked to do it all over again in the rematch. So how does he get up emotionally for his second meeting with Charlo”

“I’m one of those guys where the belt doesn’t define nor does it change who I am as a man,” he said. “It only boosted it up and made me hungrier, and in my heart right now, I’m still the B-side guy. We’re fighting in Cali, one of his cities, and you see the promotion is kinda biased towards him like he’s still the champion, so it’s one of those things where it’s not about the sport no more for me. It’s just man-to-man, and every time I get in there, it’s one of those man-to-man moments for me where I have to beat this man. It’s not about boxing, not about the sport, it’s that man versus me. And I’m the ultimate competitor, and when it becomes another man against me, I try to break it down to do whatever I gotta do to beat that man. And that’s always been in me. That’s an art in itself to be so competitive at everything you do, and that’s the guy I am.”

The odds and the promotional push may be on Charlo’s side, but the history of repeats in rematches is in favor of Harrison, even though his first victory over the Texan was close, and some would say controversial. And the way he sees it, a second victory is a given because he feels he’s prepared his whole life for what Charlo brings to the table, with last year’s win being just a start.

“I’ve been chasing this guy for 20 years before I fought him,” said Harrison. “I feel like I’ve seen this guy and his style is tailor-made for a guy that came out of Kronk. He’s super-technical, everything about him is technique down pat, sharp, and all those attributes that he carries, I’ve been fighting that guy my whole life. I told Al (Haymon) three years before I fought him that I wanted to fight him. You know when you walk by somebody and you’re like, ‘Damn, I’ve seen this guy before?’ That’s how I see him. I’ve seen him over and over and my whole life I’ve been preparing to fight him.”

Now he’s got him again. The immediate rematch was supposed to take place on June 23, but an ankle injury forced Harrison from the bout. That didn’t sit well with Charlo, who didn’t buy the story of his opponent’s injury, feeling that the new champ was ducking him. Such talk amused Harrison.

“Scared of a fight?” he laughs. “Everything that we’ve been through, you think we’re scared of a fight? Come on, man. He just wants to give his side and everybody on his side something to talk about. Every time he says something, they’re running with that. But now it’s fight week. You’re talking about an ankle? It’s fight week.”

In other words, for all the talk, Harrison and Charlo still have to fight. That doesn’t mean the talk is going to stop before Saturday night, and that’s just fine with “Super Bad.”

“I love it,” Harrison said. “When you’re from Detroit, it does something to you. It’s just that extra motivation when you’ve got somebody talking that sh-t to you and you’re talking it back. I’ve been waiting for this my whole life and it’s fun to me. Living in Detroit, you gotta have the gift of gab, and that’s another art in itself. So I can talk my sh-t, and I’m destroying him by doing it. It’s fun and it spices things up. This is a good dinner with jalapenos on top.”

Harrison is enjoying that dinner so much that he wouldn’t mind sharing it with Charlo again after this weekend’s bout, as he believes their rivalry is only getting more heated. And we all know what a good bad blood rivalry means for the sport.

“It all depends on how the fight plays out,” he said of his future after Saturday night. “I think if I knock him out, it’s over and done with. If it becomes controversial again and I get the win, I think it’s probably the best thing that can happen because then we get to do it again and build that hype up again. I think this relationship between me and him is one of the best relationships in boxing. You can’t fake it. It’s good for the sport that we really don’t like each other. And this is such a good fight. It doesn’t get much better than me and him and I want to keep topping that.”

Bur first, Charlo has to deal with a fighter who claims to be totally different from the one that beat him in Brooklyn a year ago.

“It’s like I went from Clark Kent to Superman,” said Harrison. “That belt gave me the opportunity to take my glasses off and put my cape on. Now I can become that superstar I know I am.”