Early Life
Born in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Odessa, Ukraine) as Dmitriy Aleksandrovich Lekhtman, Salita was five years old when he saw his first boxing match. "It was Mike Tyson, and I remember dancing around my room that night imitating the moves", he recalled. Salita moved with his family to Flatbush, Brooklyn, at the age of nine because of the escalating violence against Jews in Ukraine. His father, Aleksandr Lekhtman, was an engineer; his late mother, Lyudmila Salita, was an accountant. He has one brother, Mikhail. He uses his mother's maiden name as his professional name.
He said:
Basically, we came to America because Jews were discriminated against. My parents thought that my brother and I wouldn’t grow up with the opportunity to be the best that we could be. My brother, who is nine years older than I am, used to get into a lot of fights, because he was often called names. There were rumors of pogrom every now and then, and Jews would go away to the suburbs from the city. ‘Pogrom’ means that groups of people would break into homes and bash the house. I remember that my father bought a gun just in case something was to happen. It was very difficult to get top jobs or to go to top schools and still remain proud of your Judaism. I am very grateful to America for letting me pursue my goals, and have freedom of religion and speech. You don’t normally appreciate it, but when you don't have it, you understand just how great it is to have it. Now that I am older, I understand it.
In New York, classmates picked on Salita in school. He said, “When I first started going to school, I had the clothes that I wore over in Russia. I used to get made fun of because of it, and the fact that I didn’t speak English. I had to learn how to defend myself. I got involved in karate, and as time went on my brother brought me to a boxing club. That is how it all started. I got called into the principal's office. I got suspended a few times, but I got my respect. I started kicking some ass at school.”
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