JEFF Horn will fight one of the greatest boxers in history on April 23 but his childhood sweetheart clearly remembers the days when he was a punching bag for school bullies.
On Wednesday, he and wife Jo, who have known each other since they were in Grade 8, were sipping Cokes at the Regatta Hotel, toasting Horn?s extraordinary rise in a sport he only took up seriously a decade ago for self-preservation.
Australia has hosted some huge fights over the years and Australians have featured in massive overseas victories but in terms of prizemoney and a global audience Jeff Horn versus Manny Pacquiao shapes up as the biggest event ever in Australian boxing.
As Pacquiao gets ready to take on the schoolteacher from Acacia Ridge, he is in a class of his own, featuring in the most lucrative bout of all time ? a $US600m battle with Floyd Mayweather in 2015.
I was in Jeff Fenech?s corner when he won three world titles and was in Atlantic City when Jeff Harding climbed off the deck to stop world light-heavyweight champ Dennis Andries. I was in Manchester, England when Kostya Tszyu brawled with Ricky Hatton and in Oberhausen when Alex Leapai challenged Wladimir Klitschko.
But to me Horn-Pacquiao tops everything that has gone before it in Australian boxing ? even the 1908 battle at Sydney Stadium when Texan Jack Johnson, the son of slaves, stopped white Canadian Tommy Burns and became the first black man to hold the world heavyweight title.
Horn-Pacquiao will be televised into 159 countries and Pacquiao, already a prominent Senator and the greatest sports hero ever in the Philippines, will hope an emphatic victory will further boost his chances to one day be that country?s president.
Back in 1968, Lionel Rose, who a few years earlier had been living on the dirt floor of a bark humpy in an Aboriginal camp, had his first trip outside of Australia, dismantling Japan?s national treasure Fighting Harada for the world bantamweight title in Tokyo.
Aussie bantamweight Jimmy Carruthers knocked out world champ Vic Toweel in one round in South Africa in 1952.
But Harada and Toweel did not have the global status of Senator Manny Pacquiao, the former street kid who dragged himself up to the top of the sporting world and could soon be electrifying Brisbane.
