Face full of Smith: How NRL cult hero became The GOAT

By his own admission, Jeremy Latimore was a “barely known” battler when he came off the bench for the Dragons against the Melbourne Storm in a fateful round nine match back in 2018.

But what happened next that afternoon at Kogarah – namely a left hand punch that landed squarely in Cam Smith’s nether regions – turned Latimore from journeyman front-rower into genuine cult hero, with a brand new nickname to boot.

Even if he was forced to cop “a face full of Cam Smith’s groin”, was denied a try assist and earned an enemy in Storm giant Nelson Asofa-Solomona in the process.

Now 39, Latimore has switched footy for boxing and fights Asofa-Solomona on the undercard to Nikita Tszyu’s blockbuster showdown with Michael Zerafa in Brisbane on January 16.

Dubbed ‘Big Nasty’, Asofa-Solmona remembers the low blow well, telling Code Sports Latimore will, “have to pay” for what he reckons was a dirty tactic.

Latimore remembers it a bit differently after being tackled just short of the tryline early in the second half.

“We’d had a good start to the year at the Dragons, so it was a full house at Jubilee and I came off the bench – like I always do,” Latimore tells Code Sports.

“I played the ball, and Cam Smith Smith is obviously great at getting in tight in the wrestle, and he had his groin pushed into my breathing space.

“I sort’ve just threw the hand up to throw him off, and I must have collected him in the family jewels.

“Cam’s fallen down and Cam McInnes dived over and scored the try.”

Smith fell to the ground in agony, later saying the shot left him, “very, very sensitive”, but Latimore had other concerns.

“I never got the try assist for that!” he says now. “But I remember I was struggling to breathe.

“I think (Smith) was filthy. He said something to me at the next scrum, but I just had a laugh.”

The incident generated a few headlines for a couple of days, but Latimore thought that would be the last he’d hear of it.

Little did he know he was about to join the likes of Mark Tookey, Fuifui Moimoi and Big George Rose as a bona fide front-row cult hero.

He can thank the popular ‘NRL Roast’ Instagram page, run by Dragons tragic Dean Messiter for that.

Messiter found vision of the tryline low blow, clipped it up and published it, giving Latimore a new nickname in the process.

“The NRL Roast jumped on board and gave me the moniker ‘The GOAT’ because I took out the real GOAT,” laughs Latimore, who held the record for most NRL games off the bench.

“I was the bench GOAT, and I was barely known before that, but I became known as the bloke who hit Cam Smith in the nuts.”

Not even Messiter could believe how quickly the name caught on.

“The way I coined it was that he reached up, and GOAT-ness was passed from Cam Smith’s body, into Lats’ fist and into his own body,” Messiter tells Code Sports. “Everyone just got on board and we just kept posting it.

“Then we’d start chucking money on him for first try scorer, even though he’d be starting on the bench and paying a motza.

“It really started catching on when he bought into it and started calling himself ‘The GOAT’.”

Widely regarded as one of the nicest blokes in rugby league, Latimore never forgot the positive press, and gave Messiter the boots he wore for the last of his 182 NRL games.

“I caught up with him later and he signed them too,” Messiter says. “They’ve got pride of place in the man cave now.”

As for his showdown with Asofa-Solomona, Latimore – who has a 1-0 professional boxing record – knows he has his hands full.

He just needs to look at the viral vision of Asofa-Solomona’s street fight in Bali in 2019 to know that.

But he hopes to use the “GOATness” that travelled down his arm from his run-in with Smith as he plots a heavyweight upset.

“With that Bali footage, there’s the assumption that he’s going to come out and beat me,” he says. “But we’re not fighting on the street. “We’re fighting in the ring and that’s where I’ve been practising the art for the last couple of years.

“I’ll just go out with no pressure or expectation. I just need to avoid the big fella for a couple of rounds and hopefully get the job done.”