Code Sports Latimore will, \u201chave to pay\u201d<\/a> for what he reckons was a dirty tactic.<\/p>\nLatimore remembers it a bit differently after being tackled just short of the tryline early in the second half. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d had a good start to the year at the Dragons, so it was a full house at Jubilee and I came off the bench \u2013 like I always do,\u201d Latimore tells Code Sports. <\/p>\n
\u201cI 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cI sort\u2019ve just threw the hand up to throw him off, and I must have collected him in the family jewels.<\/p>\n
\u201cCam\u2019s fallen down and Cam McInnes dived over and scored the try.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith fell to the ground in agony, later saying the shot left him, \u201cvery, very sensitive\u201d, but Latimore had other concerns. <\/p>\n
\u201cI never got the try assist for that!\u201d he says now. \u201cBut I remember I was struggling to breathe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think (Smith) was filthy. He said something to me at the next scrum, but I just had a laugh.\u201d <\/p>\n
The incident generated a few headlines for a couple of days, but Latimore thought that would be the last he\u2019d hear of it. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
He can thank the popular \u2018NRL Roast\u2019 Instagram page, run by Dragons tragic Dean Messiter for that. <\/p>\n
Messiter found vision of the tryline low blow, clipped it up and published it, giving Latimore a new nickname in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NRL Roast jumped on board and gave me the moniker \u2018The GOAT\u2019 because I took out the real GOAT,\u201d laughs Latimore, who held the record for most NRL games off the bench. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
Not even Messiter could believe how quickly the name caught on. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe way I coined it was that he reached up, and GOAT-ness was passed from Cam Smith\u2019s body, into Lats\u2019 fist and into his own body,\u201d Messiter tells Code Sports. \u201cEveryone just got on board and we just kept posting it. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen we\u2019d start chucking money on him for first try scorer, even though he\u2019d be starting on the bench and paying a motza. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt really started catching on when he bought into it and started calling himself \u2018The GOAT\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI caught up with him later and he signed them too,\u201d Messiter says. \u201cThey\u2019ve got pride of place in the man cave now.\u201d <\/p>\n
As for his showdown with Asofa-Solomona, Latimore \u2013 who has a 1-0 professional boxing record \u2013 knows he has his hands full.<\/p>\n
He just needs to look at the viral vision of Asofa-Solomona\u2019s street fight in Bali in 2019 to know that.<\/p>\n
But he hopes to use the \u201cGOATness\u201d that travelled down his arm from his run-in with Smith as he plots a heavyweight upset. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith that Bali footage, there\u2019s the assumption that he\u2019s going to come out and beat me,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we\u2019re not fighting on the street. \u201cWe\u2019re fighting in the ring and that\u2019s where I\u2019ve been practising the art for the last couple of years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By his own admission, Jeremy Latimore was a \u201cbarely known\u201d battler when he came off the bench for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,689,70407,211642,28350,651,644,81736,211640,211649,211644,211648,2105,211646,211637,28364,211645,211639,117839,56535,60457,211641,4466,11850,761,762,211638,211647,11876,158,677,9914,701,85,211643,7619,211650],"class_list":["post-397071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-blockbuster-showdown","tag-bona-fide-front-row","tag-brendan-bradford","tag-brisbane","tag-cult-hero","tag-face-off","tag-fateful-afternoon","tag-fide-front-row-cult","tag-front-row-cult-hero","tag-genuine-cult-hero","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-inside-story","tag-jeremy-latimore","tag-limit-boxing","tag-low-key-battler","tag-man-cave","tag-mark-gambin","tag-mark-kolbe","tag-mark-metcalfe","tag-mark-tookey","tag-melbourne-storm","tag-michael-zerafa","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nether-regions","tag-nicest-blokes","tag-nikita-tszyu","tag-nrl","tag-oceania","tag-professional-boxing","tag-queensland","tag-sports","tag-started-calling","tag-try-assist","tag-try-scorer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}