While describing himself as a gentle giant, former Melbourne NRL star Nelson Asofa-Solomona promises fans will see a different beast when he makes his professional boxing debut next week.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old turned his back on his rugby league career after falling out of love with the sport on the back of missing two grand finals through suspension.<\/p>\n
Rather than another pre-season grind, Asofa-Solomona has been in training for his first fight \u2013 against another ex-NRL journeyman Jeremy Latimore \u2013 on the Nikita Tszyu-Michael Zerafa undercard Friday week in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
The Kiwi Test prop said he was embracing a new sporting world.<\/p>\n
“I’m excited, it’s something different but I’m definitely feeling refreshed,” Asofa-Solomona said from Melbourne, where he has been preparing.<\/p>\n
“I’m in a whole different world but I’m embracing every moment.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got boxing fitness and rugby league fitness and I think I’m at a good standard now for boxing \u2013 all I can say is that I’m happy I’m not at a Craig Bellamy pre-season right now.”<\/p>\n
While Asofa-Solomona copped some brutal bans in rugby league, he insisted he wasn’t naturally an aggressive person.<\/p>\n
But a boxing enthusiast since he was a young boy, he said he would flip once he climbed into the ring.<\/p>\n
“I’m still a big gentle giant, but as the week approaches of fight night, I think I can start to see the wheels turning a little bit in my head and a bit of that warfare mindset is starting to take place in my head.<\/p>\n
“I think you’ll see a different Nelson when I get into the ring.”<\/p>\n
Latimore made his boxing debut in 2024 in Sydney with an unanimous points win over Alexander Ale, while he also won an exhibition bout last year on the Gold Coast.<\/p>\n
Despite Asofa-Solomona being 10 years younger and up to 30kg heavier, 113kg Latimore felt he had the boxing smarts to get the better of his rival.<\/p>\n
Asofa-Solomona said he respected anyone who took up the challenge, given his size and power, but felt Latimore was “delusional”.<\/p>\n
“I think the biggest thing is the mental warfare, and I’m sure he’s going through a fair bit of it right now, knowing the power that I possess,” he said.<\/p>\n
“With boxing, it’s different from a team sport, it’s an individual sport and you have to back yourself, you’ve got to be confident so I’m not surprised that he’s confident and he’s backing himself.<\/p>\n
“But what I’m discovering in boxing, you’ve got to be somewhat delusional, so I think it’s on full display.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While describing himself as a gentle giant, former Melbourne NRL star Nelson Asofa-Solomona promises fans will see a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,802,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-399723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399723","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=399723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}