His son was born just days after he arrived at Auckland South Correctional Facility, but he wouldn\u2019t find out until a week later when his Covid isolation had ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting that letter about my son being born was the switch. That\u2019s when I realised I had to get out of there.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is why while Vatuvei said prison is a \u201cf***in\u2019 shithole\u201d he \u201cwouldn\u2019t wish on anyone\u201d, it was also \u201cthe best thing to happen\u201d to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I didn\u2019t go to prison, I wouldn\u2019t be talking to you right now. I\u2019d be doing even more stupid stuff. It helped me heal from being depressed and getting over the fact that I was done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The league player said he had turned his life around since he was released on parole in 2023, despite his initial anxiety about re-entering the public eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Beast\u201d, as he was known during his 13-year league career, said he \u201cknew what he needed to do\u201d.<\/p>\n
Manu Vatuvei had his boxing debut in 2018, fighting his now boss Dave Letele. Photo \/ Kai Schwoerer, Getty Images<\/p>\n
He is now a volunteer counsellor for his former team and has found a renewed passion for boxing after working at former heavyweight champion Dave Letele\u2019s gym.<\/p>\n
And he said he is ready to re-enter the ring this April in Sydney.<\/p>\n
Vatuvei encourages anyone struggling to be brave enough to open up.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife can be hard, but don\u2019t take the easy way out, and never give up on your dreams\u201d, he said, \u201cI gave up on my dream, but now it\u2019s popped up again with boxing, and I\u2019ll take this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listless, the former Warriors top try scorer fell into the smuggling ring and began helping arrange the shipment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[95,6186,15970,2740,71,293,221,35195,424,48955,1868,13240,111,139,69,8442,2887,12860,1517,5763,213,2737,1335,1529,154481,3006,1530],"class_list":["post-273753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-and","tag-changed","tag-conviction","tag-former","tag-from","tag-his","tag-how","tag-importing","tag-life","tag-manu","tag-meth","tag-methamphetamine","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-prison","tag-release","tag-revealed","tag-reveals","tag-sentence","tag-sports","tag-star","tag-term","tag-three","tag-vatuvei","tag-warriors","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}