By Matt Bungard
After announcing himself on the Danny Green-Anthony Mundine undercard earlier in the year, Trent Broadhurst will follow in Green's footsteps when he tangles with undefeated Russian Dmitry Bivol for the WBA world light heavyweight title next Saturday.
The 28-year-old Australian travels to Monte Carlo – a world away from his last bout, when he defeated veteran Nader Hamdan at Adelaide Oval – to chase a belt previously held by Green and Roy Jones jnr, among others.
Big challenge: Australian boxer Trent Broadhurst.
"My manager was sort of chipping away at a few things, and this fight popped up," Broadhurst said. "We jumped at the opportunity; you're never going to say no to a world title.
"I've been hard at it for the past eight weeks, got one or two hard sessions left then we'll rest up before the fight.
"I watch a little bit just to familiarise myself, but game plan-wise I leave it up to my team. My coach, the other guys in my corner, they've watched him a lot and come with what we think is the way to beat him."
Hard sessions is right. A broken rib in a sparring session before a scheduled fight in March led to a far more serious injury, which kept him on the sidelines.
"Last sparring session before my last fight, I caught a body punch on my right elbow and my elbow actually dug into my ribs and broke my rib, which pushed into my liver and gave it a small laceration," he said.
Having a laceration to a major internal organ may seem like a substantial setback but, somehow it only kept him on the shelf for a few weeks.
"It's healed 100 per cent," he said. "The doctor actually said to me, 'I've never seen anything like it, there's no evidence of injury or scar tissue.' So that's always good."
Broadhurst and his camp will head to Dubai this weekend, and from there to Monte Carlo, where he'll have a few short, sharp sessions, but mostly use the time to get mentally focused and get his weight down before the fight on Saturday (Sunday afternoon, AEDT).
A keen rugby league player as a kid, his first introduction to boxing came in the most Australian way imaginable: mucking up at footy training.
"I remember playing footy when I was seven or eight years old, my father was actually the coach," he said. "We used to play up at training and he actually took us up to the boxing gym for punishment and, funnily enough, I begged him to go back there. You weren't allowed to start until you were 10 years old, so the day after my 10th birthday he took me up there to start boxing.
"I remember watching the Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield pay-per-views and what-not. I didn't even know what was going on but something just drew me to it."
With an impressive 20-1 record – matched by his opponent's perfect 11-0 – Broadhurst faces a big challenge, and the chance to hold the same belt as Green isn't lost on him.
"He's going to go down as one of the greatest boxers this country has ever produced, and there's been some great boxers to hold that title," Broadhurst said. "For me to get a hold of that belt would be something special."