The only fights Jeff Horn had been in had resulted in devastating defeats. He was a victim of high school bullying and after being slapped around yet again he’d decided to learn to protect himself.

Glenn Rushton, who had learned boxing at a boy’s club in Townsville and was now a multi-millionaire businessman, ran martial arts classes in a huge home gym inside his baroque mansion at Stretton and Horn was a little intimidated both by the scale of the residence and the self-defence class he’d enrolled in.

“I remember Jeff coming in that day and thinking he looked like a bit of a nerd,’’ Rushton tells me in the same gym he first encounterd Horn 11 years ago.

“He told me he was getting picked on at school and I could understand why. He just had one of those choirboy faces that invited trouble.’’

Horn took the self-defence classes one day a week as Rushton showed him how to get out of a scrape.

Initially there was nothing to suggest the shy, quiet kid who planned on being a schoolteacher would one day figure in the biggest fight in Australian history.

But Horn was a fast learner.

“Jeff had played soccer for 12 years,’’ Rushton said, “so he had good balance and movement and I was impressed by his hand eye co-ordination.

“But when he first came here 11 years ago he didn’t even know how to throw a punch. I taught him.’’

And taught him well.

WE’RE soaring high above New Zealand’s snow-capped Southern Alps, the sun bathing the jagged peaks in a golden glow when “The Fighting Schoolteacher’’ Jeff Horn lets out a gasp at the majesty of the panorama below.

The unassuming boxer is sitting anonymously with his wife Joanna in the last row of an Air New Zealand flight from Invercargill to Christchurch. For all appearances they could be a pair of young holidaying backpackers but they are on the first leg of their journey home to Acacia Ridge after Horn has carved up a Ukrainian sharpshooter named Viktor Plotnikov.

Horn is peering at New Zealand’s natural wonders below through one good eye, his left; the right eye having been bandaged and the brow held together by stitches.

A few hours earlier on a freezing winter’s night in New Zealand’s coldest city, I had sat next to the boxer in an austere dressingroom in the bowels of Stadium Southland in Invercargill while local doctor, Nick Terpstra, went to work.

As the needle dug into the side of Horn’s forehead a hot rush of adrenaline surged through his wiry 67kg body. He had taken all of Plotnikov’s punches without a worry but propped up against a stark white wall Horn flinched for the first time that night as the doctor started sewing his eyebrow back together.

The mild-mannered teacher has a Bachelor of Education degree from Griffith University but had just handed out a boxing lesson to the axe-faced Plotnikov, picking up a bloody war wound in the process after their heads banged together during a fierce exchange of punches.

The world’s leading boxing commentator, Las Vegas-based Bob Sheridan, who called the fight, told me Horn was a future world welterweight champion.

“This kid’s the real deal,” said Sheridan, who began his career calling Muhammad Ali fights more than 50 years ago and has called over 1000 world title bouts.

“Plotnikov came into the fight with a great record (32 wins in 34 bouts) but Horn totally dominated the bout and was a step ahead of him right from the opening bell.

“Horn is such a nice kid but he’s a baby-faced assassin. In the ring he’s a real destroyer.”

NOW with another dangerous international opponent on his list of victims, Horn sits back in the seat of this turboprop aircraft and enjoys the journey.

It’s been a helluva ride for him over the last decade as he has gone from a bullied schoolboy to a boxing champion competing before what will probably be the biggest crowd ever seen at Suncorp Stadium on July 2, when he challenges Manny Pacquiao for the World Boxing Organization welterweight (66kg) title.

Queensland’s Tourism Minister Kate Jones expects a crowd of 55,000.

Horn’s rise through the boxing ranks is quite simply one of the most astonishing stories in Australian sport and the Queensland Government and Brisbane City Council are bankrolling the Pacquiao fight in a multimillion-dollar sponsorship.

Ever since the fight was formally confirmed two weeks ago Horn, 29, has been before the cameras almost non-stop but his own sharp focus has been on causing a monumental upset that would make his victory one of the most important in Australian sporting history.

Just three and a half years ago, photographer Peter Wallis and I visited the small Pallara State School in Brisbane’s south where Horn was teaching class to Grades 4 and 5. There was very little media interest in him back then but after almost 40 years covering boxing around the world I was intrigued by this quiet, polite teacher competing in a sport where most participants are from the school of hard knocks.

Back then, I asked him how a clean cut, mild-mannered, well-educated kid from a good home, ended up slugging it out with some of the toughest boxers in the world.

“I’m pretty softly spoken and mild most of the time,’’ he told me, ``but I love the competition of boxing.

“When I get in the ring I’m a different person.

“You have to be ruthless and get rid of your opponent as quickly as possible. I had a very good teacher in boxing right from the start in Glenn Rushton. He not only taught me the skills of boxing but he taught me to believe in myself and that with hard work anything is possible.’’

The first boxing match Horn ever saw was Anthony Mundine’s victory over Danny Green. Horn had not had a proper bout himself when he watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics on TV. But by the London Games four years later, he was the best performed of Australia’s boxing team, making it to the 64kg quarter-finals.

Horn’s last defeat was on points against another Ukrainian, Denis Berinchyk, in the quarter-finals at the London Olympics

At the Pallara School, we asked Horn to pose for a photo with some of his nine-year-old students, all too eager to punch him for the camera.

One little girl with an evil glint in her eye and an uppercut worthy of Mike Tyson became overenthusiastic as she cannoned a fat boxing glove off his chin.

Still smiling for the camera through gritted teeth, Horn whispered to her: “Be gentle, gentle.’’

THERE will be nothing gentle about Manny Pacquiao’s punches when he charges from his corner at Suncorp on July 2.

Horn knows he’s in for the fight of his life.

The Filipino wrecking ball has made $500 million ($500 million) from boxing over the last 22 years and is now a hard-line senator in his national government, supporting the summary execution of drug dealers advocated by his president Rodrigo Duterte.

Pacquiao is 38 and has lost three of his last eight fights but his Australian cornerman Justin Fortune tells me: “Manny is still a live dog. He’s still extremely quick — ridiculously quick — and he’s still an extremely heavy puncher.’’

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach, who has also coached fighters such as Mike Tyson and Oscar De La Hoya, tells me that Manny hasn’t scored a knockout for a long time and that it will be good to get one against Horn as Pacquiao prepares for fights with the likes of Amir Khan, Mikey Garcia and Terence Crawford.

He says Pacquiao will be too powerful for Horn, too fast. And too hungry.

While Horn grew up in the relative affluence of suburban Brisbane, Pacquiao spent his childhood in General Santos City in the Philippines, shoeless, hungry and dirty.

His father abandoned the family shack when Pacquiao was an infant and came back for a visit years later only to kill Pacquiao’s pet dog and eat it.

As a homeless teenager Pacquiao slept under a bridge and found work as a street vendor selling doughnuts. He started brawling with other teenagers for $2 a bout in chaotic street fights before finding his way to a proper gymnasium and learning to box.

Since 1995 he has won 11 world championships in eight weight classes from 51kg all the way up to 70kg. No one has ever come close to that.

JEFF and Joanna Horn married in 2014 but they have been friends since their teens.

She well remembers the day 11 years ago when he told her that he’d been beaten up by school bullies.

“I thought, `oh my gosh’ that’s terrible,’ she said. ``If you’d told me then that the same guy would one day be a boxing champion fighting at Suncorp Stadium I would never have believed it.’’

Horn was always a quiet kid at school, never any trouble. He spent many of his lunch hours in the MacGregor High library playing board-games and his studiousness made him a frequent target of bullies.

His mum, Liza Dykstra, who works for the St Vincent de Paul Society’s emergency relief department, would wrap her arms around him as he cried after being picked on. The thought that this kid would one day be a boxing star was Twilight Zone material.

But one day after school near the end of his time at MacGregor, Horn stuck up for one of his mates who was being targeted by the local toughs. One of the bullies ordered Horn to fall to his knees and apologise. Horn refused and was slapped hard across the face.

“Then and there I decided I wasn’t going to be pushed around anymore,’’ he says.

I ask him if he has run into the bullies since or had the chance to square up, to show them the sort of devastating body shots he’s been preparing for Pacquiao, or that sly yet explosive right hand lead that seems to pop out of nowhere and won him the Australian title with a first-round knockout.

“No, I wouldn’t do anything even if I did,’’ he says. “You never know what was going on in their lives for them to behave like that. I feel sorry for them.’’

JEFF Horn’s trainer Glenn Rushton teaches self-defence but learned self-reliance years ago, leaving home at 14 to become a fruit picker and becoming a self-made multi-millionaire through property development and stockmarket investing. Lean and tough, the 59-year-old has spent a lifetime in boxing and martial arts.

He and his wife Lillian live in the suburb of Stretton in a street of houses so big it could be mistaken for Canberra’s embassy district. They are paternal figures to all the kids who come to learn boxing at their home gym.

Horn always wanted to be a professional sportsman but after playing soccer for 12 years for the Lions and Acacia Ridge he knew he wasn’t going to cut it.

In 2006 when he first walked into Rushton’s gym he had never heard of Manny Pacquiao and had no interest in boxing. He just didn’t like getting slapped around.

But Rushton saw a spark. He told Horn that if he worked hard he could one be a champion.

Horn laughed.

“Yeah, right’’.

But Horn started to mull over Rushton’s words.

The trainer was obviously a smart guy who knew what he was talking about. He told Horn to be confident without being cocky, to train hard and follow his advice.

Horn and his dad, Jeff Sr, a softly-spoken builder, went to watch the 2007 Australian amateur boxing titles at Brisbane’s Mansfield Tavern.

Horn told his dad that with some more training he reckoned he could beat the blokes in his weight division.

Horn Snr laughed.

“Yeah, right.’’

There had never been any fighters in the Horn family except for Jeff Snr’s dad Ray Horn, who turns 90 this year.

In the 1930s Ray laced on the gloves and boxed exhibitions in the Queensland outback with his twin brother Gordon to entertain punters from Blackall, Barcaldine and Jericho, two little kids going hammer and tongs in white singlets.

The twins lived in a two-bedroom house in Winton. They had nine siblings, including sister Jean, who became the mother of Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk.

Ray turns 90 in December and Horn has dedicated a win over Pacquiao to his beloved “Pop”.

When Ray worked in outback shearing sheds, he realised the blokes who could really fight were the quiet ones.

“That’s Jeff,” Ray says. “He’s a great lad, very quiet and humble, but boy can he fight.

“The thing that keeps me going now is the chance to see him become champion of the world.’’

In 2014 Horn signed a contract with New Zealand-based promotions company Duco Events and is now unbeaten in 17 professional fights.

Most of his big bouts have been in New Zealand leading up to the Suncorp extravaganza, which will be co-promoted with Pacquiao’s backer Bob Arum, a leading figure in world sport for more than half a century. Arum promoted his first fight in 1966 for Muhammad Ali.

This fight is expected to be televised to an audience of close to a billion people in more than 150 countries.

Rushton predicts a thriller; two dangerous heavy punchers attacking each other from the opening bell.

From their first self-defence class together Rushton taught his young student a fighting style he calls ``Broken Rhythm Pressure’’.

“Jeff is always coming at you,’’ Rushton says, “but you don’t know what he’ll throw next. He could hit you with a right hand lead. He could turn southpaw (left-handed) and come at you from a whole different angle. Jeff and Manny have similar styles but Jeff is bigger, younger and stronger. And very, very tough. In all the time I’ve been training him, at the Olympics and all the big professional fights he’s had, I’ve never seen him really hurt.’’

Rushton told Horn that he could make him an Australian champion. And he did. He told him he would go to the Olympics. And he did.

Now Glenn Rushton says Jeff Horn can beat Manny Pacquiao in a Suncorp superfight that could shock the world.

The schoolteacher is doing his homework to make it happen.

FOR more than half a century Bob Arum promoted some of the greatest fights of all time and says with 55,000 people cheering for Horn, Brisbane’s Fighting Schoolteacher could spring a huge upset over Pacquiao.

Arum, 85, who was Muhammad Ali’s long-time promoter, says he sat gobsmacked at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas in 1978 when Leon Spinks, a veteran of just seven pro fights, took the world heavyweight title from The Greatest in a stunning upset. He says Horn has the ability to create a similar shock.

“I watched Horn’s last fight ringside in New Zealand and he’s a very capable young man,’’ said Arum, a Harvard-trained lawyer.

“If his fight with Pacquiao was in Vegas or Madison Square Garden in New York I wouldn’t give him much of a chance because I think nerves would take over against a fighter like Manny, who is one of the best boxers I’ve ever seen.

“But the fact Jeff is going to be fighting in front of so many of his countrymen will calm his nerves and I think he will give a great account of himself.

“I’ve been in this business 51 years and I have presided over some tremendous upsets.

“Manny is a big favourite but in boxing anything can happen and I have seen a lot of big upsets in my time.’’

Arum promoted his first fight in 1966 when Ali beat the rugged Canadian George Chuvalo in Toronto in their world heavyweight title fight and he staged such other historic battles as the Ali-Joe Frazier “Thrilla in Manila’’, Sugar Ray Leonard against Marvin Hagler, most of Roberto Duran’s epic title fights and - two years ago - the Floyd Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, which was the richest bout in history with nearly $1 billion in revenue.

He says if Horn can spring an upset against Pacquiao he will become one of the biggest stars in world sport.

“Jeff Horn already has a great backstory,’’ Arum says.

“But can you imagine the media around the world if this young clean-cut kid with movie star looks, who is also a school teacher by profession, manages to beat one of the greatest boxers of all time?

“It’s fights like this keep me young after half a century in the sport.

“This is a real Cinderella story.

“The bullied kid who fought back and shook up the world.’’