Horn’s homework done, now to teach doubters

Australia’s boxing schoolteacher prepares to fight world welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao. Weigh-in is this morning.

Jeff Horn in Brisbane yesterday as he prepares to fight Manny Pacquiao on Sunday. Picture: Peter Wallis

Courage can’t be cornered. Heart can’t be hit. Life lasts longer than 12 rounds. Queensland’s boxing schoolteacher Jeff Horn has one last lesson for his students and they can find it just before the bell sounds tomorrow on the biggest fight in Australian history, in that brief moment when Mr Horn slips under the ropes of a Suncorp Stad­ium ring to stand eye-to-eye with a sporting god.

“I hope schoolkids across Australia take the message from my journey that no matter who, where or what you do in life, if you can think positive and work hard, anything is possible,” he told The Weekend Australian on the eve of his epic underdog fight against Fili­pino 11-time world welterweight boxing champion Manny Pacquiao.

His last lesson is about turning up. Arriving at the greatest day of your life. Being there. Do your homework. Know your sums. Then knock their bloody socks off. Can’t fight the past. Can’t block it out either. So own it.

The afternoons he spent crying into the arms of his mum because the bullies at his working-class Brisbane high school got inside his head; the black and depressive thoughts of a gentle, polite and solit­ary teenager; the moment he shuffled nervously into the South Brisbane gym of his boxing journeyman coach, Glenn Rushton, to learn how to defend himself against suburban thugs; the moment­ Rushton saw him pounding a bag with rights and lefts like Tokyo bullet trains and was compelled­ to dream: “I see you fighting at Suncorp Stadium in front of 50,000 people.” “Hold the dream!” goes Rushton’s gymnasium mantra. And that’s what this past year has felt like for Horn.

One mad and colourful dream where the bookish high school relief­ teacher — whose idea of a wild Saturday night is a couple of beers and a game of Monopoly with his high school sweetheart wife, Jo — meets his boxing hero, Manny Pacquiao, inside a ring before a packed house at Brisbane’s Suncorp­ Stadium.

Pacquiao is the man they named “Fighter of the Decade” for the 2000s. Pacman, a senator in The Philippines with an estimated net worth of $190 million.

Horn was not so long ago earning professional fight purses worth $2000. He and Jo live in a fixer-upper house in Brisbane’s working-class Acacia Ridge.

He was so excited to have an in-ground pool built into his backyard earlier this year that he took a series of photos of its installation on his iPhone so he could show his friends. His mum, Liza, works for St Vinnies.

Horn is the guy who drops down to the footy ovals on a Wednes­day night in suburban Mt Gravatt, southeast Brisbane, to watch Jo play mixed touch football.

He walks his dog, Lexie, along the sidelines and people shake his hand and wish him luck.

“You reckon you can beat ’im?” people ask with raised eyebrows. “I do,” he says, flatly.

Not a shred of doubt about it. He ­believes. “People look at me and go, ‘Pacquiao’s an eight division world champion, a legend in the sport, you think you can beat him?’,” he said.

“But that’s what drives me. I want to prove all those people wrong. They don’t realise that they’re the ones that fuel me.”

They’re the ones who mistake manners for meekness. They’re the ones who haven’t done their homework.

“I’m softly spoken but once you get me in the ring, things change,” he said. “I change character in the ring.

“I think my mental state that I go into when I step through those ropes is second to none. I become a machine that is in there to win and win only.”

Take your seats, Australian sports fans, class is about to start.