By Anthony Cocks
At the start of the year he was a virtual unknown but after a high-profile win against international superstar Manny Pacquiao in front of his home crowd of more than 51,000 fans at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane in July, newly-minted WBO welterweight kingpin Jeff “The Hornet” Horn 17-0-1 (11) has become hot property.
The softly spoken 29-year-old former schoolteacher, who is scheduled to make his first title defence against Gary Corcoran 17-1 (7) at the Brisbane Convention & Entertainment Centre this Wednesday, has been in high demand since shocking the world with his twelve round points win over Pacquiao in a fight he wasn’t a supposed to have a ghost of a chance to win.
"It’s gotten a lot busier," admitted Horn on Saturday. "A lot more media commitments, a lot more invites to events. A lot more charities and things like that are getting me to do things. I’ve been fairly busy the last five weeks.”
To judge his activities by social media posts you could be forgiven for thinking Horn has spent more time in a tuxedo than boxing shorts and gloves in the past five months. There was a whirlwind trip to the United States with his pregnant wife Jo to attend ESPN’s ESPY Awards in Los Angeles in July; suited and booted again in October to accept The Don Award from the Sport Australia Hall of Fame for the most inspirational Australian sportsman, named after legendary cricketer Sir Donald Bradman; while in November a tuxedoed Horn accepted the GQ magazine Sportsman of the Year Award.
"The last five months have felt like five weeks," said Horn. "It’s been a whirlwind ever since."
Add to this various charities lining up ten deep to sign up the services of the polite, clean-cut and well-spoken boxer, corporate speaking gigs, invitations to social events, sporting events, even political events and you could be forgiven for thinking that the increased demands on his time could be driving Horn to distraction.
He insists this is not the case.
"Everything in the whole preparation can be seen as a distraction," said Horn. “It depends on how you handle it. There’s a lot of things people want you to do, this and that. I’m happy to do it, I just treat the things I do as a day out. As long as I get my training in somewhere, make up for it somewhere else, I’ll be fine.”
Horn says his preparation for Corcoran has been a little different than his training for the Pacquiao fight, with a new set of sparring partners drafted in to mimic the 27-year-old English traveller’s walk-up, high volume style.
“They have been completely different guys to the ones I sparred for Pacquiao,” Horn said. “For Pacquaio they were southpaws to start with, who were about the same size as him. This time I’ve been sparring a little bit bigger guys and non-stop, come-forward type guys."