Today, we continue the conversation with a boxing champion and his incredible wife! I have watched enough Rocky & Creed movies to know that the real story happens behind the scenes and away from the boxing ring. Jeff & Joanna Horn met in Year 8 and eventually married in 2014.
Joanna studied business and sport’s management and can be found ringside for all of Jeff’s fights. Even his epic 12-round win in 2017 over welterweight world Champion Manny Pacquiao to thousands of Aussie screaming fans in Brisbane. Being crowned Welterweight boxing Champion thrust Jeff into the limelight like never before.
Nat introduced me to Jeff at the 2012 London Games & I’ll never forget this moment of him doing some form of footwork/air punching warm up and thinking “can arms really accelerate that fast – it was like a Bruce Lee moment”. He was a relative unknown on the scene and as his popularity soars, his ego does not. Don’t you just love that in people?!? His humility and understated character has continued on no matter his successes. Somehow, he seems like that “constant underdog” that you can’t help but pull for.
But then, put yourself in the shoes of his high school sweetheart wife, who has never missed a fight, with two young kids at home, (who probably liked it a lot more when he was a PE teacher), watching the man you love and the father of your kids constantly being beaten in the head. And there have been some bloody match ups for Jeff. She has been quoted as saying:
“When I see him looking dazed up there, it’s just soul-destroying, being on the other side of the ropes, not knowing exactly how he’s feeling or if he’s all right, because it’s not just me now, there’s our daughters, Isabelle and Charlotte, who need him too.”
She has even gone as far as saying: “How would you like it if you had to sit there and watch me get punched like that?”
I know I am going to love getting to know this woman more. Someone who says what many of us are thinking.
As Covid-19 hits the sporting community hard, Jeff’s April bout has been postponed and so the pressure mounts to not only from promoters to get this fight underway but also his plan of retiring by age 35 looms.
I cannot wait to chat to this unassuming couple about the 360 degree view of the entire life of a fighter…
Ok, you two, I wonder who’s going to have more to say during this interview…
Contact Jeff:
Facebook: @jeffTheHornetHorn
Instagram: @jeffhornboxer
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