Australia's Sakio Bika has felt the euphoria of winning a boxing world-title and has suffered the sickening low and bitter taste of losing a prized belt.
That awful taste remains in the mouth of this hard man raised in a slum in the central African nation of Cameroon.
"That won't be happening again," Bika, referring to the warm night in Los Angeles last August when he lost his WBC super middleweight title to Anthony "The Dog" Dirrell in a unanimous points decision, told AAP.
At the early hour for Australian sports fans of 5am Sunday AEST Bika, half a world away in the subzero temperatures of Quebec City, Canada, will attempt to do something extraordinary.
Instead of sticking to super middleweight after the Dirrell loss, Bika stepped up a division to light heavyweight and, without a warm-up bout, will challenge Canadian WBC champ Adonis "Superman" Stevenson.
Stevenson, who seems to always have a smile on his face and likes to travel in a Lamborghini, knocked out and ended the career of one of the elites of the division, Chad Dawson, in 2013 to claim the WBC belt.
He has defended it four times.
Stevenson has been respectful of Bika in the lead-up press conferences, but North American boxing reporters are more fixated on the Canadian's likely next bout with the king of the light heavyweights, Russia's undefeated WBA, IBF and WBO champ Sergey "Krusher" Kovalev.
"Maybe it will be Bika against Kovalev instead," Bika suggested.
Bookmakers, media members and fans across North America have all written Bika off in a fight that will be broadcast live into more than 100 million US homes by free-to-air TV network CBS.
The hard-charging Bika, 35, has lived a life overcoming enormous odds, fighting his way onto the Cameroon team for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, meeting wife Belinda in the Harbour City and raising three children in Sydney's suburbs.
His journey from the slum to world boxing stage has been captured in the upcoming documentary, Champion: The Journey of Sakio Bika, by Australian director Ben Damon.
Stevenson is aware Bika is ready to cleanse his palate of that bitter Dirrell loss.
"I know Bika is very dangerous," Stevenson, who has had his own miraculous journey from Haiti to Canada, told reporters this week.
"I know he's going to come into the ring and try to give me trouble."
The fight will be aired live in Australia on Main Event.
Share
