Two days before he became the first Australian to win an Olympic super heavyweight bout, boxer Teremoana Junior was wandering around the Olympic village. The Sydney-born Brisbane resident, making his Olympics debut, bumped into Cook Islands chef de mission Matt Short.
Short is in Paris with a group of just six officials and athletes from one of the world’s smallest nations, population 15,000. The pair had only met briefly before, but the lawyer from Rarotonga – the largest of the Cook Islands – and the towering 26-year-old shared a customary greeting before Teremoana reached into his bumbag.
“He goes, ‘see bro, in my bag’, and he had his money bag and he opened it up and he showed a Cook Islands flag.” Short recounts the story with a laugh, an understanding of the connections shared by those across the Pacific, and especially with ties to the Cook Islands. “He’s in Australia, but the whole Cook Islands is supporting him as well,” Short says. “Cheer him on, you know.”
There are almost twice as many Cook Islanders in Australia as there are back home, and four times the number living in New Zealand. There were another handful in the North Paris Area to see Teremoana make history on Monday.
His victory over Ukrainian Dmytro Lovchynskyi in the first round took less than the three minutes, after a brutal first round knock-out. Afterwards, Teremoana celebrated with a tila, a traditional Cook Islander dance. The crowd were already on the feet, but noise reached a crescendo as the fans roared the arrival of a new Olympic hero.
In the media scrum afterwards, the 2m tall, 120kg giant was asked how he would describe himself to Australians who have only recently heard his name. “I will say happy go lucky. Just go with the flow and just enjoy my time here,” Teremoana said. “So pretty laid back, pretty chill, but I put in the hard work, so I know I’ve got what it takes to do the job.”
His distinctive name is the source of his motivation. On the Olympics record books and big screens, he is known as Teremoana Teremoana. “I’m representing my grandfather,” he said. Teremoana Senior died not long before his grandson turned 21, steeling the resolve of the young man to change his name and pursue a career in boxing. “He’s Cook Islander, I’m just doing something for him, for my family, to put our name on the world stage.”
In the ring, he is a brutal puncher even among boxer’s biggest boppers. Outside it, he is sharp with his tongue. He was formerly known as Samson. “That’s part of the reason I’ve grown my hair long,” he said. Of his coming bout against defending gold medal winner Bakhodir Jalolov, “someone’s going to get knocked out”. And his prospects for gold? “I believe I’m the best in the world, and I think this is the stage to prove it.”
Yet he remains humble. “To be here representing my family, no one’s really been out of the country, or been to Europe. I’ve been around the world now like to eight, nine different countries. And to me, that’s a win.”
Already known and loved in the Cook Islands, Teremoana is approaching legendary status in his ancestral home, his feats catapulting him alongside the sporting greats of the Cook Islands, like rugby league player Kevin Iro. “He is now,” says Romani Katoa, a Cook Islands sporting administrator and an uncle of Teremoana, after witnessing the bout.
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“He came on our radar back in 2021 after the Tokyo Olympics, and we were trying to get him to fight for the Cook Islands at Commonwealth Games in Birmingham,” Katoa said. “But there were some communication issues between our boxing association and himself and others, so he had the opportunity to go box for Australia, but he had to prove himself through the Australian system.”
An upset over the prodigious Jalolov who, on top of his Tokyo gold, has won two of the past three World Championships, would propel him into the upper echelons of sport in not only the Cook Islands but also Australia.
The Uzbek beat the Australian in the most recent of those World Championship runs, in Tashkent last year. Teremoana said he wants “revenge”, but is not focusing too much on his opponent. He said he has drawn confidence from his preparations over the past 18 months. “My plan is just a box like that fight [on Monday] and then if a punch lands, we’re both heavyweights, I know someone’s going to feel it.”
At that bout on Friday (early Saturday AEST) will be Teremoana’s mother, grandmother, as well as the Cook Islands contingent, and close to 6,000 screaming supporters. And not far away, his grandfather. “It’s just given me a reason to fight,” Teremoana said. “It’s given me a why and I think that why is going to destroy everyone.”