Australian cruiserweight Brad Pitt is signed and sealed to appear in November's Super 8 tournament and he is using it as a springboard to prove he deserves a rematch with Kiwi David Aloua.
Pitt, a 2006 Commonwealth Games heavyweight gold medallist, won his first 15 professional bouts as a cruiserweightbefore he was knocked out in the fourth round by Aloua across the Tasman in April.
Gone was Pitt's unblemished record and a handful of regional titles, which are now in Aloua's possession.
Aloua, ranked 15th by the WBA and WBO, has since returned to live in New Zealand after spending the past few years in Sydney. He will meet Daniel Baff, ranked 14th in the WBA, in one of the feature bouts at the Super 8, which will be held at the North Shore Events Centre.
The Super 8 fight night will be headlined by Kiwi veterans Shane Cameron and Kali Meehan who will square off for the vacant WBA Oceania heavyweight title.
The eight-man tournament will feature mostly Australasian boxers, including Kiwi Monty Filimaea and Australian Daniel Ammann, who will be matched up to meet over three three-minute rounds in quarter-finals until an eventual champion is crowned.
"I really want to come back and fight Aloua again," Pitt said. "I want the rematch, so if I can get over there and start knocking some people out then the general public might say it's a fight that has to happen and he might have to take it, so that's my motivation for it. I want to redeem myself from my last performance."
The Melbourne-based Pitt (15-1) has produced 10 of his 12 career knockouts inside the first three rounds, which gives the indication the Super 8 format may suit his power-punching style.
He has fallen in and out of love with the sport numerous times but the 32-year-old said his loss to Aloua had stoked a fire within.
"I still feel like I've got plenty left in me and I wanted to have another crack, so here we are."
Nicknamed 'Hollywood' as a tip of the cap to his namesake of acting fame, the Pitt of the boxing persuasion never championed the moniker but it was bestowed upon him as a teenager.
"At one of my first amateur fights, one of the ring announcers said: 'We've got Brad 'Hollywood' Pitt there' and it's just stuck ever since then. I haven't named myself Hollywood, it's sort of just stuck to me. I don't mind it."
Sharing a name with a celebrity also brought the inevitable wisecracks: "I've heard all the jokes," he chuckled.
