Paul Gallen vs Nelson Asofa-Solomona: A Grudge Match in Boxing

Paul Gallen says the cheque is big. But the grudge is bigger.

Dragged out of retirement and straight into a five-round heavyweight showdown with Nelson Asofa-Solomona in Sydney on November 6, the 45-year-old insists this isn’t a nostalgic cash grab. It’s payback.

The two premiership-winning NRL enforcers will trade boots for gloves again, headlining a No Limit Boxing card after Gallen answered an SOS from the promoters, who have been scrambling to find anyone willing to stand opposite the former Melbourne Storm giant.

Gallen thought he was done. Sixteen months ago he walked away on his own terms, fresh from beating Sonny Bill Williams – a one-time WBA heavyweight world champion – and closing the book on one of Australian sport’s most unlikely second careers. The bank balance was healthy, the body sore, the itch seemingly scratched.

Then Asofa-Solomona kept talking.

According to Gallen, the towering front-rower crossed a line that matters deeply in rugby league circles: mateship. Gallen says he helped open the door to Asofa-Solomona’s boxing move, only to watch his name get dragged into every post-fight call-out.

"I rang No Limit for him," Gallen told AAP. "Well, not for him, but I did ring them and say he wants to get involved in boxing."

That, in Gallen’s world, came with an expectation of respect. Instead, he says, it turned into ammunition.

"So for him to then sign with them and to be calling me out after every fight he's had, it's just not a bloke thing to do. I don't think it's the right thing to do.

"I told him I was done. I told him I was finished. He had all that intimate knowledge and now he can't stop calling me out. I'm going to smash his face in."

The promoters first dangled a million-dollar offer to lure Gallen back for a meeting with “The Big Nasty”. He said no. The answer stayed no even as the noise around Asofa-Solomona grew and the calls became more pointed.

But money talks, and so does pride. When No Limit pushed even more cash across the table, desperate to find a dance partner for their two-metre headline act, the veteran finally bit.

He will walk in 15 years older and 20 centimetres shorter than Asofa-Solomona. On paper, it looks like a mismatch. Gallen has heard that before.

He heard it before Sonny Bill Williams. Then he outworked and outpunched the taller man, adding another scalp to a boxing résumé that has already earned him around $25 million and turned him into No Limit’s long-time poster boy.

This time, though, the build-up carries a nastier edge. Gallen doesn’t just want to win; he wants to expose what he sees as a manufactured monster.

In his eyes, Asofa-Solomona is a powerful rugby league forward, not a serious long-term boxer.

He has watched the Storm prop blast through his first three professional opponents – fellow ex-NRL forwards Jeremy Latimore, Jarrod Wallace and George Burgess – under a nine-fight, multi-year deal with No Limit. The results have been dominant, the hype machine rolling, the call-outs relentless.

For Gallen, that’s precisely the problem.

"After his second fight when he called me out, I was like, 'mate, stand on your own two feet. Be a man. Make your own way in boxing, stop using my name to'," he said.

The frustration runs deeper than a few barbs on a microphone. Gallen believes Asofa-Solomona deliberately targeted the one opponent who had publicly closed the door.

"He wasn't calling out Curtis Scott. He's not calling out Junior Paulo. They're footy players. They're younger. I'm 45. He keeps bringing up my name after the fact because he knows I didn't want to do this anymore.

I'm just really disappointed in that. It's just not brave. He's a f***ing rat for it and he's lit a fire in me that's made me want to come back and I get to try and do something about it."

So the retired warhorse laces them up again.

A younger, bigger man waits across the ring. A promoter’s dream. A grudge born from what one old forward sees as a broken code.

On November 6, in a Sydney ring, Paul Gallen intends to teach Nelson Asofa-Solomona what respect looks like – his way.