GAME OF THRONES star Hafthor Bjornsson has retired from boxing after just four fights.
Following three low-key exhibition bouts, the 33-year-old Icelandic giant, known as “The Mountain”, beat fellow strongman Eddie Hall by unanimous decision back in March.
He had been heavily linked with a fight against WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury – who even flew to Iceland in August to goad the strongman into a clash.
But now Bjornsson has confirmed he is hanging up the gloves, claiming he never truly loved the sport.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, he said: “I’ll admit there was a time when there was talks between Tyson Fury and I, his team and my team, there was build-up but that never went through.
“Now I’ve made a hard decision and the reason why it took me so long to make this video was because this is actually a very difficult thing to talk about.
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“I’ve made a decision to move on from boxing, to not compete in boxing again, to say goodbye to boxing and just not fight again.
“I had a good run, I did it for two-and-a-half years. It was nice to do so, because when I first started I had a lot of people not believing in me.”
He continued: “I proved a lot of people wrong by working hard and I made some people proud.
“In reality, the passion was never there, it was all grind as I never really loved the sport.
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“That’s just the truth, but I have a lot of respect for the sport because I know how much work goes into it.”
Bjornsson, who won the World’s Strongest Man contest in 2018, will now focus on surpassing a landmark he set three years ago.
In 2019, the Scandinavian broke the world record for throwing a 25kg weight over a 20-foot-tall bar.
And speaking about his future, he said: “It was like ‘what should I do?’ Spend the last few years as an athlete doing something I don’t love, or should I focus on my businesses and the things that I love, like lifting weights?
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“I have two new goals, I have two new cats and I want to break one of my world records.
“The world record I’m trying to beat is the weight over the bar with 25kg. My record is 20 feet and two inches, so I have to beat that to break my own record.”
Source: Boxing - thesun.co.uk
