Work was slow during the pandemic for Irishman Steven Ward, and then the phone rang.
Putting in shifts on a building site, the career of the Belfastman had slowed – as many had during Covid – before he was presented with an unusual proposition.
“I was laboring on the building site,” recalls the recently retired 35-year-old. “I got a phone call from my manager, saying, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s just a stupid question. I’m in Belfast. Where else am I going to be?’ And he says, ‘Right, Thor wants to meet you.’”
His manager was talking about strongman/actor Hafthor Bjornsson, aka The Mountain, who stands nearly 6ft 8ins and weighed around 400lbs; someone who at the time held the deadlift world record and had increased his fame with his role on Game of Thrones.
“I said, ‘Who’s Thor?’” replied Ward. “He says, ‘The Mountain.’ I thought, ‘Right, this is a piss take.’ Some Greek God… and he’s called The Mountain… They said, ‘Go down to the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast, they wanna meet you.’”
Ward went down in flip flops, a dirty T-shirt and a pair of shorts, unsure what to expect. He then waited in reception and the lift door opened.
“And I have never seen a bigger man in my life. This guy is so big, he comes out sideways out of the lift,” smiles Ward.
The two engaged in small talk, and initially Ward thought his assignment was to help train Thor to fight fellow strongman Eddie Hall; perhaps even spar with him. Ward had, after all, done something similar with former cricketer Freddie Flintoff when he tried his hand at boxing, and Ward felt this could be the same type of deal.
“I’ll take big Thor around, teach him a bit of boxing,” Ward thought to himself.
But as the conversation went on, Ward heard the huge Icelander say: “Yeah, yeah, when we fight…”
“What?” asked Ward.
“Are we fighting, big man?”
“Oh, I’ll let your management talk to you about that,” Thor answered.
Ward called his manager.
“This big man says he’s fighting me?”
“Well, there’s talk about it.”
“Give us a few quid, I’ll fight him no problem.” Ward said. And the fight, a four-round exhibition, was made.
Ward picked Thor up the next day in his car, which the Irishman said tilted to one side because of Thor’s enormous weight in the passenger seat, they did a boxing session and then eventually fought in Dubai. It was supposed to be Iceland, but Covid regulations at the time stopped it from happening there.
Thor weighed in 170-200lbs heavier than Ward. In fact, the discrepancy was so great that when Ward weighed in at around 93-94kg, he told the announcer to say he was 99kg so Thor might think he was bigger.
Ward is 6ft 2ins and recently ventured up to cruiserweight from 175lbs.
In the build-up, the Irishman was sent memes by his friends of Thor killing off characters in Game of Thrones, with Ward’s head replacing those of the actors – including that gory scene where he gets his hands on Pedro Pascal, who stars as Oberyn Martell.
Before the fight, Ward and Thor spoke.
“’I need this to be real for when I fight Eddie Hall,’” he told Ward, who had been a good amateur. “‘I need the nerves.’ AndI was like, ‘Okay.’”
Although Ward had his Everlast gloves removed and had to use 16oz gloves, he and Thor went face-to-face at Conrad in Dubai.
“In the fight, a guy called Asam was out doing my corner and he had helped in the gym with [Ward’s coaches] Jamie Moore and Nigel Travis, and at the end of every round he’d say, ‘Just move around and tire him out,’ and I kept saying ‘Can I get wired into him yet,’ and he kept saying, ‘No, no, wait another round.’”
The contest is on YouTube and, as one might expect, Ward looks comfortable and picks and probes with his jab and doesn’t take liberties with the big novice.
But the size discrepancy meant he had to stay switched on.
“ or a steel bar and it wasn’t the glove, it was like his forearm and his bicep,” recalled Ward. “It was like someone got a tree and was waving a tree about. Do you know when you’re about to be hit and you go to block and the shot is too long so the glove’s above my head, his forearm was like a baseball bat it was that thick.
“But it was good fun.”
Ward said it was “nowhere near” a career high payday, but added: “It was better than working on the building sites.”
Thor was full of praise, talked about how good Ward was and how hard the sport is.
Ward bowed out of boxing recently on the back of a big all-Ireland win over Tommy McCarthy before Cuban veteran Mike Perez stopped him in nine rounds in Ipswich in June.
As Ward and Thor spent more time together, Ward also had a reciprocal appreciation of what it takes to be a strong man.
“It can be difficult - you don’t fit anywhere, often out of breath, always eating - to be that type of strongman,” he said.
But he had only good things to say about the giant Icelander and working with him.
“Absolute gentleman, by the way. Pure athlete. He’s a monster, that man.”
