Canberra boxer-turned-stonemason Stephen Lovett looks like a movie star from a bygone era on the cover of his new book Tough is Not Enough.
There is a kind of old-school Hollywood sheen to it all; the curl of his hair, his classic features unsullied by years in the ring.
"The modern Les Darcy," as his one-time manager Dominic Kelly once described him.
His book evokes more Hollywood illusions, namely Marlon Brando as shattered boxer Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront as Malloy realises, with despair, "I coulda been a contender. I could have been somebody".
Lovett's book is about chasing a dream, throwing everything at it, and still not achieving it.
That dream was to be a world champion boxer. A dream he'd had since he was 13 but "never said it out loud to anyone". Something he couldn't let go of - until now. Just.
"I'll never be a world champion. I'll never have fame and fortune. I won't be special. I'm just normal, lost in the crowd of everyone else," he writes in the book.
Tough is not Enough is nothing if not raw and honest. It's Lovett finding his voice after years of not speaking up, feeling let down by people he trusted and both "loving and hating his life".
It's about finding new goals and "focusing on the good in life".
In person, 39-year-old Lovett is a straight-talker. Down-to-earth. Maybe still more than a little bit bruised, emotionally, from his experiences.
He is husband to Alexandra, an American graphic designer he met in Texas. The couple have a son Leonardo, 4, and have just welcomed six-week-old twins, Eloise and Juliet.
It's all nappies and feeding times at their home in Gordon, with Alexandra's parents and sister visiting from the United States as they all get used to life with newborn twins and the family expanding overnight from three to five. (Both sides of the family have twins in past generations.)
There's no doubt Steve Lovett was a contender. He had 60 amateur wins and 10 losses. In the professional ranks, he had 18 wins and three losses, with 14 knockouts. In his early years, he was on a scholarship with the Australian Institute of Sport. He won selection for the World Boxing Amateur Championships but a broken nose stopped him from competing. He came close to Commonwealth Games selection.
As a professional boxer, he'd combined a full-on training schedule with the back-breaking work of being a stonemason. He lived and trained in the United States for five years. He boxed centre-stage at the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas. He had American coach Ronnie Shields training him, the same man who'd worked with Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. Australian boxing legend Daniel Geale was in his corner, often sparring with Lovett and tipping him to be the next world champion.
"I had a good run at it," Lovett said, simply.
But, in reality, boxing was a magnificent obsession that he couldn't shake. It amplified his anxieties and insecurities. It put a pressure on him that was almost unbearable. It looked glamorous from the outside, but there were times he could barely scrape together enough money to live. He felt abandoned by some of the people who should have been looking out for his interests. The internal tension had been right there from the start.
"Every fight, even in the amateurs, I'd get really anxious. I'd get really on edge. Somehow, I'd always get in the ring. But sometimes I'd get in the ring and freeze. I'd get in the ring but lose the fight. That was the early days. I was intimidated but I kept on doing it," Lovett said.
"I got to the stage where I got over the anxiety and started to perform good but then I started feeling the pressure from the outside, coaches, and the pressure from myself. The pressure that I needed to do this and I wasn't good enough. I went down the dark hole of feeling that I wasn't good enough. It got real hard.
"Growing up, I wasn't the most confident person but boxing gave me confidence. It was just a rollercoaster. Sometimes I'd feel really good. Sometimes I'd be really low.
"I felt I wasn't impressing people. I was always thinking about what others thought about me."
Originally from Cowra, Lovett and his brother Allan loved to watch on TV the stars of WWF - the World Wrestling Federation. The likes of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Rowdy Roddy Piper.
His grandfather, Reg Anderson, eventually told them the wrestling was "all fake" and that he was going to show them some "real fighting". Reg brought down a box full of videotapes of boxing matches. As soon as first VCR tape flickered to life, the 13-year-old was mesmerised.
"The first fight I ever saw was two heavyweights just slugging it out and I just thought it was the ultimate sport. And I was hooked," he said.
Lovett started training at the Cowra PCYC. His first fight was in Sydney at the age of 16. He lost. It was either nerves or the dodgy servo chicken sandwich he ate on the way to the fight.
But he didn't give up. Kept training. Kept fighting.
Lovett moved to Canberra at the age of 19 to study at the CIT to be a personal trainer. It was part of the bigger plan to keep boxing. To reach the highest levels of the sport.
"I wanted to compete against the top boxers in the country and represent Australia at the Olympics," he wrote in his book.
He trained, worked as a stonemason, had a good run with the amateur fights. Got to the AIS. Had injuries. Got dropped. Went professional. Met manager Dominic Kelly. Moved to Houston, Texas to pursue his dream to be a professional boxer. Had wins, losses. But then fights started to be put off or cancelled without warning.
In the end, Lovett got close to his dream. But never close enough. He felt like he had let down people around him. But, in reality, he'd probably been hung out to dry more than a few times by the people who should have been helping him, including when he moved back to Canberra.
"I wrote the book because it was sort of therapy for me. It was somewhat of a closure for me," he said.
"For me, the book is to show people what I went through and to show them a different way. I didn't have any balance. It was just boxing, boxing, boxing. So the book is more about having balance in life.
"Once I realised I wasn't going to fight anymore, I hadn't slept better than I had my whole life. I'd lost so much sleep because of the stress of boxing.
"I just lived it. I was obsessed. I'd get up at four or five in the morning and run 10ks and then work all day as a stonemason and then get back into the gym after work. I just felt like I always had to be doing something. I was too fixated with this one area of my life."
The bright part of the whole American experience was that he met Alexandra, on Tinder. She had moved to Houston from Mississippi to study. They were both smitten from the start.
"He was warm. Very warm," she said.
"I'm quite an extrovert and he's quite an introvert. So I think we balanced each other. He taught me a lot of patience. I feel in love with him very fast, very hard because he was just different to the guys I was used to."
They were married in the US in 2017. Lovett worries he even sometimes put boxing ahead of her. She says she never felt that way.
"Steve is the only man I've ever been with who has always put me first," she said.
"Despite all the crap he's had to shove away, I never once felt second to boxing. I think in a way I had so much respect for him in the sport, maybe others felt he put me second, but I never felt that way."
Lovett, meanwhile, says Alexandra was a wonderful distraction from boxing.
"She made me happy, at the end of the day," he said.
"Even though boxing was just killing me and beating me down all the time, she was the one person who could put a smile on my face."
The family is now firmly settled in Canberra. Alexandra works as a graphic designer with DCE (Danielle Cleary Events). Lovett has teamed up with a partner to open his own stonemason business.
Tough is Not Enough is dedicated to Lovett's grandfather Reg, the man who introduced him to boxing. Lovett knows his grandfather would be proud of him. No matter what.
Alexandra is too. Happy to see what her husband has achieved with the publication of his memoir.
"It's refreshing to see him put his heart into something else and it's so much more healthy," she said.
"After putting all that trauma down on paper, I can see the weight lift from his shoulders."
Life without boxing lays ahead for them all.
- Tough is Not Enough is published by Brolga Publishing.
