Up-and-coming Melbourne boxer Theo Dounias is ready for the biggest fight of his young career when he competes for the IBF World Youth Middleweight Title.

The fight will be Dounias’s eighth pro fight, 6-1 record, and held at the Melbourne Pavilion on May 3.

“It’s what everyone aspires to do in this sport, fighting for a world title,” he told Neos Kosmos.

“I’m super pumped up. It’s sort of hard to believe we’re here, getting ready for it and to be on the big stage.”

He said training has definitely amped up and been taken to the next level.

Dounias fights out of JD Fight Centre in Cranbourne, a gym run by his father John.

So he has been around combat sport his entire life, having started up at five-years-old.

When he turned pro at 18 he didn’t get fights for the first three years and then the COVID pandemic happened.

The 25-year-old said that it was also a difficult period to come out of.

“It was just impossible. I was training full time pretty much during COVID, that’s literally all I was doing,” he said.

“Then we come back and everyone was out of shape. No one was in their weight class.

“I’m trying to make fights and everyone wanted like six months’ notice.

“I’ve gone, man, I haven’t even stopped training. I’m ready to rock, ready to go.

“It was just annoying. I was ready to go within weeks of coming out of lockdown I was ready and it ended up being six months later we finally get a fight in.”

That is how it’s been for his career so far.

“It’s just been hard to get fights… to get people in the ring, but everything happens for a reason and we’re here now.”

Dounias’s dad is from Corinthia and his mum’s parents were from Athens. He is proud of being Greek.

“We grew up going to the Dandenong and Springvale Church because that’s where we are,” he said.

“I ended up getting married a couple of years ago at the Red Hill Greek Church.

We were going to go to where we usually go to, Springvale, which is where all our family functions are held, good or bad but we wanted to get married in more of a greener scene, so we started going to the Red Hill Church.”

That has now become the family church with his wife and three kids.

They have a boy and two girls.

His eldest, the son, even enjoys watching him train and goes on runs together with his little push bike.

When thinking of Greek Australians and boxing, the first name that comes to mind is George Kambosos Jr, and that is who Dounias tries to model himself after.

“If he does something, I sort of look at it and I got ‘Oh that makes sense for me as well’.”

“All he talks about is the Greek community… he talks about his heritage.

“He’s just a role model. He’s paving the way. There’s not much to think about because I just have to look at what he’s done and replicate it.”

He said it would mean a lot to have the Greek community get behind him like they have for Kambosos.

Dounias also dons the blue and white and continues to do so despite having people be against it over the years.

“I’ve had heaps of people in the boxing world say ‘you need to change your colours’, you need to do this, you need to do that. And I just said, ‘well you know when the Mexicans fight in Las Vegas, they wear their colours, don’t they? Well we’re fighting in Melbourne. We’re fighting in Australia and I’m a Greek. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Even my new fight shorts for this fight… got a Greek flag on my shorts. Got the Australian flag on my shorts. I’m here to represent.”