Football ground date for rising Rotherham boxer Taz Nadeem

GBM Sports has offered the Rotherham butcher an undercard slot to support the Terri Harper versus Natalie Zimmermann WBO world lightweight championship contest at Doncaster Rovers' ground.

Taz, who works in Masbrough and lives in Moorgate, said he had never expected to be campaigning in an outdoor stadium in only his sixth bout.

The show has sold 6,000 tickets already and will be screened live on DAZN.

"It has been such a roller coaster, everything has happened so fast" he says.

No opponent has been announced yet for the May 23 show, but it will be the first time the 25-yaer-old super middleweight has boxed professionally over six rounds.

Nadeem expects a better quality opponent than the five he has put to the sword since joining the paid ranks just 11 months ago.

Taz will doubtless attract more than his fair share of attention on the night. The public finds him fascinating, not just because of his 60 per cent KO rate but also a strapping athletic figure honed by years of CrossFit, the high-intensity, fitness programme.

His trainer Jamie Kennedy said Nadeem's time away from boxing – he was a champion CrossFitter for nine years – had forged the athlete he is now.

Tyson Fury once famously poured scorn on muscle-bound Anthony Joshua, saying he was more of a weight lifter than boxer.

But Jamie said Taz had: "definitely has come back (to boxing) with that power. People are saying when we get to 10 or 12 rounds, can muscly men perform like that?

"The way he has built that muscle mass, it is not normal muscle! It is explosive muscle, so we are not worried.

"He could do 12 rounds this afternoon if we wanted! When we are preparing for 12 rounds, we are not worried. He will do it without a problem. We are just excited."

The head coach of Millennium Boxing gym said the fighter had "fire in his belly. It is his ring and he is going to be victorious in that ring. It is a pride thing.

He said the athlete once had the drive to be one of the best in the world in CrossFit and that if he continued that theme in boxing, he would achieve his ambitions.

"He listens, we spend a lot of time chatting, not just coaching...he is all ears, like a sponge."

Taz's last outing was the first round TKO of Indian Jaskirat Singh at the Park Community Arena, Sheffield, in February.

He said Singh, unlike previous journeymen in the opposite corner, had "come to win, and brought 60 fans with him. "As soon as we touched gloves, he was on it straight away," Taz told Boxing King Media.

"It was good to have someone who engages."

He said his favourite knockout so far was his first "crazy" stoppage in the professional ranks.

He said the way he floored Russian Sergey Bannov "put me on the map - how many times do you get a 20 second knockout on your debut?"

There was a pattern developing with first round knockouts followed by points wins, he added.

As for his growing popularity, he said he was pleased that members of the public had reached out and supported him after his wins. It had boosted his confidence.