Spy can reveal David Nyika and Lexy Thornberry are officially an item. Photo / Supplied
Spy can reveal David Nyika and Lexy Thornberry are officially an item. Photo / Supplied
Professional boxer David Nyika’s ringside kiss from last year’s Love Island Australia contestant Lexy Thornberry was nearly as sensational as his knockout win over Titi Motusaga at Rod Laver stadium in Melbourne last Sunday.
Spy can reveal the pair are officially an item with the loved-up couple calling each other Tarzan and Jane.
Nyika, 27, has different themes for all of his fights and likes to dress as characters from TV shows for his walkouts during fights. He decided months ago the theme for his Melbourne bout would be Tarzan.
“When me and Lexy got together I hinted that Lexy could be the Jane to my Tarzan, and without telling me she went and bought a yellow dress to complete the look. It was such a great surprise,” Nyika tells Spy.
The double Commonwealth Games gold medallist and Olympic bronze medallist met Thornberry through Nyika’s Aussie trainer dad Noel.
Thornberry, 21, is the granddaughter of Australian boxer Trevor “Iceman” Thornberry, niece of world champion Ricky Thornberry. Her younger brother Cassidy is also an upcoming boxer.
Lexy was discovered by Love Island Australia scouts while working in a bar in Brisbane. Nyika’s presence in Thornberry’s life seems to have put any flirtations she had on the reality show into the distant past.
Thornberry tells Spy she watched Nyika fight on TV at the 2021 Olympics and immediately named him as her celebrity crush. Fast forward a year later to last May when her father told her that a “New Zealand boxer from the Fury camp” was flying over from the UK to train with him for a month for his next fight in Australia.
“I did not realise he was talking about David at the time. But as time went on I put two and two together,” she says.
So a few days after Nyika flew to Australia, Thornberry went to visit her family at their farm in Gatton, Queensland.
David Nyika and Lexy Thornberry. Photo / Supplied
“We barely talked at first. But we ended up going for a run together that afternoon and knew straight away that we had a lot in common,” she says.
The pair share a passion for fitness and boxing and can relate to each other about having high public profiles and not taking the limelight too seriously.
“David has the type of positive energy that radiates. He’s a dreamer but he also puts in the work and effort to make it become a real thing,” Thornberry says.
David Nyika (right) poses after defeating Titi Motusaga. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
Nyika says once he saw Thornberry hit the mitts/hand pads it nearly “scared the c**p” out of him.
“Lexy takes her health and fitness as seriously as I do and is looking to make a big career in the industry,” he says.
