If Carlos Takam thought Joseph Parker was tough, he hadn't counted on running into the Kiwi boxer's mum in the build-up to tonight's heavyweight clash.
Takam was sitting in a corner booth at Papatoetoe's Burger King waiting for a press conference to start this week when Parker's mother, Sala, met him for the first time.
"You are looking well," Sala said to the hulking 35-year-old from Cameroon, a professional boxer for 12 years, before kissing him on both cheeks. "You're not going to beat my son up on Saturday, are you?"
If Sala was hoping to kill Takam with kindness, it was a good pre-emptive strike. There were smiles from both her and the French-speaking Takam, but she knows once he and Joseph enter the Vodafone Events Centre ring in Manukau - about 10km from where Joseph, now 24 and based in Las Vegas, grew up - then her son is at risk of injury.
After her brief meeting with Takam, and the press conference which she listened to intently, Sala told of her fears: "It's a huge worry. You just hope and pray that at the end of the fight he will come out in one piece and unhurt."