"The Mountain" retires from boxing: "I never really loved the sport"

Hafthor Bjornsson, who is most notably known as “The Mountain” from HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones, has announced his retirement from boxing.

“The Mountain” Hafthor last competed in March when he took on his bitter rival from his Strongman days, Eddie Hall. The Icelandic giant controlled the better part of the bout and won by unanimous decision. Since then he’s been busy trying to fight boxing champion Tyson Fury. It’s a fight that Fury has shown interest in previously. However, despite both parties seeming eagerness to compete against each other, “The Mountain” reveals that a deal couldn’t be reached; consequently, he’s retiring from the sport.

“I’ll admit there was a time when there was talks between Tyson Fury and I, well his team and my team,” Bjornsson said on his YouTube channel.

“There was build-up starting, but that never went through.”

Just a few days ago Fury announced his intention to take on Derek Chisora in his next bout. When it dawned on Bjornsson that the fight against Fury was a no-go, he decided to end his brief boxing career.

“Now I’ve made a difficult decision and the reason why it took me so long to finally make this video was because this is actually a very difficult thing to talk about.”

“I’ve made a decision to move on from boxing, to not compete in boxing again, to say goodbye to boxing and just not fight again.”

“I had a good run, I did it for two-and-a-half years.”

The reason Bjornsson started boxing was to challenge himself and show fans that he had what it takes to succeed in the squared circle. At the same time, Bjornsson never had any love for the sport, preferring weightlifting to boxing circuits.

“It was nice to do so because first when I started I had a lot of people not believing in me.”

“I was a beginner in boxing, but I proved a lot of people wrong by working hard.”

“I proved people wrong and I made people proud, and that was very satisfying for me.”

“But in reality, the passion was never there, it was all grind and I never really loved the sport.”

“That’s just the hard truth.”

“I have a lot of respect for the sport because I know how much work goes into boxing.”

“Just the passion isn’t there.”

In total, “The Mountain” had four fights, with two of them being exhibition bouts. Last year, he defeated professional armwrestler Devon Laratt by TKO in the first round. Bjornsson later went on to defeat bitter rival Hall earlier this year. Leading up to his fights he would weigh in at between 320 to 335 lbs.