Lovett has driven back to Canberra the same night after watching former training partner and two-time world champion Daniel Geale go the full 12 rounds against Jarrod Fletcher in Sydney, only arriving home at 3.15am but still waking to an alarm that stays set at 4am. There are no exceptions.

"Normally I jump up right away, but this morning was a bit harder," Lovett confesses, wrapping his knuckles in preparation for 12 three-minute rounds on the heavy-bag, which he belts so hard that sprays of sweat stain the padded floor like a crime scene.

"There's times it gets tough, when the body's completely drained, but then you've got another guy standing in the corner wanting to punch you in the face. So you push through, that's when you get better.

"I won't give up until I become a world champion."

Lovett's power is not just in his punch, eight knockouts in 10 undefeated professional bouts, three since relocating to the United States this year.

The 5am training session in Canberra is just the start of a typical Lovett day. He then works 7am-3pm as a stonemason, splitting, lugging and laying huge rocks. When that shift ends, it's back to the gym for another two hours of conditioning training.

The knockout blow - Lovett is doing all this while back in Canberra on a break from his new professional boxing base, near Houston, Texas.

"Yeah, my work ethic is a strength," Lovett says energetically, cheekbones so high they seem to set his face in a permanent smile.

"I know what I have to do to get to the next level. I don't take shortcuts, I don't walk around and big-note myself and say I'm all that, because I'm not, I have to work to get there.

"It might look like I'm doing all this work for nothing now, but hopefully one day it pays off. It's about putting in the hours to be a master of what I do."

To understand his dedication to the sport, consider Lovett, now 29, has been boxing since he was 13. For all those years of training, he's fought a total 76 minutes and 19 seconds in five years as a professional.

Boxing has a reputation as a necessity sport. It's stereotypically a means to an end, a chance to catapult someone from the bad life to the good. A shot at replacing a life of rocks with diamonds.

But Lovett is a boxing purist. He grew up in the NSW central west town of Cowra, his mum working in a can factory, his dad in an abattoir.

"Nah, this isn't a Rocky story," Lovett grins, saying he'd never followed his old man to the slaughter shed to belt a refrigerated carcass.

"I was never in poverty or anything like that, I just loved the sport. All I thought about at school was boxing, I'd have exams coming up and I was just thinking about going for a run or doing the punching bag. Boxing has been my life since I was 13, I feel I can be the best at it."

It was his grandfather, Reg Anderson, who came to him when he was six, with a cricket bat in one hand and boxing gloves in the other. "Choose", he said.

Lovett went for the boxing gloves, but his mum wouldn't allow it. He became a talented junior cricketer instead, representing Central West NSW as a batsman.

Then, at 13, his grandfather came with a cardboard box of videos.

"They were old boxing tapes," Lovett says. "As soon as they went on, that was it for me, I wanted to be a boxer.

"We had an old swing set in the yard, so he took all the swings off and hung a punching bag off it and built a platform for the speedball.

"He's 94 now and he's not well. He's in Cowra Hospital, I go back to see him every week because he may not be around much longer.

"Last week I took him up the old boxing books he'd given me, a lot of stories about Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson. It was almost like he knew what I was talking about, but he couldn't speak. He has his good days and bad.

"When I started boxing he didn't really like it, he said to my mum 'I didn't get him into boxing to get hit'. I don't think he realised how much I looked up to him and how inspirational he is to me."

After his first year in the US, Lovett is more inspired than ever.

In 2012, the truth of Australian boxing had hit Lovett like a punch in the face.

He had just one fight for the year, as entire cards fell over and opponents withdrew late. In his first four years as a professional in Australia, Lovett could find only find seven bouts as a light heavyweight.

He was splitting his time between Canberra and Sydney, working as a stonemason's apprentice in Canberra and driving to Sydney to train and spar at Geale's Grange Old School gym. He was living in the garage of his Canberra boss, Joe Leahy, to save money on rent. It's where he's staying again now.

Meanwhile, NRL player Paul Gallen, rugby union star Quade Cooper and football code-hopper Sonny Bill Williams were building bigger boxing profiles in Australia with one-off pre-season novelty fights.

"It's hard to see when a footballer comes out and gets all this attention for a fight, you think I've been doing this for years and years, slugging it out and no one knows about me. But that's boxing," Lovett shrugs.

Rather than give up the fight, Lovett decided to take it on more aggressively by moving to the US, with a three-year plan to become a world champion.

Canberra's Dominic Kelly, of Empire Financial Planning, is now Lovett's Australian-based manager. It was only after Kelly, a keen amateur boxer, received a cold-call asking if he'd be willing to sponsor Lovett $500 for a patch on his shorts.

"I didn't realise how poorly backed he was," Kelly says. "It started playing on my mind, I'd be training and watching Steve and I thought, 'holy hell, no one's behind him'.

"We might be reaching, but with Steve, his looks and character, it's like the modern Les Darcy."

Kelly rallied investors to back Lovett and, on a whiteboard, they mapped out Lovett's "dream team" of staff who would help him reach his goal.

Lovett is now coached by hall-of-fame trainer Ronnie Shields, who once mentored Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield. He's managed in the US by Al Haymon, adviser to Floyd Mayweather Junior. He does his conditioning training at Danny Arnold's Plex facility in Stafford, Texas, alongside NBA and NFL stars.

Among such boxing royalty, Lovett's existence is still a spartan one. He trains six days a week, lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment, and his transport is a bicycle.

"As far as living, I've stepped up from a garage, so I can't complain," Lovett says laughing.

"I could be here working and earning a good living being a stonemason, but boxing is my passion.

"'I've got the perfect team to give me the best opportunity to make it in boxing. I've got nothing holding me back whatsoever.

"If I want to make it in boxing, the place to do it is the US. That's where the money is, the audience is and the most exposure. If I can make a name for myself over there, there's no looking back.

"I think I've got everything it takes to become a world champion. I've got the skills, I've got the power which will make me an exciting fighter and one people want to watch. That's the thing with boxing, you've got to be a crowd-friendly fighter."

Lovett's first fight in the US was at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, on the Canelo-Angulo undercard in March, a fight that drew a sellout crowd of 17,000.

Lovett stopped Mexican Francisco Molina just 73 seconds into the second round.

He returns to the US in January. He's got the nickname now, "Tough Love", and walks out to Men at Work's Down Under.

"Just flying into the airport at night you could see the lights of Las Vegas. I thought 'this is where it's at, this is where I want to be a main event one day'.

"The first year [in the US] was all about settling in, 2015 we step it up and in 2016 we want to be up in title contention. So these are important fights I'll be having next year to get to that stage.

"My strength is my power, I'm a good puncher. That's really beneficial for me because it makes the other guy hesitant. If I hit them they'll know about it ... I feel sorry for who I'm going to hit next."

Lovett is taking nothing for granted. He narrowly missed the 2008 Olympics as an amateur, but did enough to earn an AIS scholarship.

He made the Australian team for the world championships the following year, but was forced to withdraw because of injury.

It says a lot about about him that Lovett's favourite boxer of all time is the late world champion Aturo Gatti.

"He was the blood and guts warrior," Lovett says. "He'd be cut, blood everywhere, he'd be behind on all the scorecards. But he'd keep fighting, come back and knock a guy out. He worked so hard.

"I'm 29, I've got a long time in boxing ahead of me. [Australian] Sam Soliman won his first world title at age 40, he never gave up ... I've got a lot of time to become a world champion."