He was a 10-year-old kid who not even a month earlier had been taken to the local PCYC by his father to learn to box. His opponent? An 18-year-old not too interested in the idea of an exhibition bout.

"In 10 seconds he knocked me out. I was 10 years old in an exhibition, no joke, he came in and absolutely slaughtered me in 10 seconds," Lovelock said.

It would be enough to keep any ordinary 10-year-old from going back to the PCYC, but perhaps Lovelock didn't fit the mould of an ordinary kid.

"That gave me the mindset and the hunger, I remember it even as a 10-year-old kid, and I just wanted to get back to the gym," Lovelock said.

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"I won my next 11 fights. That made me the fighter I grew up to become, when I took that mentality throughout my whole career. That's why I don't think being an undefeated fighter is so good."

And it matters what Lovelock thinks.

Because today he is the Capital Fight Show matchmaker, handed the task of scouring cards across the country to set up bouts for Canberra's contenders.

Lovelock was born in Canberra and notched up a 12-7 record as a professional at cruiserweight, adopting that same mentality that no challenge was ever too great.

That's why in 2016 he flew to Japan to take on a heavyweight named Kyotaro Fujimoto in Tokyo. Fujimoto outweighed him by almost 25 kilograms, "but I never wanted to say no to a fight".

Lovelock brought down the curtain on his professional career in 2017 when he dominated Walter Pupu'a in Canberra.

From there he linked up with Capital Fight Show promoter Nick Boutzos as matchmaker. It marked the start of Lovelock's double life - the father of four also runs a security company in Queensland.

Step inside Lovelock's Brisbane home and you'll find a war room with whiteboards full of names. Among them are the likes of Arsene Fosso, Abe Archibald, Alex Cooper, Ben Dencio, Jorge Kapeen and Beau Hartas.

There are five-fight plans for each of Canberra's leading boxers, guiding them up the rankings and towards both national and regional title shots.

Among those plans was Friday's card at EPIC, headlined by world-ranked featherweight Brock Jarvis and Nort Beauchamp.

But those same plans Lovelock has drawn up on a whiteboard can go out the window in an instant. It might be because of a loss, an injury or a struggle to find a suitable opponent.

Look what happened to Cooper. Lovelock worked tirelessly to secure a fight for the 4-0 welterweight on Friday night's card, but nothing came to fruition. It's the downfall of televised cards, because "it means fighters are going to lose on TV now".

"I'll tell you, when I go to bed every night I'm lucky I'm still a matchmaker when I wake up in the morning. I want to quit it every single day, that's how hard the job is," Lovelock said.

"I always wanted to stay involved in the sport, I think after fighting I've had a lot of people approach me about coaching them. I've been in the sport for 28 years, but it's just something I wasn't passionate about.

"I think I'd be a good coach, but I was never passionate about it. I always thought if I am going to go to the gym every day and train someone, I might as well train myself and fight.

"I'd always dabbled in getting into that promoting side afterwards and now I've teamed up with Nick. My last fight was on Nick's show, I think I helped him out with a couple of fights on that card which is when Nick employed me as a matchmaker moving forward.

"If I'm going to be these boys' matchmaker, they've got to trust me. I'm not going to completely overmatch them and put them in a fight well above their means, I pride myself in putting on 50-50 fights. There has got to be that trust factor between teams and the matchmaker.

"I'm good at it because I know the industry, I know the fighters, I know a lot of the fight teams. It was destiny to go into it."