How Tevita Pangai Jr went from delivering pizzas to packing a punch

The car has been driven to exhaustion and won’t last much longer on the road.

At the wheel, embarrassed about the noise the vehicle makes when it stops, is Tevita Pangai Jr, a talented 17-year-old footy player in Canberra’s under 20s system.

He slides his hulking frame out of the dark blue car, straightens out his Crust Pizza polo shirt, knocks on someone’s door and offloads their dinner.

He knows it’s the last pizza he’ll ever deliver.

The bank had approved his loan earlier that day, meaning he was finally able to buy his parents their very first house, which he purchased with his brother, Kilu.

After months of living off his pizza paycheck while saving his footy money for the deposit, his stint as the country’s hardest hitting delivery boy is finally over.

It’s the end of one life and the start of a completely different one, marked out in greasy pizza boxes and a new set of house keys.

Humble beginnings

Understanding Pangai Jr’s early years is the best way to properly comprehend the magnitude of the young star’s house purchase at the age of just 17.

His childhood wasn’t easy.

The sixth of eight kids born to Tevita and Olivia Pangai, he remembers frequent moves, public housing and a never-ending struggle to make ends meet.

“We were always going house to house, getting evicted because we couldn’t pay rent on time,” he says. “I grew up in rough neighbourhoods and housing commissions around Western Sydney, the Inner West, Newcastle and Canberra.

“It was a pretty tough upbringing, man.

“My parents always took us to church and tried to keep us on the straight path, but we’d cause a lot of mischief.”

At the age of eight, he decided footy was his most likely way of escaping the cycle, so for the next decade, that’s what he put his mind to.

If buying his parents a house was his inspiration, his older brothers provided him a close up example of what not to do when chasing a rugby league dream.

David, the oldest of the footy players, was a highly-touted forward who attracted the attention of four NRL clubs, but never played first grade due to a series of off-field incidents.

Mosese, a powerful winger, was a Holden Cup standout who made his NRL debut for the Cowboys in the opening round of the 2012 season. Two years later, while at the Raiders, he was named on the wing to play Penrith in a round 10 clash, but was dropped by Ricky Stuart after showing up to training 10 minutes late.

His one game for North Queensland almost 10 years ago remains his only NRL appearance.

With the mistakes of his brothers to guide him, a young Tevita showed plenty of early promise in Canberra. In 2015, he was named in the Holden Cup Team of the Year alongside future NRL stars Tom Trbojevic, Latrell Mitchell and Joey Manu. In 2016 – his third year representing the Junior Kangaroos – he showed his leadership qualities by captaining the side to a 34-20 win over the Junior Kiwis.

It was during the early stages of his impressive rise that Pangai Jr moonlighted as a pizza delivery driver. He’d roll out of bed early for the first of two or three training sessions at the Raiders, finish footy training at three in the afternoon and start his shift at 5pm.

“Terry Campese had a few Crust Pizza stores in Canberra, so I’d deliver pizzas four days a week in the afternoons,” he says. “I’d live off the pizza money and save all my footy money to put a deposit on a house for my parents.”

Pangai Jr was a kid who got things done.

That explains his second job delivering pizzas, and was the key to his move to the Broncos.

By the end of 2015, he was on the verge of an NRL debut for Canberra, but couldn’t quite make the leap. Unsure why he wasn’t getting a run, he rang then-Broncos coach Wayne Bennett. Six years on, he says, he was after guidance more than anything.

Bennett had other ideas.

“I’m the type of guy that’ll just ring up, so I called Wayne Bennett and asked what I needed to do to play,” he says. “I wasn’t asking to come to Brisbane, but he goes, ‘How would you feel about coming to the Broncos?’

“I’d already bought my parents a house, so the next step was playing in the NRL, so I just took it with both hands and haven’t looked back.”

Highs and lows

Those early years under Bennett at the Broncos were a dream. Pangai Jr delivered on the promise he showed in age-group and reserve grade footy in the ACT, made his Test debut for Tonga in a 2017 Rugby League World Cup win over the Kiwis and was widely regarded as a future State of Origin prospect.

After years of rising at 4am when his dad would start work as a taxi driver or at Steggles, it seemed he’d finally made it.

But the highs didn’t last.

Pangai Jr soon became well-acquainted with the NRL judiciary, and frequently spent extended stints on the sidelines through suspension. By 2020, Bennett was gone, the Broncos were struggling and Pangai Jr was on the outer. In August that year, he was stood down indefinitely and fined $30,000 for multiple Covid-19 biosecurity breaches.

As the Broncos board contemplated tearing up his lucrative contract, the six-Test star ditched social media and began working at a landscaping business.

Like so many other young men seeking purpose and direction, Pangai Jr turned to boxing, and reached out to Logan Boxing Team coach Chris McCullen.

“He came to the gym late last year, and Corey Parker was helping him as well,” McCullen says. “We’d be picking him up from work in the landscape yard, or dropping him off at work after training.

“He was working his backside off.”

The physical training kept the wayward star in shape, but the discipline and dedication boxing demands was even more beneficial.

“There was a lot of mental stuff in there that I believe changed Tevita to be the person he is today,” McCullen continues. “It was about learning that you can have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t work hard, it’s going to go to waste.

“That was the road he was heading down. He was going down a road that wasn’t good for him, and he probably would’ve thrown it away.”

Fifteen months after first stepping into McCullen’s gym, Pangai Jr will make his professional boxing debut in Brisbane this Saturday on a fight card featuring rising boxing stars Issac Hardman and Jai Opetaia.

The bout has flown under the radar, and Pangai Jr insists he isn’t in it for a quick buck or the attention. The 25-year-old has long held a deep love and respect for the sport.

He studies old fighters, counts Kostya Tszyu and Anthony Mundine as two of his favourites and has an agreement with his new club, the Bulldogs, to allow him to fight during the off-season.

“Technique-wise, Kostya Tszyu is probably the best to watch,” he says. “I love watching his son too, just his ring craft and control.

“I never grew up in a boxing gym or anything, but I’ve always loved it. Right now I’m just trying to learn the basics and find a style that suits me.”

McCullen goes further.

“His wife will say the same thing here, but everywhere we go, the guy shadow boxes – literally all the time,” he says. “It doesn't matter where we are. We’ll be walking down the street to have a coffee. At the lights in the car. He’s just always practicing.”

Perspective

The landscaping work and boxing training are reminders of how fleeting a footy career can be, but there were even higher highs and much more devastating lows to come in 2021.

Indeed, rugby league would become an afterthought in August when Tevita and his wife Anna lost their baby daughter, Georgia, who was delivered stillborn at 24 weeks.

“All I ever pictured in my mind was having you breathe on my chest for the first time, getting skin to skin, taking you to your first day of school, watch you and your mum play tennis and passing the football around with me in the back yard,” Pangai Jr wrote in a heartbreaking message to his daughter.

Reflecting on that heartache now, Pangai Jr says Anna’s resilience in the face of a series of family tragedies gave him strength to continue with his career.

“The last couple of years, she lost her mum, and now our daughter, and her dad is very sick as well,” he says. “She’s just showed me that there’s more to life.

“Whatever I’m experiencing in the downsides of my sporting career, it’s nothing to what she’s had to cope with.

“She’s my rock.”

Pangai Jr played his last game for the Broncos in June, and joined Penrith on a short-term deal before beginning a big money three-year contract with the Bulldogs in 2022.

In a whirlwind couple of months, he delayed his Panthers debut to be with Anna in August, before slotting in for the side’s march to the Grand Final, although he pulled out of the decider with a knee injury.

Pangai Jr fit in well with Penrith’s style of play, scoring two tries in his six games, and wants to take what he learned during that two-month stint to the Bulldogs.

“They buy in to all the little things that win footy games – kick pressure, kick-chase – and other things that not every other teams do,” he says of Penrith. “It was all the dirty stuff in the middle, playing extra minutes and working with each other as a team.

“I’ll bring what I can bring [to the Bulldogs]. I’ll show my commitment and just do those little things I’ve learned from Penrith.”

Still just 25, and with plenty of football left ahead of him, Pangai Jr is also starting to think about the future. From his own experiences – good and bad – of navigating life under the intense spotlight of the NRL, he says he wants to be a role model for younger players coming through.

“Next is trying to be a leader,” he says. “I’m just trying to be my best. I’ve made my mistakes, but we’re all human.

“I’m just doing my best to learn from them.”