Austin Trout calls himself “one of the coolest nerds you ever met.” Fair enough. Nic Cage is a huge Superman freak, but we’ve seen his movies. “Cool” doesn’t apply to “The Wicker Man.” Stephen Colbert is obsessed with “Lord of the Rings,” but he’s not exactly James Dean. Robert Downey Jr. might be plenty cool, but at the end of the day, who’s going to argue with the guy who decks people for a living?
When Christmas shopping for Austin Trout, we can't recommend a Power Glove highly enough. (Photo illustration by Paul Palmer/Premier Boxing Champions)
So if Trout wants to lay claim to that title, he’s not going to take a lot of flack. Case in point, his downtime in training camp, where Trout is eagerly plowing through Assassin’s Creed Unity just to get out ahead of the October release of the next game in the series, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
“To be honest, I get more of my gaming done at camp,” said Austin Trout, who is preparing to fight Joey Hernandez in Los Angeles on September 8 (Fox Sports 1, 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT).
“When I’m at home, either my son takes over the game or my wife starts bugging me about doing something else besides playing video games. This is my time to game on.”
Which is how he finished Batman: Arkham Knight and is getting pumped up for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This is the best showing for a boxer vis-à-vis video games since Little Mac.
Any good nerd worth their salt and/or Comic-Con attendance badge knows that you don’t just stay in one lane. Trout is a comic book fan, too, who leans more toward the Marvel stuff than DC—with the necessary and completely understandable exception of Batman.
“I’m looking forward to Deadpool; I have all his comics,” Trout said of the upcoming Ryan Reynolds movie. “I’m glad they made it rated R, because then he could really be Deadpool. Looking at the trailers, I think it’s going to be awesome. Deadpool isn’t really a hero. He’s a merc, but he’s pretty dope.”
It’s been a good run for those of nerdy persuasion since Iron Man hit theaters in 2008, with comic book movies dominating the box office for much of the last seven years (or more, if you want to go back to the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises).
Then again, why wait for Deadpool when there’s an entire summer’s worth of superhero movies to tend to?
“I saw Ant-Man,” Trout said. “It was a lot better than I thought it would be. I haven’t seen Fantastic Four. It got horrible reviews. Which doesn’t surprise me because the first two sucked. Then they changed it all up. Was Stan Lee even in the boardroom when they were making these decisions? I don’t think so.”
In the meantime, keep up with our fight page for all your Trout vs Hernandez needs.
