Ahead of this weekend's Sydney homecoming, George Kambosos Jr pauses and ponders over his life before boxing; a 20-year journey which has taken him to the mountain-top on the other side of the world and back.

He tells The Ring: "I'd sit there for hours, not doing school homework, instead I'd sit there doing my [boxing] homework, watching fighters and legends.

"We used to get given fight tapes and I'd be told 'have a watch of Corrales vs. Castillo', you know, 'watch them fights, watch that Gatti vs. Ward'.

"You start to dream as a young kid, it's all about a dream. You start to visualise, 'you know what, maybe one day, I can conquer the world'."

A couple of decades later and Kambosos Jr is ready to fight back home in Sydney, where he was born, for the first time since 2016.

It's been some ride for Kambosos Jr (21-3, 10 KOs), the eight years since.

The 31-year-old became Manny Pacquiao's chief sparring partner, fighting on two of the Filipino's undercards. He beat Mickey Bey and Lee Selby in litmus tests on away soil before unseating Teofimo Lopez as the lightweight division's top dog, winning the unified 135-pound titles in Madison Square Garden's 'little room'.

Though he dropped the titles in his next fight with Devin Haney, Kambosos Jr brought big-time boxing to Melbourne and Perth with a duo of undisputed world title bouts against the American and another versus Vasiliy Lomachencko, attracting just under 100,000 fans in total and millions of dollars at the gate.

On Saturday night, the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney will play host as Kambosos Jr takes on stand-in opponent and fellow Aussie Jake Wyllie (16-1, 15 KOs) after original foe Daud Yordan had to be pulled on medical grounds. The fight will stream live on DAZN.

Should Kambosos Jr win, an IBF junior-welterweight title shot against Richardson Hitchins back in New York City this summer awaits.

You'd be mistaken, through no fault of your own, for thinking that Kambosos Jr is overlooking an unproven fighter in Wyllie, with Hitchins waiting right around the corner. It's no secret Kambosos Jr likes to use social media as a tool to take verbal potshots at his adversaries.

One week it could be Hitchins, the next Lopez. Gervonta Davis has even come into the firing line in recent weeks.

But he adds: "I've been in big fights where there's a carrot dangling on the other side, so I've seen that many, many times, but I'm focused. I know that opportunity, again, to go back to New York and do it all and win it all again is there, but I won't lose my focus.

"But you know, if you take a cheap shot at Kambosos, 99.9 percent of the time I'm going to shoot and land when I come back with it. I'm the pound-for-pound number one on Twitter. No one's going to get one against me.

"I still feel that we're still one of the biggest names in the sport, we're constantly being mentioned every single day on social media and, you know, world champion fighters [are mentioning me]. I take that with a lot of pride. If someone comes at me on social media, I will not miss one."

Kambosos Jr admits he was bullied as a kid. "Life wasn't too flash for me as a 10-year-old," he says. He played Rugby League and held aspirations of going pro before his father Jim stepped in and took him to the boxing gym.

Puppy fat eventually morphed into muscle and the bullying stopped. Kambosos caught the bug. He continues: "People ask, how can you fall in love with that brutal sport? Where you're actually fighting another man? You've got to go in there and try to hit another man and knock him out while he's trying to do the same thing to you, but it was something about that raw combat.

"The raw aspect of it, everything is on me, I can make or break my career and where I want to go myself. And obviously losing all that weight and becoming this supreme athlete was incredible."

The former unified world champ also attributes his fiery attitude to those formative years as an adolescent. It's easy to be grateful and keep schtum about your position in a sport dominated by Americans, but Kambosos Jr swore years ago he would never be bullied again, hence the provocative approach with his fellow fighters.

"I'm not going to be bullied," he says. "I've been here before, and I'm going to stand up for myself. I think it all comes back from those times I was being bullied before I got into boxing."

By the end of the year, Kambosos Jr could once again be champion, and a two-weight titlist at that, after moving up to 140 pounds. Hitchins is a crafty operator and could represent a lot of the same problems Haney posed him in Melbourne.

A loss won't be the end of Kambosos Jr's world, though. He already has three on his record and has previously stressed defeats, particularly against elite opposition, shouldn't be held against any fighters.

"I think most fans, especially now that we're starting to forget about the zero, appreciate that the best got to fight the best and the model of boxing is starting to change," he says.

"The only guys I've lost to are all-time greats. As long as fans remember 'he fights the best, he steps up to anybody, he went out and did it all, he did everything he could to create legacy and history and he never ducked anyone'.

"That's a true warrior."