Instantly cast as a fearsome Bond villain archetype, the beast from Dagestan was either wrestling bears in the forest or quickly scything down any heavyweight who dared step into the ring with him.

A pair of inside-distance defeats, to Agit Kabayel and Guido Vianello, may have punctured his veneer of invincibility, but his next opponent, Tyson Fury, has labeled him "the biggest, scariest, ugliest bloke" he’s ever seen ahead of their April 11 clash, which could reshape the heavyweight landscape completely.

But although his reputation might precede him, the 36-year-old cuts a disarmingly unassuming figure when he sits down with The Ring overlooking Tottenham Hotspur Stadium pitch where he will fight Fury on April 11.

A man of deep faith, Makhmudov is thoughtful in his responses and speaks so quietly he is almost impossible to hear. He has been made a significant underdog against Fury, who will be boxing for the first time in 16 months by the time fight night rolls around, but it may come as little surprise that Makhmudov is not in London exclusively for the paycheck.

“I just need to win this fight,” Makhmudov says. “I feel like everything in my life since I was nine years old has brought me here. ... Exactly to here.

“That’s why I’m not thinking about anything else, about what might happen after this fight. I am just fully focused on winning this fight and changing my life forever.”

It is now 27 years since he first walked into a boxing gym, after his mother enlisted an uncle to try and wrestle the kid back onto the straight and narrow.

“My uncle was doing karate at the time, but his friend had a boxing gym in my hometown,” he said. “My mother had asked him, 'Please, get him doing some sport.’ I was always fighting in the street. Everyday I was fighting in the street. I don’t know why. I’m not aggressive or anything like that, but I found myself getting into trouble.

“Even if I was going to play soccer, other guys would know I was ready to fight. If someone asked me to fight, I couldn’t say no because then you’ve lost already, and you’re scared. I would always say yes. Then they would organize a fight, even if we don’t have a problem with each other, they would push us into a fight and I would just fight, fight, fight.

“Understandably, my mother was worried by all of this and knew I needed to spend my energy in the right way. That’s why she asked my uncle to take me boxing in the first place.”

However, it was not exactly plain sailing and it would be another five years before Makhmudov had the chance to officially fight for the first time.

“Once I had started, they kicked me out after a year because I was still fighting with older guys,” he said. “Then I changed sports to soccer, but they also kicked me out, so then I started kickboxing. When I was around 14, I think, I had my first competition, and then it grew from there.”

He was a relatively late starter in the professional game, too. He was 28 by the time he made his debut, stopping Jaime Barajas in just 24 seconds in December 2017.

He would end six of his first seven fights inside the first round, with the other finishing after a minute of the second. It was clear that Makhmudov could move quickly through the levels.

“I remember when my uncle explained to me when I was a kid that I could be big like Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson,” he said. “But then he brought round a VHS of a Mike Tyson documentary. When I watched that, I just thought, 'That’s what I want to be.’”

It was not until his 15th fight that he was taken the distance, but he still did enough to beat the durable Carlos Takam widely on points. Another three knockouts followed, lifting Makhmudov into the No. 1 position with the WBC, but he unraveled against Kabayel in Riyadh in December 2023 and has been battling to climb back to the top ever since.

This bout with Fury will represent Makhmudov’s second consecutive outing on British soil following his October points victory over Dave Allen, which became his unofficial introduction to UK fight fans. Allen, too, had spent much of the buildup describing how "scary" Makhmudov looks, but they ended up good friends and were even pictured with the Doncaster man’s two children a few days later.

“People know me a little better now for sure,” he says. “Dave Allen is a hero here, people really love him. I see that. But before that fight I said, ‘Guys, you will love me’ and I think I definitely gained some fans here.

"On April 11 we are fighting here in England, but not everyone in this stadium will support Tyson Fury. There will be British fans supporting me, I’m sure of that.”

His encounter with Fury at Spurs will close a remarkable circle for both men, who first met in Laval, Canada, in December 2017, a week after Makhmudov’s debut. That night, Fury’s close friend Billy Joe Saunders beat local star David Lemieux with a masterclass performance, but it did not seem as if the Gypsy King would ever box again.

At that point, Fury weighed close to 400 pounds after crashing off the rails in the wake of his stunning victory over Wladimir Klitschko two years earlier. And Makhmudov, who asked the Englishman for a picture purely as a fan, never expected their paths to eventually cross as they will soon.

“Tyson Fury is a big name in boxing,” Makhmudov says. “A legend. He beat Wladimir Klitschko, he shocked the world that night. He has beaten real giants in boxing. He has a good history, but now it’s my time.

“It’s my time to beat him, to turn my situation around and to make my own history.”