In his old life as a Jacksonville Jaguar, Austen Lane once clambered up into the grandstands to punch on with some rival fan.

Same as during more than one tackling pile on, this $2 million defensive end remembers playing his part in a swirl all fishhooks, eye gouges and violence.

“But American football now,” he shrugs, “it’s changed a lot since I played”.

Yet as for the man himself?

Nah, not so much.

Which is why, despite being 10 years removed from his NFL career, 35-year-old Lane is still looking to showcase every inch of the athleticism, courage and grit which took him to the Big Show when he throws down at UFC 293, Sunday.

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Squaring off against popular Australian heavyweight Justin Tafa, Lane will receive a hostile reception from inside the sold out Qudos Bank Arena.

But worry?

“I made my NFL debut at Cowboys Stadium, Dallas,” he grins. “With 80,000 booing me.

“So I’m OK.

“Having experienced so many moments like that in my early 20s, it really has set me up for this.”

Same deal his first college practice in Kentucky, when this kid from a tiny Wisconsin town of 1300 – and graduating class of only 54 — found himself laid out, before even the session was done, on a hospital gurney.

“First college session, and I pass out on the field,” grins the Murray State alumni.

“I arrive that day, it’s 102 degrees.

“And in helmets, I just wasn’t used to the heat … I eventually passed out with heat stroke.”

So it was bad?

“Oh, I was taken to hospital, IV drip, the works,” Lane cackles.

“I remember being laid out on this gurney in the ER, calling my mum and saying ‘hey, I’m not sure this is for me’.

“I told her how I hadn’t even been able to survive my first practice.

“How I was ready to leave.

“I was 12 hours from home, in hospital, thinking ‘What am I doing here?’

“But the message mum told me was the same one she’d told me all my life

“She said ‘you have to stay two more weeks’.

“Said that if I started having fun in those two weeks, if I got a smile back on my face, then I had to stay.”

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So eventually, Lane was cleared from the ER and, within days, returned to practice.

“Which was just a little bit easier,” he recalls.

Same with the one after that.

“And after a while I started having fun,” he says. “And when I started having fun on that field, I started having success.”

Didn’t he what.

Signed by Jacksonville in the fifth round of the 2010 NFL Draft, this 6’6’’ enforcer would go on to spend five years in the toughest sporting competition on the planet, along the way working his backside off with Kansas City, Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears.

It was this same attitude, years later, that Lane would then bring fighting, as he again recalled those words of his single mum, Julie, who he describes as the family “backbone”.

“Starting out as an amateur, I sparred professional boxers,” he continues, “and they didn’t take it easy on me.

“They’d hear ‘former NFL player’ and would go all out, busting my balls.

“At the time I didn’t even really know how to spar properly, it was you hit me and I’ll hit you back.

“So I got beat up, broke my nose a couple of times.

“That paved the way for me.”

Always has.

“People always see me and say ‘oh you must’ve been an NFL player’ because of my size,” he continues.

“Yet what they fail to realise is that guys my size, they’re a dime a dozen back home.

“So what separated me from them was my work ethic.

“I come from a town of 1300 people so was never some star-studded kid with all these opportunities.

“I had to put myself on the map.

“And the foundation has always been the work ethic.”

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Apart from chasing down NFL quarterbacks, Lane also once, during an Oakland Raiders game, attempted to climb the grandstands and hunt down a member of that old supporter crew, The Black Hole, who lined the Coliseum end zone.

“I was standing near Tyson Alualu, one of my best friends on the team,” Lane recounts of the defensive lineman who is these days with Pittsburgh Steelers. “He’s a quiet guy, reserved, really humble.

“Anyway, Raiders fans were hardcore back then and they started saying stuff to Tyson.

“It was really inappropriate, too. Racial stuff.

“But being the guy he is, Tyson didn’t say anything.

“But me, I started chirping back.

“It actually got to the point in warm ups where I jumped the barrier and started going up into the stands to get in one particular guy’s face.

“But my defensive co-ordinator, he called out ‘if you go up there, you aren’t playing tonight’.

“So that was it, I went back down.”

Elsewhere, Lane also revealed how the mother of current Jaguars defensive end, and proud Australian Adam Gotsis, actually gave him some travel tips, and sightseeing advice before heading Down Under for this fight.

“I was at Jaguars training camp the other week and his mum came up to me,” says the heavyweight who has also spent time after football working in Jacksonville sports radio.

“I had no idea who she was but we got to talking, I noticed the accent and came to find out it was Adam’s mum.

“And once I told her about my trip, she gave me all these things to do.

“I’ve talked to Adam a few times, I used to do a sports program and had him on a couple of times and he’s a great guy as well.”

Sunday’s showdown against Tafa will also be a rematch for the duo who back in June, for what was Lane’s UFC debut, fought for only 29 seconds before an accidental eye poke by the American saw the fight waved off.

So bad was the injury, Tafa initially thought his eyeball had come up.

Three months on, however, the Brisbane knockout artist has recovered and the pair are now set to throw down again.

Asked about the incident, Lane says: “I was going for the collar tie.

“I’ve had five professional fights and done the same thing every time — got the collar tie, pushed my opponent off and thrown an uppercut … although in this case I was going for the upkick.”

So what went wrong?

“When he threw the overhand, I saw it coming, went inside and tried to get the collar,” he explains.

“It’s a move that has been very beneficial to me. As I say, I’ve had five knockouts from doing it. Am very accustomed to it.

“But unfortunately on that given day, his head was in a spot, my fingers were in a spot … and now here we are again in Sydney.”