Boxer Mai Soliman Dreamed of the Pyramids - Now She'll Fight There

Mai Soliman had a dream. It was 2022. The Australian-Egyptian boxer was fighting in front of the Great Pyramids of Giza for a world title. She woke up crying with goosebumps all over her body. It felt so real. Soliman was born in Cairo, grew up around the Ma’adi neighbourhood, and started sports young, swimming at Cairo Sporting Club where she won a national title before she was a teenager. Her father's work moved the family to Dublin, then back to Egypt, then to Sydney when she was nine and a half. Sydney is where she stayed. But Cairo never left. She goes back at least once a year. She keeps up her Arabic, stays close to family and makes new connections every time she visits. For someone who has lived across three continents, the thread back home has never snapped. "I don't want to say I'm patriotic," she tells SceneSports. “But I am.” Boxing wasn't in the picture yet. At 17, during her last year of high school, Soliman walked into Tszyu Fight Club - a gym built on the legacy of legendary boxer Kostya Tszyu - and put on gloves for the first time. For the entire first year, her parents had no idea. "In Egypt, it's probably a conversation you don't know how to have," she tells SceneSports. Her parents eventually found out. It wasn't easy, but Soliman kept training, kept showing up, and somewhere along the way, resistance turned into pride. “Now they’re my biggest supporters ever,” Soliman says. From those first sessions at Tszyu, Soliman has built a professional record of 10-1, with nine straight wins. The most telling of those came against Jasmine Parr - she went in as the underdog, fell behind, and stopped Parr in the seventh round. Close enough to hurt, and then some. Years after she first dreamt it, Soliman spoke her dream to fight in front of the Pyramids when she appeared on a podcast in Egypt. She wanted to use that bout to bring a world title back to Egypt. Nobody had asked her about it. She just blurted it out. The underdog tag hasn't left her, and she doesn't want it to. She’s taking that label into the biggest fight of her life — the one she dreamed of and spoke into existence. From a dream to reality Turki Alalshikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority who’s been reshaping professional boxing, caught the clip of Soliman's podcast interview and shared it. He flew to Cairo a few weeks later, and announced Glory in Giza, the high-profile boxing event where undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (24–0) will take on legendary kickboxer Rico Verhoeven on Saturday, May 23rd, 2026, at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt for the WBC Heavyweight title. Within weeks, Soliman got a phone call on her way to training. "They said Turki would like you to fight for a world title in front of the Pyramids," Soliman told SceneSports. “There was no going back and forth, no, nothing…I just said yes.” She went back and rewatched the clip recently. The timestamp doesn't lie — she was calling her shot before Alalshikh had even landed in Cairo. "I spun out," she says. "That is so scary." Fight night at the Pyramids Soliman will challenge Mizuki Hiruta, the undefeated Japanese southpaw who enters at 10-0, a six-time world title defender and Ring Magazine's 2025 Female Fighter of the Year.  Her parents will be ringside. The Pyramids will be behind her. Across from her, an undefeated world champion. And on her phone — timestamped, undeniable — a clip of her calling all of this before it existed. "As a Middle East, North African female athlete," she says, "I just want to show that we can dream big and make it happen.” When young athletes in this region see someone who looks like them competing on a stage this big, it rewires what they think is possible, she said. That’s the point. That's always been the point. One question remained. Does Soliman remember how the dream ended? Yes, she told us. She won.