The 23-year-old will sing the New Zealand national anthem before the heavyweight world title fight between Joseph Parker and Andy Ruiz jun at Auckland’s Vector Arena.
"I got approached by [promoter] Duco Events. They had seen me sing our anthem before at the Mitre 10 Cup Championship final [at Forsyth Barr Stadium in October]," Morris said.
"I’ve done the league before as well, with the English anthem. They’d seen that and they approached me to come up."
A crowd of 10,000 is expected to pack out the Vector Arena, numbers not unfamiliar to Morris. However, promoters last month predicted a global television audience of up to 100 million people, from 100 different countries, could tune into the bout.
"[I’ve] never [sung at] boxing. So with the sporting side just the Four Nations for the league and the Mitre 10 Cup Championship [final]. So never boxing and never something so massive. It’s obviously the world title fight, so it will be something completely different."
It had the singer excited and her experience performing would help her as far as nerves went.
"You get more comfortable with your nerves; you get less nervous. I think there’s always some kind of adrenaline or something pumping through you and just the want to do a good job. Everyone knows the anthem, so you want to do justice to that."
Those audience numbers had the added bonus of giving her exposure to a wide range of people, which could act as a springboard the same way her performances at Forsyth Barr Stadium did.
"The dream is to get overseas; the ultimate dream would be to travel the world singing. So things like this where you get a pretty broad audience, that’s always exciting and appreciated as well. It’s a good chance to get some more exposure."
She would stay on and watch the fight afterwards, leaving no doubt where her loyalties lay.
"I wouldn’t call myself the biggest boxing fan. I appreciate watching it, I appreciate their skill, but it’s something different for me as well, so that’s pretty cool.’’‘‘[I’d] definitely would love Parker to win, obviously."
