Tim Wiese will turn from goalkeeper to grappler when he makes his in-ring debut for WWE in his native Germany on Thursday night.
The former Werder Bremen, Kaiserslautern and Hoffenheim stopper, who won six caps for his country between 2008 and 2012, will compete in a tag-team match in Munich.
Wiese will join forces with Irish star Sheamus and Swiss wrestler Cesaro to take on Puerto Rico's The Shining Stars aka Primo and Epico and American Bo Dallas - and he isn't lacking in confidence!
"I will hurt them, they won't hurt me," the 34-year-old told AFP. "Anyone can have a go, I'm going to be unbeatable.
"This is Champions League. WWE is the biggest thing in wrestling, so I'm fully focused and blending out everything else around me."
Wiese spent a week at WWE's state-of-the-art Performance Center in Orlando, Florida in September after being invited to the facility by WWE executive and 14-time world champion, Paul 'Triple H' Levesque.
The former gloveman, who once turned down the opportunity to be Iker Casillas' back-up at Real Madrid, says he is nearing ultimate ring shape.
"When I stopped playing, at my biggest I weighed 132kg, and I had to have about six to seven thousand calories a day," he said during an interview with The Guardian.
"Now I've cut that down to about three thousand calories and am down to about 120kg - I want to lose another three or four kilograms so I'm more explosive and more aggressive in the ring.
"I don't really see wrestling as an escape, it's an alternative to becoming fat and sitting on the couch."
WWE stars often make as much impact, if not greater, on the microphone than they do in the ring. It seems Wiese is no slouch in that department…
"I've got trash-talking in my blood," said the German.
"My game plan against the Shining Stars will basically be to go full throttle, beat them down out of the ring.
"Seeing as they weigh 30-40lbs less than I do, I will grab them, one with the left hand, one with the right, and end them. I'll drop kick Bo Dallas and throw him off the stage."
Wiese, who was jettisoned from the Hoffenheim team in 2013 after being thrown out of a party, added: "As a football player I tried to make people hate me. I like that I polarised opinion.
"If you are hated, people react to you on the pitch, so I never had a problem with that. I'd say half the wrestling fans like me, half the fans hate me, which is good - at least I'm being discussed."
Wiese is not the only goalkeeper to have moved into WWE - former Port Vale and Burton Albion custodian Stuart Tomlinson signed for the company in 2013 and was handed the ring name Hugo Knox.
Yet he appeared just once on WWE television, on an episode of NXT, and was recently released.