JUSTIN Fortune has a 20cm scar along the side of his neck that looks like someone sliced him open with a sickle and skin grafts on his arms and legs consistent with a shark attack.
You won?t hear him complaining about them. The Australian boxer who once fought Lennox Lewis is too busy putting the finishing touches on Manny Pacquiao in the lead-up to the fight of the century and running his Hollywood gym, Fortune Gym, in Los Angeles.
Privately, Fortune has also been fighting his own fight, undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy to try to beat the ultra-aggressive throat and neck cancers he had operated on eight months ago.
To the untrained eye, the 49-year-old looks fighting fit, save for the scars all over him where three surgeons had to perform a radical neck dissection to cut out the cancer.
When a Fox Sports camerman asks Fortune what all the scars are from, the West Australian can?t resist having a lend, deadpanning: ?The neck was a knife fight and my arm got bitten by a shark.?
Justin Fortune (right) with fellow trainer Freddie Roach. Source: News Corp Australia
The doctors took an artery out of his neck, replaced it with one out of his arm and told Fortune he would be in the Intensive Care Unit for nine days.
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He walked out after four, refusing the liquid morphine they were prescribing.
Fortune doesn?t like to talk publicly about his battle and must wait until later in the year to learn if he is out of the woods.
?Manny?s told me a couple of times that he?s prayed for me but it?s not about that,? Fortune said.
?I?m doing fine and this is about him and his fight with Mayweather.
?There?s no point bitching because no one wants to listen.
Fortune fought under Freddie Roach before joining him as a trainer in 2002. There was a brief falling out but Team Pacquiao is back together again, with the Pac Man never losing a fight with the Australian in his corner.
?If Manny listens to Freddie, he?ll knock him out. He?s stupidly strong and fast so that?s the ticket,? Fortune said.
