AS BRISBANE continued to gear up to host home town boy Jeff Horn in Australia?s biggest ever fight ever at Suncorp Stadium, Anthony Mundine was sweating in a tin shed at Slacks Creek, eager to have his voice heard.
He has made a reputation for outrageousness and braggadocio since he walked out on a lucrative headline-grabbing rugby league career with the Brisbane Broncos and St George Illawarra 17 years ago to tackle the sport that his father had tried hard to conquer.
Here, in the stifling heat and humidity at the Logan Boxing Club, Mundine is stripped of all hype and pretence as the mercury in the sauna-like surrounds pushes past 40 degrees.
His carefully crafted image as a media loudmouth seems nothing but a mirage as he slugs it out with three of the heaviest hitters in Queensland ? one tough old fighter preparing himself for battle in Brisbane?s summer heat.
Eleven years ago, Mundine beat Danny Green before 30,000 people at the Sydney Football Stadium in the most lucrative fight ever held in Australia.
The pair, who have the greatest rivalry in Australian sport, split a purse rumoured to be as high as $12 million, a figure unchallenged in Australian boxing until Horn stole their spotlight as his promoters began an audacious coup to topple world champ Manny Pacquiao.
Mundine says he?s still capable of making some noise himself and causing turnstiles to spin.
On Friday night, he and Green, both former world champs, will go at each other at Adelaide Oval, promising that even though they are both past 40 they still have plenty of fight.
Boxing in Australia is undergoing a revival thanks largely to the exploits of Horn, Brisbane?s ?Fighting Schoolteacher??.
Two years ago, Pacquiao, the man he hopes to meet on April 23 at Suncorp, lost a points decision to Floyd Mayweather in a bout that generated close to $1 billion in ticket sales, pay per view receipts and merchandising.
Mundine and Green will not generate anything like that next week, but both are hoping to surpass the payday from their first fight. That will still make them among the biggest earners in Australian sport.
Mundine took home more money from their last bout than his father Tony made in combined earnings from a 15-year career of 96 bouts ? 26 of them in Brisbane.
I worked as an assistant in his corner for his last Brisbane fight in 1982 when he lost on a decision to the Canadian Murray Sutherland and I vividly remember him telling me before the bout about his pride in his seven-year-old boy.
Almost 35 years later, I listened last week as that boy, now a veteran sportsman eyeing retirement at 41, told me how much his father had inspired him.
Tony grew up in abject poverty in Baryulgil, northern NSW, and many of his relatives, including his father, died from cancers related to asbestos mining there. Anthony resolved to never be treated as second-rate.
When Anthony was a boy, Tony took him to the red light districts of Sydney, to show him addicts and deadbeats ? the outcome of the wrong path in life.
?From a very young age, I had a desire and a dream to be different,?? Anthony tells The Courier-Mail. ?When I was six or seven, I told all comers I wanted to be champion of the world; I had the bloodlines of a fighter, but I wanted to first be a star in rugby league. I really looked up to my dad for his advice on not drinking, not smoking, not doing drugs.
?He was a great sportsman and he taught me to live clean and train hard.
?That?s why I?ve been able to have such a long career.??
Mundine?s rivalry with Green began in 2001 when I wrote the first newspaper article suggesting that they fight each other as Mundine made headway as a boxer and Green took his first steps out of the Sydney Olympics. Green?s loss to Mundine on such a huge stage 11 years ago has burned him ever since and he is still looking to even the score.
Like Mundine with his father, Green?s dad has always been his guiding light.
Mal Green taught his son to take a mark and make a mark as his junior footy coach in Perth.
He taught him about mateship, loyalty and the determination he had learnt trying to survive on a dusty farm in the West Australian wheat belt.
After three years of successive drought in the early-?70s Mal moved his young family to Perth and got a job flipping burgers at Hungry Jacks, working his way up the ranks until he became a big cheese in the company.
?Dad has been my life coach,?? Green says.
?He?s been the guy I?ve wanted to please the most in my life. He?s old-school from the bush, a quiet bloke. After I?m victorious there?s nothing better than to give him a hug and a kiss on the forehead as we savour the win together.??
As he goes looking for revenge and redemption 11 years after a humiliating loss, Green says: ?Dad taught me that no matter how many times you get knocked down in life you can always pick yourself up and start again and do better the next time.??
