i looked at the record of Jeff harding the other day and i noticed that he fought a 10 rounder in his pro debut. same went for guy Waters. then i looked a tsyzu...he had a ten rounder in his thrid fight. Jeff fenech a ten round pro debut……..and a 12 round fight in pro bout number three. mundine a 8 round pro debut …..and a ten rounder by fight 4. does anyone know why??
Look up Bert O'Keefe, he was a former Australian amateur champ. All 15 of his fights were set for 12 rounds.
I remember Vic Darchinyan commented once that while Australia beat the hell out of Armenia as a place to live, it wasn't a great place to be a boxer, i.e. that the fans were often rude or unsupportive and that the Australian sports media was unfavorable to boxing. Maybe this indicates a lack of institutional support that would usually enforce orthodoxy in the form of conventional round limits? I don't know. That said, Jeff Fenech was a super-credentialed amateur fighter, and Tszyu's amateur career was probably just as legendary, except that he didn't get a chance to prove it in the Olympics, so it makes sense that those two would get down to business early. As for Harding and the others, I don't know.
There doesn't seem to be any uniformity about it. Famechon and Ferreri started of with quite a few 4 rounders.
Could it be because of some lack of world-class fighters there at that time it was easier to rise to national and commonwealth prominence quicker? Don't even know if there WAS a paucity of good Aussie fighters in that Harding and Fenech era, but worth pondering.
