How Daniel Geale took on Anthony Mundine and won

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/m...-mundine-and-won/story-e6frfglf-1226589105400

How Daniel Geale took on Anthony Mundine and won

• Ruth Lamperd
• Sunday Herald Sun
• March 02, 2013 9:12PM

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Daniel and Sheena Geale with children Bailey, 8, Ariyelle, 6 and Lilyarna, 4. Picture: Tim Carrafa Source: Sunday Herald Sun

DANIEL Geale had nothing left in his tank. World champion German Sebastian Sylvester's solid jabs hadn't left a mark on him, but the next day even his hair and fingernails would ache.

On that night nearly two years ago, the Tassie boy became a world middleweight boxing champ - the IBF belt in 2011 was the biggest of his career. It was the cherry on top for years of work.
He was elated with his win, but fully spent, like all good boxers at the final bell.
Twenty minutes later, from the dressing room at the Neubrandenburg stadium, he called his wife, Sheena and three young children, back in Sydney.
"You see the fight?" Daniel asked.
The first thing Sheena said to him was: "Yes. I thought you could have gone harder."
Geale copped that on the chin. Sheena's taken over from where Geale's dad left off. There's no place for pride. His train and truck driver dad, Wayne Geale, repeated it quietly to his two sons as they grew up in the battler suburb of Rocherlea on Launceston's outskirts.

The young Geale knew that no matter how much he fancied himself as a boxer or an Aussie rules or tennis player, there was always someone better than him. And ever since, there's always been someone to remind him - nobody likes a show-off.
PROFESSIONAL boxing is full of braggers. Look at Anthony Mundine.
Geale had a close look a few weeks ago. He didn't like what he saw. He beat him in the pre-match mouthing-off lead-up by staying silent, refusing to bite. ("It's simple mate, talk with your fists," his dad's words echoed.)
It won him admiration from a growing fan club which wants professional boxing to return to its noble roots.
Then he smashed Mundine in what most described as a decisive victory inside the ring. Mundine claimed he was robbed. Geale doesn't care what Mundine thinks. He's the one with the belt.
He put up with months of insults questioning his Aboriginal heritage, the colour of his wife and children, sucking back the psych-out baits from Mundine.
Mundine spouted: "Everything he does, I do better," and, "I am the best athlete ever produced in this country, ever, my name is going to live for eternity."
It makes Geale cringe. He wears the Aboriginal colours subtly on his boxing shorts. Mundine's below-the-belt jibes at his family's Aboriginality stung the most. He says that sort of stuff lowers the sport to worse than professional wrestling nonsense.
(His mother's mother came from Dolly Dalrymple's tribe, a well-known Tasmanian Aboriginal woman to whom her descendants are proud to be linked. And, according to Geale, Sheena has more Aboriginal blood in her through her father's NSW-born, Koori-descended father than Mundine.)
"Actually, pro wrestling doesn't even get that low. They stop at personal insults," Geale says after a training session in his home base near Camden, in Sydney's outer southeast.
"At least they don't offend an entire race."

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Daniel Geale lets his fists do the talking in the title fight against Anthony Mundine. Picture: Brett Costello Source: News Limite

 

TATTOOISTS consider it bad luck to ink your lover's name into your arm. Children are different. Geale has his three - Bailey, Ariyelle and Lilyarna - forming a loop around his left forearm.
But not long ago, the couple talked about Sheena's name joining the rest of Geale's body art. They'll probably have to settle for her initials to keep the tattooist happy.
They've been together for ages. Sheena told her parents when she was nine years old that she would marry Daniel Geale one day. She was single-minded as a girl, too. He was one year older than her and a new boxer with her brother at the local Launceston club.
They first hooked up at 15, then again at 17. At 23 and 24 they married - a few years after he won gold at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games. It was the peak of his amateur career. Geale - who turned 32 last week - credits Sheena and his children with his top-level success.
When Bailey, now 8, was on his way, they were at the crossroads. She was working two jobs, he half-time as a labourer and training the rest of the time.
They mulled over the choice, whether to go pro or to give up and take the less risky road. They took their chance. They earned just enough to pay the rent of their one-bedroom Sydney flat.
It took six years for their punt to finally pay off. For hundreds of others battling it on the pro circuit, it didn't happen. But he had become what his promoters spruik him to be - Daniel "The Real Deal" Geale.
Despite his rise, Sheena winces every time her husband cops one.
The better he's become at boxing, the higher the level of the fights, the more fearful she is. It's a dangerous job. Any jab can theoretically floor a man forever, no matter how tough they are.
Their children have never seen their dad fight. Sheena says she'd hate something terrible to happen to Daniel in front of them. The trauma would be with them until the day they died.
But Bailey knows his dad is a star. When Geale turns up at pick-up time at his kids' local school, he sees his dad sign autographs and quietly accept the pats on the back from people he doesn't really know. The night of his fight with Mundine he didn't go out and celebrate.
He got a good night's sleep so he could take his youngest child to her first day of school the next morning.
He says to shirk family responsibility is to ignore the ultimate reason for his boxing success. They give him something important to fight for.
"Without my family, I wouldn't be here," he says. "My family always comes before anything."
GEALE'S mum, Michelle, stayed home to look after her grandchildren in Sydney the night her son fought Mundine. She hasn't watched one of his 200-plus fights live.
The most she'll endure is a quick look over a replay once she knows her boy's come out unscathed.
His dad, Wayne, who answers to "Cowboy", was at the fight. He reckons he and Michelle had the easiest of times with their two boys.
They'd sit and talk to them often about life. Cowboy says Daniel never had a chance to get up to mischief. He knows how much his boy deserves his success.
"All his friends were out partying and chasing girls. He was in the gym. People don't really understand what he missed out on," Cowboy says.
Joe, Daniel's brother, a year younger, was born with a hole in his heart. Doctors told him he'd never play sport. But with the gritty Geale DNA, he made the Aussie rules team at his school and later even boxed three fights, cheered on by a brother, a veteran then of 80 fights.
"I was really proud of him," Geale recalls. "He proved them all wrong."
Cowboy's oldest son might have picked any sport to go hard at. When Daniel was 14 he sat with him, suggested he had a rest from boxing for a year or two. Focus on the footy, son.
"Daniel leans in and looks me in the eye. I remember it. He said: 'Dad, if I win a footy grand final, everyone gets a medal. In boxing, the belt's all mine.' "
TEENAGE Daniel was always the peacemaker. He saved his fists for the ring. His bunch of mates would often get themselves into scraps. Geale was there to break up the tiffs. He never had to say to bullish boys at the pub, "Do you know who I am?" In a small place like Launceston, you can bet everybody likely to throw a punch already did.
His nose is straight. Even after his hundreds of fights he's managed to keep it pretty. His trainer, Graham Shaw, offers some insight as to why.
"The thing about Daniel is he is the epitome of the simple rule in boxing - hit and don't get hit," Shaw says. It frustrates the other boxers and turns the fight to a mind-game as much as one of power.
He moves fluidly.
"He's a good breather. He might be gasping for air going into his corner and in 30 seconds he's back to normal. But aside from that, what makes him special is when the fight steps up, he does too."
Regardless, Geale is considered a gentleman in the ring. He won't make the fight personal.
At the bell signalling the start of the final round with Mundine, he did as he always teaches the amateurs at his Grange Old School Boxing club - he offered his glove to acknowledge Mundine's good effort and to wish him luck.
Mundine ignored the offering. Geale wasn't surprised.
"I didn't care. I did the right thing and that's what mattered," he says.
"I can't tell the young blokes who look up to me to do one thing and then not do it myself."
To Geale, there's is no excuse for poor manners, even if your opponent's a bad sport.
SHEENA is in the crowd for all of her husband's Australian fights. She's a realist, not the sort of woman who could sit home and pretend he was off at an office job.
She relieves her own pressure by yelling helpful advice from her seat. "You're being lazy!". "Get you're hands up!". They share a smile at the lunch table about her words in the heat of fight.
Geale doesn't remember much from the Mundine contest. Certainly he didn't hear his wife's voice above the din in his ears.
But he can recall in an earlier minor fight in nearby Campbelltown, Sheena sitting in the front row of the crowd, hearing her through the entire fight.
Did he take any notice of her wisdom?
"Um, well," he pauses, looking at her across the table. Sheena tilts her head as if to say, "Yeah . . .
So did you?"
He turns back, with a small grin and says, "All right, yeah, maybe a bit." A smart man picks his fights.
The couple have a manner that rounds off each other's edges. She helps keep him grounded.
The instructions she shouts at him during fights doesn't make him special. She dishes up the same treatment to their son at the sidelines of his weekend junior soccer matches.
Geale accepts the equal regard gracefully. Thankfully, even.
"I'm nothing special," he says. "When I start to think I am, then that will be the end of me."

 

Gary could lose a few kg there...

 

Figure of speech...