Dumped Rawlins may shun Australia

http://www.theage.com.au/sport/dumped-rawlins-may-shun-australia-20101104-17ft6.html

A BOXER dumped from the Australian amateur team, despite winning a world championship qualifier, has landed a plum spot on an international team that will pay him to box professionally without forfeiting his chance to qualify for the Olympics.

But super-heavyweight boxer Trent Rawlins, 24, said he may never fight for Australia again because of a dispute over a racist slur from national boxing coach Bodo Andreass, who did not select him for the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where Australia had one of its worst results in 37 years.

Rawlins is the only Australian chosen to represent team Miami in an innovative venture called World Series of Boxing, run by the International Amateur Boxing Association, with the backing of the International Management Group.

The boxers have been drawn from AIBA's 196 affiliated national federations.

Rawlins leaves Australia unsatisfied that Boxing Australia has properly dealt with the racist incident.

The Australian Institute of Sport boxing coach was fined $5000 for calling Rawlins a ''blackie'' during a training session last year and warned that a repeat incident would cost him his job.

But six months of mediation with sporting officials through the Human Rights Commission has failed to produce an acceptable outcome.

Rawlins, a two-time national amateur super heavyweight champion, is from Melbourne, but his parents are from Barbados and South Africa, making him eligible for either country.

He said he does not believe he can compete for Australia while Andreass is still in a senior position.

''I can represent South Africa or Barbados. It has been something that I had to consider but it's been very, very difficult because I'm not from South Africa or Barbados,'' he said.

''But to reach my goal to go to the Olympics, it's something I might have to look at. But it saddens me.

''I believe Boxing Australia particularly, have just swept it under the carpet.''

His lawyer, Siobhan Keating of Maurice Blackburn, said the fine does not go far enough and that Rawlins would seek compensation.

However the boxer will now be paid to fight. Each WSB team, or franchise, has put in up to $7 million to fund the competition, which they hope to recoup by selling TV rights to the series. Some of the higher-profile boxers are believed to be on million-dollar contracts.

Rawlins, a former reserve-grade rugby league player with the Sydney Rabbitohs, will be paid an undisclosed salary for three years plus bonuses when he fights against other American teams. The winners will then form regional teams for the finals series.

He leaves for Miami today to begin training under top US trainer Pat Burns.

The competition begins in two weeks when teams from the US, Europe and Asia begin elimination rounds, before the best from each region fight each other in the finals, scheduled for March.

Rawlins's coach, Gerry Murphy, said the boxer had learned quickly and that his strengths were in his punching power and his solid defence.

''It's a big compliment for him to be chosen and it proves I'm on the right track too with the kind of training I do. It's a bit of a poke in the eye for Bodo Andreass because he thought he wasn't good enough to go to the worlds,'' Murphy said.