Great Mundine article in Courier Mail.....

Tommy Burns TKO 11 O'Neill Bell.

Yes I've read your book.

 

Jacksonmann... a performance for your own thoughts (and homework) must be that of Bert Osbourne vs Al Foreman..

Providing some insight will be a treat for me (purely for the sake of yourself understanding the background of the bout) and for the ESB members to see a different side of 'ringside seating'.

Leave it with you J.

 

Most people who see the negative side of high risk ventures rarely understand the motivation.

Like you, I see a tightrope walker & think "This bloke is nuts" It's a fundamental observation.

Boxing is anything but fundamental.

As for a mugs game? Well, the first benefit for a boxer that has had solid tuition & competition, he has a legacy for life in understanding the physiology of the body, including it's reaction to stress, strain & pain.
With the right training, he learns that a toe in or a toe out could make the difference to accuracy, power, timing & deception. The Science of boxing.

He also walks life without the fear of physical intimidation. This attribute on it's own is immeasurable in developing self esteem, confidence & respect.

The source of this "Science" only comes from one place. If you want to visit it, you learn little. If you live it, you learn not only the aforementioned skills, but you have been where few people have gone.

As a kid, I never had this inspiration, just admiration for the fighters that had a niche all of their own. I didn't understand why though.
I went to Police boys, learnt what I could but made nothing of it.
10 years later I regretted not giving it 100%.

It is a mugs game if you want to fool yourself. Believe you're something that your not. Those that take the easy road only damage their own integrity & confidence. But that's life in general.

With respect mate, It is never about maiming people. That really is a mugs eye veiw.
Most of us like to use the highway. We're not interested in the journey, we just want to get there.
With the select few, it's the opposite, & boxing is for the very select few, the greatest challenge.

To each his own mate.

JMO.

 

Great perspective Rodin.

...and hopefully I won't detract from it:


People often forget that we are all different - different in our makeup, our upbringing, our ideas and our motivations. This is fortunate, as if we weren't we'd all be doing exactly the same occupation and there'd be no one to do all the others.

There was a TV show the other night about guys training to be get into the SAS. Just one of the tasks involved being totally sleep and food deprived and carrying a heavily loaded pack and rifle through hell for a 3 hour time-trial. Those that failed to get to the destination in time were rewarded by getting to have another go at it.

During the entire SAS training program the objective was to break the candidates. Break them physically - break them mentally - and destroy their wills!

A very small portion of the overall number of candidates who start the SAS program get through - and their reward - packed straight off to Afganastan!

What would make a person want to do that - to go through that?

The obvious answer is that they see it as a way of making a better person of themselves - as Rodin alluded to earlier when referring to boxing.

Thankfully we are all different, and some are prepared to risk life and limb to achieve their personal goals, however strange they may appear to others - and God help anyone who gets in their way.

 

Apologies if this has already appeared on here. There was another decent article about Mundine that appeared in today's Daily Mirror, over here in the UK. Oliver Holt, one of the few sports journalists to cover boxing - but not much, dedicated his weekly column to Mundine. Couldn't believe it, considering he's completely unknown over here. Funny stuff.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/columnists/holt/

 

Have posted the article here just in case the newspaper remove it from the net mate. A funny read, but oh so true.



Anthony Mundine loss is one defeat the Aussies are happy to celebrate

I took the boat from Circular Quay up the Parramatta River and into Australian sport's heart of darkness last week.

Past Drummoyne, Chiswick and Kissing Point, where the homes of wealthy Sydneysiders gaze down from their bluffs and motor yachts bob gently at their berths.

Until, after an hour watching the city bathing in the setting sun, the RiverCat reached the Olympic Park where the Devil himself was lacing up his boxing gloves.

Some were to call what happened later that night in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium "the greatest moment in Australian sport" but it was far from that.

It was just that most of Australia had feared and loathed Anthony "The Man" Mundine for the best part of a decade, yearning for him to be vanquished and humiliated, and this was the night their dreams came true.
Mundine is 35 years old. He was an outstanding rugby league player before he switched to boxing and became one of the best fighters Australia has ever produced.

He lost to two of the best fighters in the super-middleweight division, Mikkel Kessler and Sven Ottke, but twice won versions of the world title in the last decade.

He is also an Aborigine and a Muslim, a classic anti-hero who does not believe in keeping his mouth shut, no matter how controversial the subject. He does not have any sponsors because he says he does not want to be in thrall to anyone.

"Marketing means you are licking the arse of some corporation," says his agent Khoder Nasser.

In 2001, Mundine said that the September 11 attacks were not about terrorism but "fighting for God's law". He lectured Australians on how

"Americans brought it upon themselves".

He has spoken frequently about the racism he believes is widespread in Australia and the obstacles faced by Aborigines.

"Anthony," Nasser says, "is one of the people who can reveal the deep-seated hatred this country has towards indigenous people and people who are different."

Once, when he thought that other Aborigine sportsmen, friends of his, were keeping quiet about a race issue, Mundine called them "coconuts", brown on the outside but white on the inside.

"I'll tell you point, straight, blank - they are coconuts," Mundine said. "I don't respect them for that. Whether we lose that friendship or not, I'll tell them straight up."

If you want an idea of how unpopular Mundine is in Australia, think Audley Harrison in England and then multiply it by 10. Even 100. The country has been begging for someone to beat him and finish his career. Nobody gave Garth "From the Hood" Wood much of a chance of being the man to do it.
Not just because his nickname is one of the lamest in boxing, but because his credentials were paper-thin.

He earned the fight against Mundine as a prize for winning Australia's version of The Contender, an X Factor for boxers. Wood was not even on the original cast-list for the show.

He was seen as a loser, a guy whose life was on the skids.

Another former rugby league player, he had struggled to adapt to life outside the sport.

Wood had lost his wife and family, and become an alcoholic.

He went on three-day benders, walking up Darlinghurst Road where the baddest bouncers in Sydney work the doors of the nightlife area of Kings Cross and picking fights with them.

"I was hoping someone would shoot me or stab me," Wood said. "I had a death wish."

So the Devil and the white man on redemption's happy road fought at the Acer Arena on Wednesday night, the same place they held the basketball and the gymnastics events at Sydney 2000.

Ten years ago, an Aboriginal woman, Cathy Freeman, became the face of Australia's guilty conscience for a fortnight They felt so bad about what their forebears had done to the indigenous peoples, they even let her light the Olympic flame.

But Mundine does not trouble their conscience. He is way too uppity for that. By last Wednesday night, Australia just wanted rid of him and his opinions.

It was a rough, unattractive fight. Lots of holding and shoving and wrestling.

All the judges' scorecards showed that Mundine won the first four rounds.
Then, in the fifth, Wood caught The Man with a couple of untidy rights. Mundine sagged against the ropes and Wood hit him again with a brutal left hook.

Mundine slumped to the canvas and it was obvious immediately he was not going to beat the count. It was as if all Australia was sitting on his back, pressing him to the floor.

The arena went wild, caught in a mixture of exultation and disbelief.
Mundine was booed when he got to his feet. He accepted defeat graciously. He did not complain or make excuses. He said Wood had been the better man.

Wood's daughters, from whom he had been estranged, joined him in the ring. Everybody started crying. Everybody was happy.

I turned on the television when I got back to my hotel room an hour later.
The fight was the main story in the sports headlines and the pretty blonde presenter felt she was free to speak for Australia.

"Anthony Mundine got his just deserts last night," she said as the fight pictures began to roll.

 

Ding Dong the witch is dead.!!!!!