Making Of The Man

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday May 13, 2006

BRAD WALTER

Forget the state-of-the-art gyms, when Anthony Mundine gets into his serious training regime, he heads for the bush. BRAD WALTER reports.

THERE is a flat patch of ground in a gully near the outdoor boxing ring Anthony Mundine set up at the remote Aboriginal settlement of Baryulgil to prepare for Wednesday night's bout against Danny Green. The locals refer to it as the Bull Ring.

"Anyone who got into a fight - the drunks and that - would have to sort out their differences first thing the next morning in the Bull Ring," Mundine's father and trainer, Tony, recalls.

"They'd fight with bare fists until one person dropped. There would be broken teeth and broken noses. As kids, we'd all gather round and watch. If someone didn't want to fight, they'd be dragged out of bed."

Perhaps it's where the Mundines developed their boxing genes. Although Tony - like Anthony - doesn't drink or smoke. Their upbringings, however, were vastly different and, unlike his father, Mundine's background is no Rocky script.

Born in Newtown and raised in Earlwood, Mundine was always destined to be an elite sportsman and by 15 had toured the US with a combined NSW-Queensland basketball team and was on a rugby league scholarship with St George. Choosing the latter, he became a star with the Dragons and played for NSW, ensuring he always enjoyed the best conditions and facilities.

In contrast, Tony Mundine worked from the age of 13 in the asbestos mine near Baryulgil that is blamed for so many of his friends and relatives being buried in the village's graveyard. Like so many boxers, he used the sport to build a better life for himself and his family and believes his tough start helped him get to within one knock-out punch of the world middleweight title.

It's why Anthony Mundine decided to go back to basics for the Green fight with his primitive training camp in Baryulgil, a 12-hectare tract of land bequeathed to three Aboriginal families - the Mundines, Daleys and Gordons - by the cattle-ranch owner they worked for to help them escape the welfare laws of the 1920s that led to the stolen generation.

"Anthony is a city boy, but the country life is a good life," Tony Mundine says. "When Anthony first started training, he was doing all new stuff like running machines and weights and all of that shit - the same as what Danny Green is doing now. Weights will do no good for you.

"To be a boxer, you have got to have muscles like a baby, you've got to be quick and able to fire like a bullet. If you are pumping weights, naturally your muscles are going to get hard and you're going to stiffen and get tight. You might think you look good but from maybe the sixth round or seventh round onwards you're going to feel the [negative] effect.

"The old school way is still the best; get a lot of exercise the natural way like sit-ups and doing a lot of mileage. In the old days, it was more harder and more tougher. You've got to remember the guys who have beaten my son - like [Mikkel] Kessler and [Manny] Siaca - haven't had two amateur fights [as Mundine had before quitting league to take up boxing in 2000]. They have done this sort of training before."

Mundine trained up to four times a day, running the dusty roads around the settlement, working out in the makeshift gym that comprised of a concrete block wall and three timber posts supporting rafters from which hung punching bags and a speed ball, and sparring in the ring that had previously been used in the Russell Crowe movie Cinderella Man.

It was a regime that began at about 6am each day and could finish at 10pm, sometimes after workouts with three sparring partners under the glare of headlights. The training - overseen by Tony Mundine and famed American trainer Roy Jones snr - was physically demanding, but the main benefit for the Man of returning to his father's birthplace was mental.

"In Sydney, there are a lot of distractions and especially with this being the biggest fight in Australian history, it was good to get away," Anthony says. "I had to adjust, I had to adapt to a different environment and it challenged my mind as well as my body.

"Any fight that I've lost, mentally I was there but to get into a real war mode before the battle you need solitary so you know why you're there. I know why I am here and it is because of Green. No matter what he's got or what he's done, how much skill he has got or how much power, it's not going to affect me.

"This fight means a great deal to me, this is the fight that is going to catapult me to where I want to be in the boxing ranks. From now on, I can't see myself getting beat unless I beat myself. I've blossomed and progressed as a fighter, mentally, physically, skilfully and in every way."

According to Jones, Mundine is still a baby in boxing terms, having had just 28 fights since quitting league in 2000 to pursue his dream of winning the world title that his father was denied during a 15-year professional career in which he stepped into the ring 96 times.

Of those, five have been world title bouts and Mundine, who will turn 31 next Sunday, has won two.

"He was renowned in rugby [league] and everyone just thought of him as an athlete and a star when he first came into the sport," Jones says. "But everyone has to take their punches straight, if you know what I mean, and he'd never done that. Everything he has ever done before has been high tech.

"Going to Baryulgil was like giving him a taste of the inconvenient things in life. I think the main thing it did was made him more aware and made him realise that this is a different sport. It kind of toughened him up a little bit.

"He'd never had a taste of it before and he didn't like it but no kids these days like it. It was just to get him out of the element that he's in now, just to give him a slight taste - not that he had to stay there - of what not having things was like and see what sort of effect it had on him."

While he is focused on beating Green and eventually regaining his WBA super-middleweight belt, the time at his bush camp has sharpened Mundine's consciousness of being a role model for young Australians and, unlike many other athletes, he is comfortable with that responsibility.

"I touch a lot of youth, give them self-esteem, give them pride and as long as I'm doing that, and saving a few lives along the way - not touching drugs, not touching alcohol - I feel like I'm doing my job," Mundine says.

Blood, sweat, cheers - Page 33

Floyd Patterson dies - Page 80