Anthony Mundine is trying to reinvent himself but it might be too late
As he prepares for his final fight, Anthony Mundine has finally said the words Australia has been waiting for. But PAUL KENT asks, is it all too late?
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PREDICTION: Horn camp expecting KO
Boxing is the art of reinvention.
It begins the first day in the gym. Young fighters are taught the most effective punch in the ring is the only punch you won’t see in a street fight, when the fight reverts to instinct.
Nobody jabs in a street fight. Nobody wins in the ring without one.
Every instinct is relearned in the ring.
To punch with your left hand you push off your right foot. To generate power in the hook you don’t swing the arm but keep the elbow tight, instead turning through the hips to create torque.
Every movement is rehearsed, every behaviour reinvented. Much of it is self-prescribed. Nothing about it is natural.
To land a punch you have to risk standing close enough to receive one, an unnatural act. To win a fight you must step towards the pain, not away from it.
Little seems logical. Much of it is backwards.
Men have been reinventing themselves in the ring since John L Sullivan hung out a stiff left and jabbed his way to the heavyweight championship.
But reinvention comes outside the ring, too.
Men have been reinventing themselves outside the ring since Jack Dempsey married an actor and stuck his face in a bucket of flour to hide the scars over his eyes and tried to make it in Hollywood. He was slightly more convincing as the Manassa Mauler than he was in Sweet Surrender.
Sonny Liston was a thumb-breaker for the mob before he found legitimacy as the heavyweight champ. Muhammad Ali preached separatism until he found forgiveness and became a universal symbol of peace.
Anthony Mundine, whose career will end Friday, was also invented in the ring. Not entirely.
Mundine was already well along the way to being Australia’s most controversial athlete as a rugby league player, claiming racial injustice and a lack of respect and picking fights never fought before in rugby league.
Some were legitimate, some were not.
He turned to boxing and was good, which we all agreed with. He claimed he was the best athlete ever, which I didn’t.
He was never as good as he said he was but he was better than most credit him for.
Nothing was banned when it came to selling fights. Everybody could be offended, and often were.
For such reasons, a thousand small arguments, Mundine and I have rarely got along. We spoke a few times in 1994, or it might have been ’95, and really haven’t had too much to agree on since.
The truth always seemed too elusive. Mundine’s story was always being rewritten, the past updated and adjusted.
Part of it was that too often what he meant to say was hijacked by what he actually did say. It happens when you’re in a hurry.
Other times he just didn’t care.
But he was always a curiosity. Gorden Tallis is as good a judge of character as a stockman and has always defended Mundine.
Like Tallis, others around him always said he was different away from the spotlight. There, they said, he was a good guy. You should get to know that guy.
This week Mundine was at Fox Sports for an hour long special to run 8.30pm Tuesday, after The Back Page, for an interview built on disagreement.
But this is the thing with Mundine, he always surprises.
“Sometimes,” he said, setting the scene early, “we have different views on some stuff, and different beliefs, but it’s all good man. But I be me and you do you.”
The difficulty of interviewing Mundine is predicting what mood he will be in and, within that, any expectation the conversation will follow a logical path.
Even with all that, though, there is something different about now. He walks away from boxing after Friday’s fight against Jeff Horn because his motivation is no longer there. He is 43 and the chapter is near closed.
His thoughts are on what’s next. What’s happened and what might have been.
In many ways his career has been the greatest waste of opportunity of his generation.
A whole succession of what-could-have-beens.
It plays on his mind a little now, he said. All those opportunities overshadowed by all those controversies.
“There’s been that many,” he said.
“I’ve said some stuff that I look back and I, probably, meant it in a good way, but my delivery wasn’t great. I said it raw, uncut, you know what I mean?”
His most offensive insult cost him dearly; a TV interview after September 11 where, as one of Australia’s most high profile Muslims and certainly its most vocal, he said America “had it coming”.
The comment reverberated through his career. America was the big leagues for boxing but Mundine was unofficially black-banned after that, no US promoter game to touch him. It would be almost 11 years before Mundine finally fought in America, his best already behind him, and even then fighting off the Strip in Las Vegas against someone named Bronco McKart.
“That’s probably one of the things that I wish I could …” he paused, rephrased, “like I said, the delivery was messed up, and I wish I could take that back and rephrase it, re-say it, in a better way.
“But I’m not for no killings.”
It took him years to apologise for those comments, a young man lost in his own greatness.
That was often his problem. He knew what he meant to say but never quite said it. And once he fumbled it he refused to apologise for it.
It is hard to forgive a man who seeks no forgiveness.
“There’s a lot of things I’ve said that are dumb and stupid. I admit that,” he said.
It began as the exuberance of youth. A challenge, he said, to himself. Insult Laurie Daley, for instance, and leave himself no choice but to then try to prove it.
He thought little for feelings or public perception.
Yet it is changing now.
As Mundine heads into Friday’s fight with Horn it is clear he is in a different headspace than where he normally is before fights.
Part of it is that he is 43 and this will be his last fight.
Much of it is that he wants to change.
“I’m more considerate now as I’ve got older and evolved into the man I am today,” he said.
“When I was younger I didn’t think. I cut to the chase. Didn’t think about anybody’s feelings.”
It seems absurd that Mundine could reinvent himself again, this time into someone widely adored.
He insulted not just people but communities.
“I thought they wiped all the Aborigines from Tasmania out,” he said to Daniel Geale, the Aboriginal fighter from Tasmania who he had just insulted for “marrying a white woman”.
Surely, I asked, those people are entitled to be insulted.
“A hundred per cent. And if they were I apologise,” he said.
“I’ve said some stupid things in the past. Like dumb things. I’ve said some good things, but sometimes my delivery isn’t where it should be.”
Mundine sees where he fell.
“In the future I want to articulate myself a lot better and work on my delivery a lot better,” he said. “And try not to offend, but educate.”
They are concessions never before revealed, an hour long confessional.
In many ways they are the words much of Australia has been waiting to hear.
Sorry always was the hardest word.
“I want to inspire all people,” he said.
He says he has changed.
He says he wants to change. But after so long as Australia’s public enemy the greater question is, can we?
BENNETT’S HYPOCRISY HURTING BRONCOS
When Wayne Bennett left Brisbane to coach St George Illawarra in 2008 he looked down from Mount Wayne and, from such high moral ground, claimed he did it because he never wanted it to become about “me and the Broncos”.
It was a standout quote in his book. Bennett had too much respect for the club than to go to war with them over when might be the time to retire so he was leaving for the Dragons.
It sits at odds with Bennett’s stance now, which isn’t about the honourable stance of what is best for the club but is now being re-packaged as another honourable stance, this time “honouring my contract by going to training”.
He didn’t mind breaking his contract to leave Canberra for Brisbane in 1988, or renege on the deal to join Sydney Roosters in 2007 and ten sacked himself at Newcastle to return to Brisbane.
The difference between Bennett leaving Brisbane now and Bennett leaving in 2008 is, back then, Bennett was leaving on his terms whereas now he is being moved on by the Broncos.
The whole conversation is public posturing at best, hypocritical at worst.
Bennett has claimed loyalty to his players and a commitment to them to justify his stance, even while backroom negotiations are going to reach a payout figure Bennett finds acceptable.
All this changes this week, though, with Andrew McCullough’s urging this week to get it sorted out.
It is clearly affecting Bennett’s players.
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