Grantlee Kieza: Anthony Mundine shouldn’t be underestimated against Jeff Horn
JEFF Horn is a heavy favourite to win on November 30 but veteran Anthony Mundine has an impressive resume and shouldn’t be underestimated, writes Grantlee Kieza.
Boxing/MMA
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IN 40 years of covering big fights around the world, I’ve seen some extraordinary things – from Mike Tyson complaining about the price of fish in a Washington restaurant to Roy Jones Jr trying to catch a fish from the boardwalk beside the Sydney Opera House.
But in four decades of being ringside around the world, few things have shocked me as much as what Anthony Mundine did on a cold winter’s night in Dortmund, Germany back in 2001.
Just 17 months earlier I had watched Mundine make his professional boxing debut at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, beating a Kiwi journeyman. It was a moderate performance against an opponent of indifferent quality but now I was watching transfixed as Mundine handed out a boxing lesson to an undefeated world champion and three-time Olympian, Sven Ottke.
In the years since Mundine has dazzled many more times and Jeff Horn cannot underestimate him when they fight at Suncorp Stadium on November 30 even though the one-time Brisbane Bronco is now 43 and in his 19th year of boxing.
His fight with Ottke was an extraordinary performance pitting the mild-mannered German family man earning $400,000 a year advertising condoms against Mundine, who claimed he went into the fight not having had sex for 10 weeks.
At the weigh-in for the IBF super-middleweight title bout, Mundine looked fitter, stronger and more fierce.
But Ottke, the smaller and physically less impressive specimen, was adamant that size didn’t matter and that he was up for the job. At the time Ottke’s combined number of bouts as an amateur and professional was 332.
Mundine’s was 10.
By all sense of reason Mundine should have been annihilated but the Aussie upstart put on a show and for the first six rounds dominated the champ with a snapping jab and faster feet. Only a sustained high pace _ which Mundine was not experienced enough to handle – proved the difference and Ottke won with a punch to the temple in Round 10.
Years later Ottke admitted it was the toughest fight of his life.
He said Mundine had the best jab, best defence, fastest hands, best footwork, best boxing brain and sharpest skills of anyone he ever fought – and he fought the very best that America and England had to offer.
Three years after escaping Mundine’s surprise assault, Ottke bailed me up at the Nurburgring motor-racing track outside Cologne where Danny Green had just been disqualified in a bloodbath with Markus Beyer.
He told me that Mundine would beat Green if they ever fought because his movement was too sharp and that Green would have trouble catching him.
Mundine says that while Horn has an awkward style he will sit on him and counterpunch just as he did on another extraordinary night when he handed the future world middleweight champ Sam Soliman his first loss inside the distance back in 2007.
Most boxing experts believed that Soliman’s unorthodox style would trouble Mundine but The Man had other ideas and he says Horn will face the same shock.
Mundine says Horn’s feet are all “over the place” when he fights and after Horn’s win over Gary Corcoran in Brisbane last December he said the “Fighting Schoolteacher” looked “like he was on crack, his feet were everywhere.”
“I am too strong, too fast, too seasoned,’’ Mundine says. “All Horn’s got going for him is his awkward style, but you saw what I did to the most awkward fighter in Australia, Sam Soliman, and I’ll destroy Horn the same way.
“I’m going to take the teacher to school.”
Jeff Horn is a heavy favourite to win on November 30 but Mundine has an impressive resume with wins over the likes of Soliman, Danny Green, Shane Mosley, Daniel Geale and Shannan Taylor. He has proved time and time again that when he sets an exam, it is always full of surprises.
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