Concerned pal Graeme Goldberg desperately seeking ‘Aussie Joe’ Bugner

Veteran boxer ‘Aussie Joe’ Bugner has ‘disappeared off the map’ during the Covid pandemic, according to concerned friends who fear for his health and wellbeing.

Veteran boxer “Aussie Joe” Bugner has “disappeared off the map” during the Covid pandemic, according to concerned friends who fear for his health and wellbeing.

A personal friend of more than 50 years is reaching out for help in locating the former heavyweight champion after repeated attempts to contact the 72-year-old by phone, email and post failed.

Graeme Goldberg, one-time owner of Double Bay institution Dee Bee’s cafe and noted Sydney raconteur, said he had been left frustrated and concerned after failing to locate his Hungarian immigrant friend — who Goldberg refers to as his “brother” and who, or so says Queensland media, was moved into an aged care facility outside Brisbane over a year ago.

Calls from this columnist to aged care provider Regis, manager of the facility identified by our northern sources, have been met with contradictory accounts of Bugner’s residency status.

On two occasions we were informed Bugner was a resident at a Regis facility in Brisbane’s northern outskirts, on another occasion we were informed he was not listed as a resident, while further requests for Regis management to clarify our confusion have been ignored. Goldberg has also been told Bugner is not a resident at the property.

Joe Bugner at Broadbeach PCYC gym in 2013.

The mixed messages have alarmed Goldberg, a longtime supporter of the faded boxer who has famously been on his uppers for decades after the bank foreclosed on his Hunter Valley home in 1989.

Sydney agent Max Markson said he, too, had lost contact with his former client, who in 2009 drew fresh fire in the UK following his participation in the British version of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!

Markson added he’d heard Bugner’s second wife, Marlene Carter Bugner, had died, a fact this column has been unable to confirm but one which may explain how Bugner — who once called Marlene his “guard dog” — has seemingly become lost in Queensland’s aged care system.

Goldberg said he held grave concerns for the amiable boxer he met in London about 1968 when young Bugner was having one of his first professional bouts at the famed Royal Albert Hall, where Goldberg’s father Frank worked as a boxing ticket agent and promoter.

“He was a year older than me, I must have been about 17, and we met in the green room at Royal Albert Hall and just hit it off.

“When he moved to Australia in the mid ’80s we reconnected and picked up where we’d left off,” the British-born Goldberg, who has called Sydney home for decades, said last week.

Bugner (right) in the ring with Muhammad Ali in Kuala Lumpur in 1975.

The heavyweight fighter’s marriage to Australian Marlene — who the boxer first spotted at Teddy Kennedy’s side at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas, in 1973 during his first legendary clash with Muhammad Ali (which he lost in 12 rounds, as he did also to the murderous Joe Frazier that same year) — spurred Bugner’s decision to relocate to Australia in 1986, following the breakdown of his first marriage in 1976.

Estranged from his three children from his first marriage, Bugner and Marlene, who he married in 1978, spent the better part of a decade living high on the hog in the US as the former European, British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion revelled in his new-found US celebrity status while raking in millions from his twin careers as one of the world’s top five rated heavyweight boxers and as a B-grade actor.

But life among Hollywood’s elite in Beverly Hills, where the Bugners counted Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Joan Collins among friends, cost more than even Bugner could afford.

In 1986, the couple moved to Australia and Bugner became an Australian citizen and returned to the ring after restyling himself “Aussie Joe”.

Home became a vineyard the couple bought in the Hunter Valley, but within three years the bank had foreclosed on it, prompting the couple’s move to Queensland after they were bankrupted.

Bugner would later say: “After we moved to Sydney in the mid-80s we made a number of disastrous business investments … people have taken advantage.”

Ever supportive, Goldberg continued to steer his friend towards paid work opportunities during the next 20 years in the hope of keeping Bugner afloat financially.

The entrepreneurial Goldberg persuaded Elton John to cast his friend in the Australian stage production of the musical Billy Elliot, he helped grease the wheels on a book deal involving Bugner’s biography, found him work on speaking tours — even paid the car registration on Bugner’s redundant Mercedes to get his old friend back on the road, but ultimately the work and the excuses for interstate catch-ups dwindled.

“I haven’t seen Joe in the flesh for probably six years, but there have always been calls and cards, and now, with us getting on, I just need to know where he is and that he’s safe and being cared for,” Goldberg said.

Anyone with any information should please email me on [e-mail].