If Mundine and Green can’t bring the desire, the bout won’t match the hype, writes Paul kent

PAUL KENT: Beware Anthony Mundine and Danny Green. It is far more difficult putting together a great fight, as opposed to putting two great fighters together.

WITH not even a gentle nod to proportion, the biggest prizefight in Australian history slowly nears.

Early forecasts have Danny Green and Anthony Mundine counting their money until early winter, the most lucrative prizefight on these shores, and the hype around that easily lends itself to an understanding that the fight might be also as special.

This should not be confused.

It is far more difficult putting together a great fight, as opposed to two great fighters, than you might imagine.

OLD FOES READY FOR LAST BATTLE

Mayweather v Pacquiao couldn’t match the build-up. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Worldwide, the biggest fight of recent years finally took place when Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao eventually got in the ring in May 2015 after years of circling each other. It was so long in coming they generated $500 million in worldwide pay-per-views. But the use-by date was done.

By the time they got in the ring they were both past their best and the fight could not have sucked more.

Mayweather had a clear advantage in speed and skill and tucked his chin in behind his shoulder and pitter-patted his way to victory. He never ventured past those advantages to put himself at risk or give Pacquiao a chance.

A conservative Mayweather coasted to an easy points victory and the only real damage done was to the sport itself. Anybody who sat through the entire 12 rounds was entitled to a refund.

THE MAN IS OLDER AND WISER

How much does Danny Green want revenge?

When Johnny Lewis puts together a checklist of what should make a good fight there are a dozen or more requirements, all relevant.

For this fight, he says, “there’s only one I can come up with”. It is Green’s desire.

“Danny Green wants to win more than anything else,” he says. One of those requirements on the checklist, what makes a great fight, is the “want” to win.

“The wants has got to be greater than the need,” he says. “When you’ve got two blokes who want it so much ... that’s when you have got a really good fight.”

Green has burned since Anthony Mundine beat him 10 years ago.

Skills might pay the bills, as Mundine claimed in the lead-up to this fight, but it is always will, not skill, that makes for a better fight.

CALM BEFORE THE ‘GREEN STORM’

Ali v Frazier remains one of boxing’s greatest rivalries.

The perfect convergence is always when both come together at once. Like the night Muhammad Ali came into the ring against Joe Frazier the first time, both with legitimate claims to be called heavyweight champion.

Oddly, many look past that fight and consider their third fight, the Thrilla in Manila, to be the greatest fight ever. Both were past their physical best by then but such was the intensity of their hatred, their want, they went beyond their physical capabilities in a bid to, really, destroy the other.

At the end of the 14th Ali told his trainer Angelo Dundee to cut his gloves off, he was done. Dundee argued.

In the opposite corner Frazier had one closed, his good eye, and the other half-closed. It meant Frazier needed to lift his head to see Ali, making him easy pickings.

Still, a blinded Frazier told his trainer Eddie Futch that if he stopped the fight he would never speak to him again, such was his want.

Futch stopped it, saving Frazier. Ali collapsed moments later.

When Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns went into the ring in 1985 it was another superfight. Nobody was certain who would win. Surely, nobody predicted what happened next.

Believing Hearns was vulnerable early, Hagler went after Hearns and their first round is still considered the best opening round, if not any round, in a championship fight.

Hearns cut Hagler early and had him bleed. Hagler, fearing the cut would see him stopped, stepped it up. The fight lasted only eight minutes and not one person left feeling they were short-changed.

Some fights surprise everybody. Diego Corrales and Jose Luis-Castillo were two tough brawlers, handy enough to fight for the WBC and WBO lightweight titles in 2005.

They stood in front of each other in round one and punched and brawled for nine rounds, the pace claustrophobic.

Castillo began the 10th strong and knocked Corrales down twice. He looked set for victory. What an ending, what a fight.

Corrales spat out his mouthguard twice to buy some time under Castillo’s onslaught. Then Corrales knocked Castillo out.

Danny Green can leaving nothing out there to make this a classic. Picture: Hamish Blair

It was similar the night Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti climbed into the ring in 2002. While Kostya Tszyu was in another part of America the same night defending his WBA, WBC and IBF titles in the same division against Ben Tackie, there came the perfect clash to highlight how hype guarantees nothing.

Tszyu held all the belts in the division, but he turned on a snorefest. Gatti and Ward turned on an instant classic. They had the want.

“This,” trainer Emanuel Steward, commentating at ringside, said after the ninth, “should be the round of the century.”

All these fights, these rounds, Want can be measured in different ways.

Jeff Fenech never lost a fight on points. “I’m proud I got knocked out in all my losses,” Fenech says.

The idea of a respectable loss, doing not enough to win but remaining physically safe, never occurred to Fenech. You need to expose yourself to make a great fight.

Green showed as much in his two most recent losses against Antonio Tarver and Krzysztof Wlodarczyk, both times carried out on his shield.

Whether Green and Mundine live up to the hype is extremely unlikely. Not impossible, just hard to see. The hype is becoming inescapable, though, and mixing with the size of the purse and the interest of two old fighters past their best and promising fireworks some believe the fight can match the hype.