How Alphonse Gangitano bashing ended career of Barry Michael
He was the reigning IBF junior lightweight champion, but one evening of frenzied violence from gangster Alphonse Gangitano and his thugs in a Melbourne nightclub brought his world crashing down.
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Barry Michael’s rat-cunning skills, honed after 15 years of ducking and diving in the dog-eat-dog world of professional boxing, should have sensed the trap that had been laid in a Melbourne nightclub on April 3, 1987.
But Michael was flying, living high on the trappings that go with being one of the few Australian boxers to have actually claimed a world title, an achievement greats such as Les Darcy, Dave Sands, Hector Thompson and Tony Mundine snr couldn’t manage for differing reasons.
The night had begun well enough. Michael and then-wife Sandy sitting ringside at the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre to watch “The Marrackville Mauler” Jeff Fenech beat a typically brave Tony “Mad Dog” Miller on points for the Australian Featherweight Title.
Also in the crowd were a number of “colourful Melbourne identities”, a euphemism for types who had either been in jail, were about to be in jail or deserved to be in jail. Michael knew them all, including a De La Salle-educated 29-year-old named Alphonse Gangitano who was making in-roads in the Melbourne underworld as a 187cm standover man with an extremely unpredictable and violent nature.
The pair had history, dating back a decade to Mickey’s Disco in St Kilda, Melbourne’s version of New York’s Studio 54 where naive innocents did John Travolta impersonations to Staying Alive while the creme de la creme of youthful criminal society plotted their next easy dollar, or equally as importantly, who they were going to bash that night.
Michael, who had knocked back a 1973 university spot in psychology after passing his matriculation at Williamstown High School, always had the smarts to know who was who. His own friendship group included a wide variety of society, from cleanskins to knockabouts, and as he left Mickey’s Disco on that 1977 evening, Bernie Taupin’s lyrics “Saturday night’s alright for fighting” were being played out in graphic detail as some young blokes were getting flogged outside by an unknown group.
“A mate of mine Robbie Luscott saw what was going on and just jumped in to help these kids who were getting half kicked to death. Turns out the bloke who was doing most of the kicking was Alphonse Gangitano, and even though he would have been only about 20, he had a reputation so I knew him a bit,” said Michael.
“There was another bloke in Alphonse’s crew named Martin Paul who had fought main events. Al started getting the better of Robbie so I grabbed Al in a headlock. Then ‘bang, bang, bang, one of our gang in Steve Collins or Fat Albert as we knew him fired off three shots. He said ‘hang on, we’re fighting Alphonse and Martin Paul’ so we stopped and shook hands, before Robbie wanted to go on with Alphonse again.”
From that moment on Michael’s relationship with Gangitano would be tenuous, although their paths rarely crossed until the swarthy Gangitano became involved in the promotion and management of a Melbourne teenager named Lester Ellis, who in two unforgettable years of fistic fury had managed to achieve what Michael couldn’t in 13 by winning a world title.
Michael had first sparred Ellis seven years earlier and declared the kid from Sunshine with the flashy hands “a world champion waiting to happen”.
The pair got on well, Michael more of a big brother than a rival, but when the “Sunshine Comet” beat South Korea’s Hwan Kil-Yuh for the IBF world junior lightweight championship, it caused a split in their relationship that quickly became Grand Canyon-like in its dimensions. And one that would take three decades to mend.
Plain and simple Michael was envious of what his young mate had achieved and the battlelines had been drawn, with Gangitano’s sneering presence an extra hurdle for Michael to overcome.
Five months after beating Kil-Yuh, Ellis and his management unwisely agreed to give Michael a shot at the title, the veteran taunting his young foe to take a clear points win over 15 wicked rounds at Melbourne’s Festival Hall. Michael’s fighting style, just as suited to a phone box as boxing ring, was brutal, a meeting of wills where wicked body punching could sap the best-prepared of bodies.
He was all about the smile, welcoming opponents to his house of pain with the cheeky chatter, delivering lines that would have seen him succeed selling produce in the west fish markets of London near where he was born in 1955 before the family emigrated to Melbourne two years later.
The transition from Barry Michael Swettenham to Barry Boy Michael was natural enough when he decided pugilism was going to replace tertiary study, but his road to the top saw him travel to a number of fly-blown outposts in the hope of securing a world title. In Michael’s corner were some stand-up waterside types in Leo Berry, Leo “The Lout” McDonald, Jeff Patterson and Roy “Spider” Holman, a group that asked or gave no quarter.
From the moment Michael had the IBF World Championship belt placed around his waist, something was going to give as he found out to his chagrin 20 months later the night he set foot in Lazar’s nightclub in King Street. Michael had successfully defended his title three times, while Ellis had fallen into a boxing wilderness, depressed at what had been taken from him. His “friends” had suddenly dried up, but he clung desperately for a re-match that hung in the air until that fateful Lazar’s night.
“Everything was going OK at the Fenech-Miller fight until a mate of mine named Simon Burtonclay, who worked for one of my sponsors, got in a verbal fight with one of Gangitano’s trigger men. Alphonse saw a chance and took it, walking over to Simon to calm things down and then saying he wanted to make everything right by buying us drinks at Lazar’s,” recalled Michael, 64, this week.
“Looking back it was all a set-up, but I wasn’t thinking like that at the time. When we arrived there Alphonse insisted on buying us champagne and that went on for a while until he sent a message that he wanted to talk. We spoke about a re-match and I did want to fight Lester again because the financial lure was massive for both of us, plus as good as he was, I knew I could always beat him.
“At that stage I thought everything was sweet. My then-wife Sandy and mate Simon were sitting away from where Al and I were discussing business, me with my back to the crowd which I have never been stupid enough to do again. Because the money issue seemed to be sorted I stood up to shake hands with Gangitano, but I hadn’t even got to my feet before I heard Sandy screaming “these dogs have knocked Simon out”. I turned around to see Simon being carried out by bouncers after he had been king-hit by one of Gangitano’s goons as he walked off the dance floor.
“Suddenly the bottom feeders that were always hanging around surrounded me and I still clearly remember thinking ‘I’m off here’. Everyone knew they carried guns. I turned to Gangitano and said ‘you dog, you’ve set me up’. That’s when he grabbed me by the lapels of my suit so he could drag me close enough to sink his teeth onto my cheek. He actually had history with biting boxers, having bitten the tip of Matt Ropis’s nose clean off about 10 years earlier when Matt was getting the better of him in a street fight.
“I could actually feel his teeth munching through the flesh on my face and the small muscles and nerves sounded like they were snapping like gristle. He pinned me on the couch and I never got off there. All I could do was gouge his eyes to get him off and if I hadn’t succeeded I have no doubt he would have bitten off half my face. My thumb actually drew a little bit of blood from his eye socket which was like bees to honey for his goons who were basically fighting each other to get at me.
“I had been in some wars but the ferocity of the attack was something I had never experienced before. Then I heard someone yell out ‘where’s that thing, where’s that thing?’. I knew that was code for a gun. My face was bleeding from bite marks, my back had been bitten as well and my head had knuckle-duster marks on it. Then one of the heroes grabbed one of those big glass ashtrays and smashed my nose, completely smashing it.
“I had fought almost 500 rounds of professional boxing and sparred many thousands of rounds, yet only had my nose broken once before and that was in the fight against Lester Ellis. Semi-conscious, I was dragged out of the shark tank and taken to the emergency department of St Vincent’s Hospital.
“News of the fight got out quickly with Alphonse giving his version to The Sunday Press newspaper saying it was a fair fight that he had won. Until I heard that I was prepared to say nothing but I wasn’t going to let that biting reptile make himself seem like a hero. When the story went to print the Victorian Police, who were just starting to get a feel of how dangerous Alphonse could be, wanted me to make a statement. I didn’t want to go down that path so I went with something like ‘I’ve had a dispute with someone I know and it has been blown out of all proportion.”
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While that took care of the police, Michael’s boxing career was finished the moment his nose was smashed with the ashtray. Four months later he was stopped by US superstar Rocky Lockridge in the UK, after having his nose broken early in the fight, and at age 32 never returned to the ring.
Eleven years later Gangitano was murdered by a gunman, believed to be his one-time friend Jason Moran, in the laundry of his Templestowe home. The man known as “The Black Prince of Lygon Street” was just 40.
This article is a preview of Barry “Boy” Michael’s upcoming book which lifts the lid on the colourful world of boxing, and those who surround it.