In my corner: Daniel Geale ready to defend his IBF middleweight title in America

IN my corner: Daniel Geale has landed in America and is fighting fit to defend his IBF middleweight title against England’s Darren Barker.    

GEALE ON HITMAN’S TURF

AUSSIE Daniel Geale has landed in America and is fighting fit to defend his IBF middleweight title against England’s Darren Barker in Atlantic City on Sunday August 19.

I was in Atlantic City 24 years ago with Jeff 'Hitman' Harding when he staged one of the great comebacks of all time to beat Dennis Andries for the WBC light-heavyweight title.

It was one of the most savage fights I’ve seen with Harding down in round five only to swarm back and behind on points, stop Andries in the last round.

I caught up with ‘The Hitman’ again last week when I was a guest speaker at the Australian Boxing hall of Fame awards night at Crown Casino in Melbourne.

It was great to see him healthy and happy after years of doing it tough.

This is my Courier-Mail report on the big night and the stars who made it such a memorable evening.

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SLUGGERS COP HITS ON ROAD TO REDEMPTION

BOXER Nigel Benn cheated on his wife for 16 years and hardly batted an eyelid after he left an opponent blind, deaf and crippled.

The former world middleweight and super-middleweight champion confessed this to new soul mate Jeff Fenech in the Palladium Room at Melbourne's Crown Casino on Friday night, outlining a life of violence and debauchery.

Labelled the 'Dark Destroyer' by the British press, he once drew 42,000 people to Manchester’s Old Trafford for a fight with Chris Eubank, making a million pounds but still feeling destitute inside.

"That was my life then," he says. 

"It was full of hurt and pain. I don’t recognise that guy anymore. It was like he was demon possessed."

Almost 100 years ago, David Belasco, the Broadway impresario, described boxing as show business with blood and here’s Benn as a guest at the Australian Boxing Hall of Fame awards, surrounded by all the drama and passion of a surreal sport and characters unique to a business of blood, guts, glory and grief.

Benn and his long-suffering wife, now both devout Christians, live in Sydney, helping troubled youth and spreading the message of their faith. 

As Benn talks about his turbulent life, Guy Waters nods sagely.

Another devout Christian, Waters is here with his wife Sharon, who has stuck by him for more than 20 years even though she hates the brutality of boxing, and even though his family was embroiled in a cold-blooded killing.

Together with younger brother Troy, the Waters brothers engaged in six world title fights but are probably better known for the court victory of older brother Dean, a former Australian heavyweight champion, who walked free despite shooting a man dead at point-blank range on the orders of his mad, tyrannical, sex-deviant father.

Guy says he managed to come through the fires of a hellish childhood and years of hard fights and now, with white hair and glasses, has found his faith and his peace. At this revelation, Johnny Famechon is all ears.

Fleet of foot and fast of hand, the artful dodger won the world featherweight title in London in 1969, but has had to fight even harder every day since 1991 when he was sent cartwheeling by a car that hit him outside Sydney’s Warwick Farm racetrack and left him with speech and movement difficulties.

In the days when he was still as nimble as Nureyev, Famechon refereed two of Australia’s best in a fierce fight on Ash Wednesday, 1983 when smoke from bushfires around Melbourne choked fans packed into the Town Hall.

Thirty years later, the victor, Barry Michael, and the vanquished, Frank Ropis, are at the next table to Famechon’s with their arms around each other, reveling in the unique friendship of fighters bonded by blood.

Benn says it is only in the past few years that he’s been able to still his inner turmoil.

Some years ago, Benn donated his world championship belts to charity and in 2007 he helped raise $250,000 for the stricken Gerald McClellan, a lead-fisted American he knocked out in London in 1995.

Benn had been punched clean out of the ring in the first round but clubbed McClellan into submission in the 10th, turning a superb, finely honed athlete into a deaf and blind paraplegic. 

It was not until he went looking for God that Benn felt true remorse.

As Benn and Fenech discuss their roller-coaster lives, Jeff Harding, seated nearby, recognises an old friend, leaps from his perch and throws his arms around the widow of Lionel Rose.

Like Rose, Harding has done it tough in the years after boxing. He has known fanfare and failure and lived rough on park benches. But now declaring himself sober, ‘the Hitman’ has dragged himself back from life’s abyss.

Harding is fighting back in the manner he hauled himself off the canvas to win the world light-heavyweight title in Atlantic City in 1989 despite a broken nose and two closing eyes.

With all its traps and temptations, life has often proved to be a more dangerous opponent than Dennis Andries, the rugged Englishman he stopped in the last round of that furious battle as the cold Atlantic Ocean lapped the boardwalk outside.

On Friday night, Australian boxing’s greatest champs gathered to celebrate the courage of everyone who ever laced on a glove.

And it was a moving sight to see Jeff Harding winning his greatest comeback of all.

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BRUNKER’S MESSAGE TO DIB

AUSSIE featherweight Joel Brunker hopes to upstage former world champ Billy Dib with a big victory over Mike Oliver on the Geale-Barker undercard on Sunday.

Fighting before his hometown crowd in Hartford, Connecticut on July 5 Oliver pushed Dib to a majority decision and Brunker (unbeaten in 26 fights) hopes to score a more emphatic victory over the American.

"We really want to send a message to the world," Brunker’s manager Angelo Di Carlo said.

"That Joel Brunker is a future world champ.

"He’s No.4 in the WBO now and we are chasing a title shot with everything we’ve got."

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LEAPAI V BROWNE LOOMS LARGE

AUSTRALIA’S biggest heavyweight fight in 100 years has moved a step closer after Brisbane’s Alex Leapai crushed Mexican Felipe Romero in China on August 9. He is now focused on fighting Perth's world class Lucas Browne.

Leapai, the No.8 ranked heavyweight in the world, is now set to fight Perth’s world-class Lucas Browne, after stopping Romero in nine rounds in Hengyang.

Romero was down in the first round and on the canvas again twice in the ninth when New Zealand referee Bruce McTavish stopped the fight.

It was Leapai’s 29th win against four losses and his 24th KO.

Romero is best known for two wins over former world light-heavyweight champ Julio Cesar Gonzalez, a boxer who broke two of Danny Green's vertebrae in a furious sparring session in Los Angeles in 2006.

There could be a late push to match Leapai with Nigerian giant Franklin Egobi in Brisbane on August 29 after Egobi’s original opponent Nathan Briggs withdrew.

The card, at the plush Eaton’s Hill Tavern, will be topped by Craig Hill’s challenge to Australian junior-middleweight champ Shannon 'Shaggy' King.

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CESAIRE CUT BY SHARP HORN

A SICKENING clash of heads ruined a thrilling battle between Brisbane Olympian Jeff Horn and Melbourne’s Rivan Cesaire in the third round at the Southport RSL on August 8.

The welterweight (67kg) bout was declared a technical draw after the head clash left a deep cut on Cesaire’s left eyebrow. The ringside doctor immediately stopped the fight.

It was an absorbing contest while it lasted with the powerful Horn, a Brisbane primary school teacher, set some tough tests by the fleet-footed Melbourne Commonwealth Games representative.

Horn now has three wins (all by KO) and a technical draw in his four pro fights. He wore an armband in tribute to Olympic team-mate Billy Ward who took his own life on August 4 aged just 20.

Cesaire is 11-3-1 (3 KOs).

Horn’s London Olympic team-mate, light-heavyweight (79kg) Damien Hooper stopped Togasilimai Letoa in round five.

It was Hooper’s fourth KO in four fights.

On the same card, slick Cairns fighter Fred 'The General' Mundraby won the Australia super-bantaweight (55.5kg) title with a unanimous decision over come-backing Emmett Gazzard.

Scores were 97-93, 96-94 and 99-91.

Mundraby has previously held the Australian bantamweight and super-flyweight titles.

Sydney light-heavyweight Renold Quinlan won a close six-round majority decision over Tim Kanofski from Ipswich.

Jeff Horn’s multi-millionaire trainer, Glenn Rushton told me: ``Rivan was thrashing his head around all over the place and I had warned Jeff before the fight to be very careful of head clashes, due to Rivan’s style of boxing.

"It was very frustrating for us, as after Jeff won the first round, I asked him to increase the pressure a little going into the second round and Jeff easily won the second. When he came back to the corner after the second, I knew we had him and it was only a matter of time. I thought we’d get him between rounds 3-5. Jeff was simply too strong and too skilful for Rivan."

Rushton hopes to match Horn with Sam Colomban in Melbourne on September 12.

"Many pundits will now be saying that we have bitten off more than we can chew," Rushton said. 

"But I have lived by the motto all my life to, 'Bite off more than I can chew and then chew like mad.'

"Colomban will be a very tough fight but we’re up for it."

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FLANAGAN FIRES BACK

TOWNSVILLE light-heavyweight Mark Flanagan (13-4, 8 KOs) scored a second round knockout over Ofisa Vili (6-3) at Moranbah on August 3.

Good to see him putting some wins together after his point’s loss to slick Kiwi Daniel Mackinnon in February.

Flanagan has victories over tough Aussies Kariz Kariuki, Tyrone Jones and Philip Maley.

On the same Moranbah card, welterweight Cain Oldfield went to 3-0 (3 KOs) by stopping Jason Mac Gura in round one.

On the same night at the Fortitude Gym in Brisbane, unbeaten Irishman Dennis Hogan (13-0-1, 6 KOs) scored a first round knockout over Thai junior-middleweight Petchsuriya Looksakkongdin (5-9, 2 KOs).

Beijing Olympian Todd Kidd scored a third-round KO over another outgunned Thai, welterweight Dennapa Bigshotcamp (12-27).

Keep your eye on Brisbane-based French super-middleweight Faris Chevalier (2-1, 2 KOs) who stopped Kerwin Buckley (0-1) in round three.

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JACKSON ALL ACTION

LUKE Jackson, Australia’s boxing team captain at the London Olympics, tells me he loves flying up from Hobart to Sydney to train with Billy Hussein.

Action Jackson, who also fought at the 2006 and 2010 Commonwealth Games and has a bronze medal to show for it, is now 2-0 as a pro and looks to have an exciting future.

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WILDER WARNS KLITSCHKO BROTHERS

UNDEFEATED American heavyweight Deontay Wilder might just be the man to take the heavyweight power play away from the German-based Klitschko brothers.

The 2m Wilder went to 29-0, with all 29 wins by KO, as he belted former WBO heavyweight champion Sergei 'White Wolf' Liakhovich (25-6, 16 KOs) in the first round on August 9 in Indio, California. 

Liakhovich was left writhing on the canvas from a big right hand.

The fight lasted just 103 seconds.

TWITTER: @GrantleeKieza