Deadline: Anthony Mundine poses with Jimmey Barkho at blockbuster bout

A couple of flamboyant characters not known for taking a backward step caught up ringside at a blockbuster Melbourne fight.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

The square circle of friends

They’re a couple of flamboyant characters not known for taking a backward step.

It was all smiles when Melbourne gangland figure Jimmey (his preferred spelling) Barkho and boxing great Anthony Mundine caught up at the big George Kambosos-Devin Haney fight this month.

Barkho is (reputedly) a key figure in the Notorious Crime Family organisation, which has found itself in the sights of police in recent years.

Whatever he’s doing, it must pay well.

Those in the know say he had the kind of coveted ringside seat that would have cost the price of, say, a Louis Vuitton bag.

Barkho’s continuing prosperity will be of interest to the County Court judge who warned him to “grow up” early this year when letting him walk after 101 days behind bars.

Boxing great Anthony Mundine with Jimmey Barkho.

Police had found nearly 200g of methamphetamine in Barkho’s designer Louis Vuitton bag along with $8920 cash and three mobile phones. That was in Sydenham in 2018.

At the time, Barkho claimed with a straight face he was the victim of an unknown villain who had planted the drugs in his bag while he was “in the toilet”. Police and the judge, Helen Syme, considered this explanation implausible.

Barkho seems to have overcome any embarrassment from the incident.

At Marvel Stadium, he was as happy as a pig in mud, as was former Mongols strongman Toby Mitchell, another fixture at Melbourne’s big fight nights.

There have been strong rumours in recent times that those connected to NCF were unhappy that Mitchell posted their name on social media with a group picture of Mongols who had followed the former president out of the gang when he was given his marching orders in April.

We understand that apart from what happened inside the ring, there was no drama.

Cold hard evidence of prize dope

This looks more cry for help than crime.

The 17-year-old who thought he would turn an Esky into a mobile dope-dealing service around Carrum Downs may have been using too much of his own loco weed.

For those who missed the news of this, our hero attached the cooler to a motorised scooter and hit the streets to do business but quickly found trouble.

Inside the Esky were cannabis, scales and a bong. Handy, but also guaranteed to make the case pretty strong when he was arrested by coppers guided to his location by a police chopper responding to complaints from locals.

A real joint effort.

The teen’s Esky scooter contraption.

Blunderworld gunmen

Tuesday was a day two bumbling underworld gunmen must have hoped would not come.

It was when Comanchero sergeant-at-arms Tarek Zahed celebrated his 42nd birthday, on the mend since being shot ten times in an ambush outside a gym in Sydney

His brother was killed and Zahed was only spared because one of the assailant’s guns jammed.

One of his close mates wrote on Instagram: “Happiest birthday to Tarek. A true man’s man and a heart so bright it can’t be stopped”.

Deadline wonders just what he wished for when blowing out the candles on his cake.

It would surely have sent a shudder down the spine of the hit team.

Fabulous footy flashback fax

Long before the days of social media and email, angry newspaper readers actually had to make an effort to abuse reporters.

Back then, the irate could try their luck with the phone or send a letter questioning the intelligence, sexuality, accuracy, parentage or professionalism of those in the news business.

Then there were others who took to the fax machine, as did rugged former St Kilda ruckman Lazar Vidovic back in 1996.

Lazar Vidovic in action for the Saints in 1997.

It was the footy off-season and ace Herald Sun sports writers Scott Gullan and Darryl Timms had flagged the possibility of the Saints looking for a new ruckman such as Matthew Allen or Justin Madden.

That brought an angry response from Vidovic, as shown in ancient correspondence unearthed recently in a Deadline tidy-up.

Under the business letterhead of his western suburbs car yard, Vidovic immediately asked the hard questions.

“Which one of you testicle-heads believe St Kilda needs a new ruckman?” he demanded.

The big man went on to question the fortitude of Allen and Madden before getting back to Timms and Gullen with an apparent reference to the six-week suspension he had received for roughing up competition newbies, the Fremantle Dockers.

“Please don’t get into my sight in 1997 or I might do a Fremantle,” he wrote.

Having dealt with Timms and Gullan, Vidovic set his sights on their bespectacled colleague Mike Sheahan, whose AFL top-50 player rankings were often hotly debated.

“How could Sheahan be warranted to rate the top-50 AFL players when he has never played at AFL, the silly goggle-head,” the ruckman thundered.

This was most disrespectful to a legend of sports writing, one who has just received a gong for his life’s work in the Queens Birthday Honours.

But, to be fair to Vidovic, we must point out he played 80 games at the top level. And some Saints fans believe the club would have won the 1997 premiership if he had not been injured.

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The day Tim was upstaged

What better way to mark a man’s elevation to the Queen’s Birthday honours list than by showing him in an awkward on-camera moment.

Tim Day has had a successful 31-year career with Victoria Police, much of it spent in the homicide squad where he grew to be one of its most respected investigators.

Supt. Day wound up running the squad and, as is customary in that role, became a familiar face on television screens.

In December, 2019, he was making an appeal for public help after a gang-related murder in St Albans.

That was when an interloper decided to take over the press conference, shaking Supt. Day’s hand and delivering a dose of patriotism, followed by strident commentary on the issue of deportation.

Supt Day wisely stepped aside.

He fought the law and ...

Fadi Diab regretted opening fire at a police car the moment it happened.

Thinking the police were rival gang members, Diab pulled the trigger when they approached him and a mate at the side of a road at Greenvale in September, 2019.

He soon knew it was a bad idea.

Within seconds, the cops returned fire, dropping him. As Diab lay on the ground, quite possibly relieved to be alive, one of the officers asked him why he’d started shooting in the first place.

“Sorry” was the lame reply. Diab meant it. He had even more reason for regret recently when a court added incarceration to injury, sentencing him to seven years jail with a minimum of five.

The man he was allegedly with on the night of the shooting has his own problems.

That was an alleged bikie sergeant-at-arms facing high-level drug charges after last year’s huge Echo taskforce operation.