Mundine stops at the end of the block, in front of a brick
boxing gym painted on the backside with an Aboriginal flag. This is where
Mundine – a boxer both loved and loathed, depending on the audience – trains
for his December 10 fight.
On this particular afternoon, Mundine will sweat through 10
rounds of sparring in an old gym where punching bags hang from rusted metal
piping and yellowed early-90s boxing posters decorate the walls. Could he find
a nicer gym? Sure, he says.
But then he’d be surrounded by people who don’t understand
him.
And, based on history, when Mundine attempts to explain
himself – when he talks in absolutes about his code or his principles or his
beliefs – a caricature, rather than complexity, tends to emerge.
Here, Mundine steps out of his vehicle wearing a Yankees
baseball cap, a sticker still on the brim. Four or five street urchins,
middle-age guys, beg for money. One holds a Victoria Bitter bottle.
Sometimes, Mundine hands these guys, or people like them, a
few bills. Sometimes, he hands his car keys to a mate and instructs him to take
the neighbourhood kids on a ride. But this time, Mundine just exchanges a few
brotherly handshakes and heads upstairs to the ring.
I came here myself trying for a sense of the real,
honest-to-goodness Anthony Mundine – a misguided goal, I learned.
Mundine’s realness, if it exists, is wrapped under
contradictions.
He’s weary of two-word headlines and yet by choice he’s
sensationalised himself into a two-word nickname: “The Man”.
By his own labelling, Mundine is a Muslim and an Aboriginal
and the best ever and unequalled and real. Banner statements, charged words.
Let him start talking and that’s his default mode.
“People can’t buy my heart, man,” Mundine told me at
the gym, where he’s preparing for Monday’s fight against Jose
Alberto Clavero, of Argentina.
“My heart and my soul. That’s who I am. I represent the
people. I represent the struggle. I represent the common man.
“And they might want to portray me as a villain, this
or that, a d…head, brash – there are reasons why I’m like that. One, I’m an
extraordinarily athlete, the likes they’ve never seen before. I’ll be the best
ever.”
Perhaps because few others promote him well, Mundine’s
always been a self-promoter, and he’s done so with hyperbole. But what’s
underneath all that?
In some ways, he’s still like the boy who so loved chocolate
– smearing it across his face until it resembled a beard – that friends and
family called him “Choc”.
Even now, Choc stops eating dairy products four or five days
before his fights, having determined that they hinder his breathing. Chocolate,
though, he keeps eating until two days beforehand.
Mundine demands perfection of himself; that’s his main
creed. He’s never drank or done drugs, even during his footy career “where
they drank every week”.
He tells this story: At 16 or 17, he was hanging out with
some Aboriginal mates. They’d formed a circle and were passing around a joint.
Mundine realized he faced a formative decision.
After all, several years earlier, his father had driven him
through Kings Cross, showing him the alcoholics and drug fiends and offering a
warning about the commonplace vices. So Mundine said no to the joint and ran away
from his mates in tears – and not out of despair.
“I’d realized what I did, the strength it took,”
Mundine explained. “And when I left, that’s when I knew. I could be
great.”
As an athlete, he’s superb – no question. His jawline looks
like it could draw blood. He’s chiselled and fierce. A recent eye infection
still isn’t 100 per cent but he jokes he can see well enough to knock another
man out.
He wants to fight for another three or four years and, in
the process, ignite another Aboriginal superstar.
Mundine has stayed close to his roots, too, having never
been sought by corporate Australia.
Despite his high profile, Mundine has no sponsorships, he said.
Controversy and unpredictability don’t make for great ad
campaigns. One of his handlers wondered if it might be possible to establish a
deal with one of Mundine’s favourite products, V Energy Drink.
With the help of his right-hand man, former NRL player Wes
Patten, Mundine has scheduled trips to bush towns where he speaks to the
community about, as he calls it, “the traps” – alcohol, boredom,
isolation, in-fighting.
About two months ago, he and Patten and one other drove to
Bourke, NSW, almost near Queensland,
just to spend three days there. Mundine attended a barbeque, followed on a
traditional walk with community leaders and talked to a group of troubled youngsters.
He hopes a few of them end up at the newly-formed Indigenous Boxing Academy.
The thing is, I would have never heard about this trip from Mundine. Patten
told me about it. Mundine later said, simply, “I’m not one of those guys
who needs to bring 20 cameras. I do it out of my own heart.”
I still can’t tell you what it all means. I’ve got no
conclusions about Mundine’s heart or his intentions.
But I know he’s a great fighter, and as a result, people
listen to him. That’s both his blessing and curse.
www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22870928-5001023,00.html