Boxing: Big mouth knocks himself out

By BILLY ADAMS

According to his official website, Anthony "the Man" Mundine's favourite book is Muhammad Ali - The Greatest, and his favourite film is When We Were Kings, a documentary about Muhammad Ali.

Mundine's sporting hero is Muhammad Ali. The people he would most like to meet? Sugar Ray Leonard and , you've guessed it, Muhammad Ali.

To find then that Mundine idolises and models himself on the greatest boxer in history comes as no surprise. A black Muslim fighter, Mundine is the possessor of enormous self-belief and a motormouth to match.

He is quite capable of getting himself into trouble when he keeps his remarks to sport, but when he stepped into the political arena with his comments on the war in Afghanistan he ran into the heaviest counter-punching of his career.

His self-promotion has followed a familiar path. "I want the world title by the end of the year," he proclaimed after flooring New Zealander Timo Masua to win the Pan Asian Boxing Association super-middleweight crown. "I want to go on and fight all the greats and make them all look second-rate. My dream is to be the best athlete of all time."

But while Ali's legendary verbal barrages were as sharp and classy as his movement around the ring, Mundine is a poor imitation. He often sounds like a loud, childish parody; more Ali G than Muhammad Ali.

Following September's terrorist atrocities in New York, Ali condemned the bombers and any suggestions that they committed the crimes in the name of Islam. Despite the crippling effects of Parkinson's disease, his tone and choice of words was eloquent.

The same cannot be said of Mundine, who is also known as the Mouth, when he voiced his opposition to Australia's involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

"I really feel it's not our problem," he said in a live TV interview. "They [the US] call it an act of terrorism, but if you understand the religion [Islam] and our way of life, it's not about terrorism, it's about fighting for God's laws, and America's brought it on themselves with what they've done in history and so on."

An audience with Anthony Mundine is rarely mundane. Before becoming a professional boxer, Mundine had a highly successful career in Australian rugby league. He scored 59 tries in 137 games and played in three grand finals. But although he was recognised as a sublimely gifted player, his off-field outbursts generated most reaction.

Not for Mundine the unwritten sportsmen's code of refusing to publicly bag fellow players.

"Laurie Daley is running on old legs - I'm the world's best five-eighth," he once said of the Aussie league legend. Criticism from another celebrated former player sparked an equally diplomatic response: "Johnny Raper is yesterday's man."

Brisbane apparently did not appreciate his value during a brief 11-game relationship with the high-flying Queensland club. "The Broncos didn't treat me like royalty," he explained. "At St George I am the man."

He has long seen himself as a spokesman for the Aboriginal cause, and more recently Islam, after his religious conversion in 1998. While Australia's best-known Aboriginal athlete, Cathy Freeman, largely shies away from the race debate, Mundine is in his element as a high-profile black sportsman.

He regularly made allegations of racism in rugby league. In 1998, fed up with racial taunts, he filed an official complaint against Barry Ward after the Canterbury Bulldogs player insulted him on the pitch. The following year he accused national selectors of bias after three Aboriginals - including Mundine - were left out of the squad for the Tri Nations series against New Zealand and Great Britain.

Last year he went awol. After 10 days he flew in from San Francisco where he had been "clearing his head". "Can't a black fella go on holidays?" he said of the mid-season walkout.

Then came the big bombshell; he was ripping up his $A600,000-a-year ($733,000) contract to become a fighter.

To those who knew him, it was no surprise. His dad, Tony, was also a professional boxer, and Mundine spent much of his childhood watching him in the gym. Studies took a back seat. "I enjoyed school but I wasn't a Rhodes scholar or anything like that."

Mundine sen is his son's coach and promoter. He runs a boxing gym in Redfern, an inner-city Sydney suburb with a large Aboriginal population, where his son trains.

Mundine jun's chest is emblazoned with a tattoo bearing the word Jada, the name of his 3-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. He has also had a baby son with his present partner, Danielle.

But Mundine, a teetotal non-smoker whose hobbies include hanging out with the boys and playing computer games, has one goal: sporting immortality.

There is no doubting his natural ability. At school he was offered a basketball scholarship. In league he was a class five-eighth, the playmaker of St George.

He hasn't taken long to establish his fighting credentials. Last month he recorded his 10th straight win, against Guy Waters, to set up a world title fight against reigning IBF super-middleweight champion, Sven Ottke, in Germany on December 1.

In a sport jam-packed with supremely confident loudmouths, Mundine seemed quite at home. Peppering fights with firework-enhanced entrances, and victory backflips, he declared before the Waters fight: "I'm in kill mode ... I'm in the frame of mind where if I could kill him in the ring I would. Come tomorrow night you better have a coffin ready for him."

But the morning after defeating Waters it all went wrong. Mundine's opinions on the terrorist attacks were, at best, poorly explained, at worst, ignorant and offensive.

So fierce has been the backlash that the Mouth, for once, might have wished he had kept his gob shut. A grovelling apology followed in which he claimed to have been quoted out of context. "I condemn killings on any side and all acts of terrorism," he said. "I am against any form or any shape of violence or killing. I know people who were in New York on September 11 and my heart and soul goes out to those families who lost loved ones."

The apology was drowned out by the condemnation of peers, sports officials and politicians both at home and in America.

The WBC stripped him indefinitely of his world ranking. Should he win in Germany, the IBF has threatened to strip him of the title if he speaks out again. Amid warnings to stay away from America, TV networks in the lucrative US market have labelled him too hot to handle.

Mundine's supporters say he was ambushed in the interview. Even his harshest critics, including America's top boxing scribes, have defended the Mouth's right to speak his mind "however addled it might be".

"The entire process smacks of McCarthyism at its worst," the Boston Herald's George Kimball said of the WBC's action.

"I mean, wasn't Max Schmeling an officer in the Nazi Army when Joe Louis fought (and beat) him in 1938? You don't have to approve of what Mundine said to defend his right to say it."

ESPN.com boxing writer Tim Graham accused the WBC of hypocrisy. "[The WBC's] number one heavyweight is Mike Tyson, a convicted rapist who bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield's flesh and spat it on to the canvas."

Mundine apparently cried during the furious reaction to his outburst. He has been strangely quiet, , preferring for once to let the gloves do the talking as he prepares for next month's fight.

Mundine is still only 26, and clearly not the sharpest tool in the box, for all his Machinegun deliveries.

Asked on his website which person in history he would liked to have met, Mundine replied: "Nelson Mandela."

Perhaps someone in his camp will advise him in future to sidestep the verbal banana skins and leave loose talk of terrorism to the politicians.