Greatest Ever Boxing Workouts - including Mike Tyson, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Roberto Duran. Gary Todd
me one little bit. When we touched down, I was so relieved that I kissed the runway.
When I get to where I’m going, it’s all business. I dump my bag in the hotel, then plan my days at the gym and get organised for whatever fight I’m in town to see. People ask me if I’ve seen a lot of the world while on my travels, but other than the airports, the hotels, the taxi cabs, the burger joints and, of course, the gyms, I’ve never been one for sightseeing.
Yet I love visiting these old, rundown houses of pain, and meeting the characters who train there. I love spending time with the men who never had a hope of being world champion, but still turned up every day to open the doors to the gyms so that the kids might have a chance.
In this book, I’ve tried to feature the best fighters from the past to the present: stylish, fast, technically-gifted, big-punching tough guys.
Men who can excite our human emotions with a single flowing hook, or a flick of a jab. Men who excited and entertained us. Men who inspired – and continue to inspire – us, on our individual journeys through life.
People have asked me how I came up with the idea to write a book, and I tell them it just came to me one night. Me and my lads were all on jackhammers and the noise was deafening. I was working away and my mind wandered to thinking about what I was going to do for training.
Once I’d finished my shift, I started thinking about how so many aspiring world champions still had to hold down a job while training for their biggest fights. Some of the biggest names in the sport all had to work just to make ends meet. Manny Pacquiao, Micky Ward, Vitali Klitschko, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Juan Manuel Marquez all fought for years and years, waiting on a big payday. Through perseverance, a fair bit of hardship and a lot of hard work, they all made it. When I interviewed them all, I asked them, “What kept you going through the hard times?” and they all gave the same answer: the training, being part of their respective gyms and the security they felt when they were there.
For some, it was all they had.
To see these men in the gym was a tremendous privilege for me, something I will never forget. To see them hammer the bags and hit the pads at their peak was an experience I wanted to share with you all.
I hope you enjoy reading about it in Greatest Ever Boxing Workouts.
Country: Australia
Date of birth: 21 May 1975
Wins: 37 (23 KOs)
Losses: three
WBA Fedelatin Super Middleweight Champion
WBA Pan African Super Middleweight Champion
IBF Pan Pacific Super Middleweight Champion
WBA Super Middleweight Champion of the World
IBO Middleweight Champion of the World
Anthony Mundine stormed into the super middleweight division in July 2000, with an amazing sell-out crowd of over 10,000 people in Sydney, Australia turning up to see if ‘the Man’ could really fight. Mundine had been telling everyone that would listen that he was going to be champion of the world. It was a bold statement from a boxer who hadn’t even had his first fight.
He won it easily, and his next seven matches were no different. In September 2001, Mundine defended his newly-won IBF Pan Pacific title against Sam Soliman, fighting out a hard-earned points win to take one more step towards a world title shot.
He had his sights set on the strategically brilliant German champion Sven Ottke’s IBF belt, and was confident of ripping it away from him. Along with his famous boxer father, Tony, Mundine travelled to Dortmund, Germany to challenge the IBF king in December 2001, after only ten professional fights.
I remember telling ‘Choc’ Mundine he would have to prepare for Ottke with serious sparring; he was in with the big boys now. Mundine fought tremendously well and shook the unbeaten champion up, but in the tenth round he was knocked cold by Ottke.
He lost but fought well, and I believe it was Ottke’s ring experience, both amateur and professional, that made all the difference. Mundine had learned a valuable lesson in German.
‘The Man’ returned to his gym in the mean streets of Redfern, Sydney, and trained harder than ever before. He built up an impressive winning record that shot him up the WBA world rankings and earned him another chance at a world championship. To win, he had to face the experienced puncher Antwun Echols. They fought in Sydney for the vacant WBA Super Middleweight Championship of the World.
Come fight night, Mundine boxed like a veteran. He frustrated and bamboozled Echols, with his stick-and-move style, to realise his dream of becoming champion of the world. Mundine silenced his critics and fulfilled his ambition after only three years as a fighter. What a night to remember!
But winning the title was one thing, keeping it was another.
The new champion successfully defended his world title against the ageing Japanese brawler Yoshinori Nishizawa, and then took on the big-punching Puerto Rican Manny Siaca in 2004. Siaca had been around the super middleweight world for years, so this was always going to be a hard day at the office for the new champ. He lost his title by a split decision.
That could have been it, but no. Mundine came back again with more TKO wins.
Meanwhile, across the world, Manny Siaca had lost his title to the unbeaten Danish fighter Mikkel Kessler, in his first defence. Kessler had also been around a while, but was relatively unknown outside of Europe. He was a young, strong, hungry warrior who was just too much for Siaca.
In June 2005, Mundine lured Kessler, ‘the Viking Warrior’, to Australia, in a challenge for his old title. With both fighters looking in superb peak condition, Kessler and Mundine put on a show which went the championship distance. Kessler won by unanimous decision to retain his WBA title. Although he was beaten, this was Mundine’s best night in the ring by far.
Earlier on in that same year, Mundine’s longtime rival Danny Green had been in search of his own piece of greatness, travelling to Germany to face the WBC champion Marcus Beyer, but was tactically out-boxed, losing on points.
With both fighters at a career crossroads, it was announced that the two would finally meet for the biggest domestic fight Australia had ever seen.
Green was the favourite to stop Mundine. With national pride at stake, Green and his team shut themselves away in their training camp, while Mundine continued to train at his gym, later setting up a rough-and-ready makeshift camp in ‘the bush’ of Barulgil, some six hours’ drive from Sydney.
With both men mentally and physically prepared, Green entered the ring to the sound of Men at Work’s ‘Down Under’, sending the 30,000-plus crowd into a frenzy. Mundine entered the ring surrounded by bodyguards to the sound of the aborigines’ ceremonial didgeridoo.
Green was fired up, as expected, and tried to target Mundine’s body to take his legs away. But after round four, the aggressive Green could not get near him. Mundine