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HOURS after learning he had done $500,000 cold Jeff Fenech found a little sunshine in his day.
Fenech caught up with former WBC champion Samart Payakaroon in Sydney, who was WBC champion until the night Fenech knocked him out in the fourth to take his title 26 years ago.
Payakaroon famously bet his entire purse he would beat Fenech, and when he was stopped he returned to Thailand to become a monk.
"We were just taking, throwing a few punches at each other, it was great," said Fenech, who's idea of a good time differs from others.
"Let me tell you, it's a hell of a lot easier talking to them when you've knocked them out than when they've knocked you out.
"He was saying he had to lose 10kg the day of the fight and I told him I had to lose 11kg.
"It was all good fun."
Being a monk finally wore off, and the only time Fenech has seen him since their 1987 fight was at a wedding in Thailand. Payakaroon was the wedding singer.
The Thai is in Australia to promote the Real Hero Muay Thai Championships at the Sydney Olympic Park Sports Centre tonight at Homebush, which pits an Australian team against a Thai team.
As light as it was, though, Fenech was still seething.
He took an angry call from Mundine's father Tony, asking him to lay off his boy.
Fenech argued it was an argument between him and Mundine the Younger, who he said offered not a whiff of compassion after Fenech had done his money to, essentially, help make the fight happen.
He told this was between him and Anthony, who he said didn't mind speaking to him day after day before the fight, but then shelfed him the moment the fight was cancelled and his money was gone.
"The guy is classless, he's got no class," Fenech said, in case we didn't get it the first time.
He did see some good in the loss, though, saying Mundine's callous disregard for Fenech's loss has revealed the true Mundine.
And he hopes the rest of Australia sees it.
"If I lose $500,000 and it means he will never make another dollar then I'm the happiest person in the world."
For years Mundine has traded on being the bad guy, copying Muhammad Ali's strategy of causing enough outrage that people will to see, as they say in the B-grade movies, to get his head knocked off.
"If you want to see Anthony Mundine getting beat watch Channel 9 news, it will be on there," Fenech said.
"Why give him another dollar?"
It is long odds a Mundine-Mosley fight will go ahead.
While Mundine and manager Khoder Nasser have vowed to promote the fight themselves, and have all the tools, Mosley's promoters have told sources there is no way he will come back to Australia.
And more significantly, it doesn't appear the fight has the appeal to "buy" Mosley.
Mundine the Younger might realise the tipping point was reached in the insults against Daniel Geale (married to a "white woman"), Arthur Beetson ("Uncle Tom"), Laurie Daley ("Uncle Tom"), Tasmanian Aboriginals ("I thought they were all dead") and refusing the national anthem before the fight.
Before the fight Mundine's camp took hold of $100,000 worth of tickets to sell. The day the fight was canned his camp had sold 10.
***
And another thing. Nobody has bothered to ask why Mundine, who we have been told for years has made far more from boxing than if he had stayed in the NRL, needs to borrow the money from Sonny Bill Williams.
Both Mundine and manager Khoder Nasser confirmed this week they might seek a loan from Williams, noting that it was all part of the brotherhood after Mundine once paid $700,000 to get Williams out of his Canterbury contract.
Why couldn't Mundine fund it himself, unless the money isn't there?
And if it's not, where has it gone?
***
You can't put muscles on a chin. Women weaken legs. Lead with the jab. We wuz robbed. He can run but he can't hide.
The important one, in Blake Ferguson's case, is the first.
Ferguson, an NRL star, was supposed to be the main support to the Mundine-Mosley fight. A tough gig, given the pay-per-view event was going to be his first step inside a ring.
Even tougher given Ferguson is coming off a knockout loss in his last start, an unofficial set to against a Bra Boy, whose name is withheld, while in his recent holiday to Bali.
***
Recently, friend Robyn Sayers walked into the nursing home where 92-year-old Joan is living and asked about the handsome man in the photo.
"Oh, I don't know who that is," Joan said.
Robyn looked at a picture on the wall.
"Who's that?" she asked,.
"Brad Fittler, of course," Joan said. "Oh, he's a beautiful man."
Joan met Fittler 13 years ago. Thanks to her work in the Parramatta community she was one of the last torch bearers in the Olympic relay, before the torch was finally handed to Cathy Freeman.
She passed on her flame to Fittler, although she never really let it go.
She was 79 at the time, and the way Fittler bent and spoke to her, helped her, she was taken.
Anyway, she is growing older her now and, as Tony can tell you, her memory is not always what it should be.
At times like this people start thinking of farewells, and last wishes, and when Robyn looked at the Fittler photo, well ...
"She's a person who's old and she's at the end of her life," she said.
"So I said, 'What would you do if Brad Fittler walked in'?"
Well, she didn't have to think about that.
It took only a phone call for Fittler to say yes, and last week he visited Joan at her nursing home.
Just walked in.
They sat and spoke about the torch relay, and the more they spoke the more the conversation turned into the kinds of conversation we all want to have with people who have lived a little.
"You can have some interesting conversations with people who are old," Fittler said later.
And, for different reasons, they both had a story to tell.
It was nothing more than an afternoon, a full afternoon of conversation, unscripted in the cogs of elite sport these days.
After it was over Joan walked Fittler to reception to help him sign out, then returned to her ward.
There, she leaned on Robyn and cried.
"It was lovely," she said.
***
JAMIE WHINCUP - Red Bull Racing
What's the one rule for racing in the Gold Coast 600?
The one rule is really to try and qualify well and try to stay out of trouble, that's the key.
Where do you find more trouble, the track or other drivers?
From the track generally. There's debris on the circuit, crashes around the corner, all sorts of things.
Those big cement barricades must be intimidating.
There's big tyre walls everywhere. You've got to try and get through the chicanes.
How tough is this circuit, so soon after the Bathurst 1000?
You have a couple of days to recover, but the Gold Coast is chalk and cheese compared to Bathurst. Bathurst is open and flowing, Gold Coast is a tight, rough street track.
So it's an advantage that Red Bull really does give you wings.
Yes! I certainly hope so. There's plenty of big curves so there will be plenty of opportunity to get in the air, but hopefully not too much.
***
A GOOD WEEK FOR
David Warner learned one of the realities of public life this week. In between topping his third century in eight days Warner was pictured, in a feel-good story, enjoying the surf with girlfriend Candice Falzon. Score the runs, and all the bad headlines go away ...
A ROUGH WEEK FOR
If non-racing types questions the loss of Atlantic Jewel to Australian racing, not so long ago Black Caviar was lighting up the track. Sport is increasingly personality driven, and Atlantic Jewel threatened to be all that.
DON'T MISS
Forget about the game, the action at Allianz tonight (Fox Sports 1, 7.30pm) will be in the crowd, as the RBB meet The Cove, across the pitch, head on. Hopefully, as passions rise, nothing flares up. Get it?
HERE'S HOPING
Nobody does a better job at selling their sport than V8 supercar drivers. And they know part of the appeal is that nobody does a better job at stopping a V8 super car than a concrete wall, which just happens to be in abundance at tomorrow's Gold Coast 600.
CHILL PILLS
Wisden's decision to leave Adam Gilchrist out of its 150th anniversary team is a slap for Gilchrist, but he'll handle it the way he always does. No fuss and, if ever given the chance to prove their mistake, a bludgeoning.
ANGRY PILLS
If anybody ever needed further proof that boxing in Australia is dying, and almost unrecoverably, then this week's Mundine-Mosley farce is it. Those saying this circus is good for the sport are the problem themselves.
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