Biggest fights to be held in Australia

[Grant]

Rose v gatellari was huge at the time. Also TONY Mundine vs Bunny Sterling, two top 5 middleweights over 15rnds.

[Beltane]

The Lionel Rose versus Rocky Gattellari fight was a very big event in it's day (most wanted to see Rocky get his come-uppence), but there was a bigger fight (both status and crowd wise) for Rocky earlier, when Rocky challenged Italian: Salvatoe Burruni for the WBC Flyweight title on 2nd December 1965.

The bout was held at the famous Sydney Showground arena, in front of 25,000 estimated crowd, with pricey seats on the grass with the cheap seats back in the stands. Rocky thought the local Italian crowd would get behind him, but they mostly barracked for the visitor Burruni. Most non-Italians there, didn't like Rocky due to his flamboyant cockiness, and also cheered for Burruni.

So with the majority of the crowd against him, Rocky put up a game effort, but was stopped in the 13th round. A report can be found below:
http://boxrec.com/hugman/index.php/1965 ... alia_-_WBC

This was the end for Rocky at Flyweight, and later Lionel basically ended Rocky's boxing ambitions at the Stadium.

[Tinnie]

Well there you go... i had always just assumed the Barruni fight was held in Italy.

Rocky Mattioli after leaving Australia in search of a world title belt, returned to make his first defence at Kooyong Tennis Arena against Elisha Obed..... while certainly not one of the biggest fights... it was one of the early world title bouts in this country that rarely gets a mention in these sort of threads.....

[bogan whisperer]

Mundine vs Green was huge. So was Michael vs Ellis.

[Rise Above]

Jack Carroll had two fights where 30,000 attended and two with 20,000 in the mid 1930's!

[bogan whisperer]

Jack Carroll had two fights where 30,000 attended and two with 20,000 in the mid 1930's!

Amazing people could afford to attend back in those days of the depression years.

[bogan whisperer]

surely rose must have had some big fights or did he fight mostly fight abroad ? on a side note watched fenech v grove for first time other day absolutely cracking finish by grove, sent a right shiver through me !

Rose vs Rudkin was a big fight.

[bogan whisperer]

When Roy Jones Jnr came here it was like a royal visit. A genuine ATG of boxing coming to a boxing outpost like Australia was huge news and it was all over the TV, newspapers and internet. It came as a huge shock when Danny Green stopped Roy in the first round. I was in a packed bar and the crowd went absolutely nuts when Green hurt Roy after only a matter of seconds into the fight and then the referee stopped it. Then there was just a stunned silence while the punters took in what they had just witnessed.

[bogan whisperer]

At one stage we held 5 Commonwealth titles simultaneously. There is a picture with the 5 champions together wearing their belts. Mundine, Ramon, Dunne, Ferreri and Nissen and they all initially won their belts on Australian soil.

[bogan whisperer]

Most of us can only say fights in our generation...but some of the Patrick, Barnes, Dawson, Burns, Palmer, Sands etc were huge.

no big money in them days but all sellouts.

These blokes actually fought for their supper.

There are few greater motivations than knowing your next meal depended on you winning. That's part of the reason Mexicans fighters were so feared in the 70s and 80s.

[Beltane]

There was an old saying that certainly applied to the game between the two world wars:

"hungry fighters make the best fighters"!

[buster007]

I was at the green - jones fight and cause the crowd was expecting green to likely get schooled, the crowd went bonkers when he did the unthinkable.

no dive, just a belting, lol.

[DA GOOSE]

When Roy Jones Jnr came here it was like a royal visit. A genuine ATG of boxing coming to a boxing outpost like Australia was huge news and it was all over the TV, newspapers and internet. It came as a huge shock when Danny Green stopped Roy in the first round. I was in a packed bar and the crowd went absolutely nuts when Green hurt Roy after only a matter of seconds into the fight and then the referee stopped it. Then there was just a stunned silence while the punters took in what they had just witnessed.

to me ...it looked like a dive....but with Jones's record and the little money that would cost this man to dive against his stellar record...does not make sense at all

Don't really like Green but had $40 on him to KO Roy. Roy has been shot for ages Tito was inactive Calzaghe had brittle hands,Sheika shot,Lacy a 1 armed fighter.Surprised Green as crude as he is stopped him in round 1 though. But c,mon it was no Gonzalez-Mares,Stevenson-Dawson,Ishida-Kirkland type surprise. He got $0 for the Hopkins fight and Hopkins got $2 million because after the Green fight it didn't sell well and Hopkins demanded $2 million and said Roy could have anything the fight made over that. So there was definitely no dive he cost himself a big pay day in the unlikely event that he did dive.

[bogan whisperer]

When Roy Jones Jnr came here it was like a royal visit. A genuine ATG of boxing coming to a boxing outpost like Australia was huge news and it was all over the TV, newspapers and internet. It came as a huge shock when Danny Green stopped Roy in the first round. I was in a packed bar and the crowd went absolutely nuts when Green hurt Roy after only a matter of seconds into the fight and then the referee stopped it. Then there was just a stunned silence while the punters took in what they had just witnessed.

to me ...it looked like a dive....but with Jones's record and the little money that would cost this man to dive against his stellar record...does not make sense at all

Don't really like Green but had $40 on him to KO Roy. Roy has been shot for ages Tito was inactive Calzaghe had brittle hands,Sheika shot,Lacy a 1 armed fighter.Surprised Green as crude as he is stopped him in round 1 though. But c,mon it was no Gonzalez-Mares,Stevenson-Dawson,Ishida-Kirkland type surprise. He got $0 for the Hopkins fight and Hopkins got $2 million because after the Green fight it didn't sell well and Hopkins demanded $2 million and said Roy could have anything the fight made over that. So there was definitely no dive he cost himself a big pay day in the unlikely event that he did dive.

No way Roy dived. Just got caught cold by a big puncher and didn't get a chance to recover from it.