An article on Barry Michael from the Herald Sun newspaper earlier this year is well worth a read. Here is a sample. You will need to click on the shortcut below to read the rest >>>
In the ring, Michael was famously talkative and that hasn’t changed in 25 years.
“I’ve copped more hits than Google,” deadpans Michael, whose mates dubbed him “Head of Stone” in a nod to his famous contemporary Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran.
Michael’s eyebrows are scarred, but his brain is fine. When he was fighting, Michael was proof of the proposition that the best thing about professional boxing was the boxers.
The night he fought the American Al “Earthquake” Carter at Dallas Brooks Hall in 1981, Michael was calmer than anyone at ringside. He oozed the nonchalant self-confidence of a bulldog, grinning and joking as if it were just another training session. But when he climbed through the ropes he was all business. It wasn’t as if Carter was a pushover.
The man from Akron, Ohio, was lightning fast and tough as teak. The judges decided Michael had won the war by a whisker but for most of the fight it had looked a draw. Carter returned to Ohio and an uncertain future. The last we heard of him he’d “committed suicide” a few years later — although some wondered why a right-handed man would have a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his left temple.
FOUR years later, Michael became IBF super featherweight world champion in one of Australia’s renowned sporting events — the night he goaded the brilliant youngster Lester Ellis out of his new title at Festival Hall in one of the last 15-round fights ever held.
These days, Michael works outside the square, promoting fights and managing fighters. In a business that has its share of colourful and questionable characters, he is on nodding acquaintance with everyone but likes to do it his way. He proved that two years after the Ellis fight, when the forces of evil, alias Alphonse Gangitano and his crew, got their revenge because he hadn’t thrown the Ellis fight the way the bad guys wanted.
It happened at Lazar’s nightclub in King St. Gangitano bit a chunk from Michael’s cheek and smashed his nose flat with a heavy glass ashtray while armed hoodlums held him down.
Michael was maybe the toughest white lightweight fighter of his time but half a dozen heavyweight hoods set him up. Lucky they didn’t shoot him. The bouncers had been too frightened to stop the bashing but one later told the boxer he’d kicked a pistol from one goon’s hand.
Michael was scarred but not scared. But the injuries brought on the end of his career. In his fourth title defence, against American Rocky Lockridge in England, the broken nose he’d suffered in the bashing was shattered in the first rounds. Then came a burst ear drum and plenty of cuts. He retired hurt and never fought again. But he is still in the game, promoting fights and managing fighters.
The thing about boxing gyms, Michael muses, is that while not everyone in them is an angel, the training does more to cure wild kids than to corrupt good ones. And none of it involves killing small animals.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinio ... 7242587796