FIGHTLINE BY DOUG FISCHER
Fights only last a matter of minutes, but fighters are connected to each other by chains that extend for decades – even centuries – into the past. Their bond is a lineage built face-to-face: A young prospect struggles with the skills of an aging veteran whose nose was once broken by a fighter now enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. In that way, muscle memory carries knowledge and boxers face a piece of everyone their opponent has fought, everyone those people fought, and so on.
BURNETT KO 6 MUNDINE MAY 14, 1976
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This month we’re linking two standouts from the New South Wales region of Australia – 1970s middleweight contender Tony Mundine and Ring/IBF cruiserweight champ Jai Opetaia . Following in the footsteps of bantamweight champion Lionel Rose, Mundine was a popular indigenous Australian who gained worldwide recognition for his fierce fighting prowess. Mundine notched 80 victories – 64 via stoppage – during a 15-year, 96-bout pro career that took him to France, Italy, Greece, Argentina and Ghana, as well as South Pacific island countries and territories such as Fiji, Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia. Mundine was blitzed 52 seconds into the opening round of his first bout against a world-level opponent – seasoned Cuban veteran Luis Rodriguez (who held a 104-9 record at the time) – in April 1971, but the 20-year-old up-and-comer won his next 22 bouts. That impressive run carried him to No. 1 in The Ring’s middleweight rankings and included top contenders Denny Moyer and Bunny Sterling, as well as faded former champ Emile Griffith, whom he outpointed in Paris in November 1973. The win streak ended when he faced Philadelphia’s “Bad” Bennie Briscoe, who stopped Mundine in five rounds in February 1974. Four bouts and eight months later, a seventh-round stoppage to middleweight great Carlos Monzon in his lone title shot ended his days as a contender, but he fought on for another 10 years. In 2000, Mundine’s son Anthony made headlines when he left rugby league football to pursue a professional boxing career at age 25. Anthony Mundine quickly developed into an attraction and contender at super middleweight, where he won a world title. Opetaia (29-0, 23 KOs) is an athletically gifted boxer-puncher of Samoan descent. Although the Sydney-born southpaw was a decorated amateur who represented Australia at the 2012 Olympics, he was unknown to most of the boxing world until he upset rugged cruiserweight veteran Mairis Briedis in July 2022. The hard-fought unanimous decision (Opetaia suffered a severely broken jaw) championship, including a rematch decision over Briedis. The lesser challengers were dispatched in brutal fashion. Opetaia is as mean as he is talented, which may explain why he’s had a difficult time getting the other cruiserweight titleholders – Gilberto Ramirez and Noel Mikaelian – to fight him in unification bouts. There are multiple paths linking the Aussie sluggers, whose primes are separated by 50 years, but we found this seven-boxer Fightline. Can you find a faster route? If so, or if you have another Fightline you’d like to submit, send it to comeoutwriting@gmail.com. And remember, some fighters earned him the Ring Magazine and IBF titles. Opetaia has made seven defenses of the Ring can be linked on paper by jumping forward and backward in time, but to be a true lineage, the fights must come in chronological order.
SPINKS UD 12 BURNETT OCTOBER 31, 1982
SUTCLIFFE UD 8 SPINKS OCTOBER 1, 1994
TUA TKO 2 SUTCLIFFE OCTOBER 23, 1999
TUA UD 12 AHUNANYA MARCH 31, 2010
PEREZ UD 10 AHUNANYA DECEMBER 30, 2011
BRIEDIS UD 12 PEREZ SEPTEMBER 30, 2017
OPETAIA UD 12 BRIEDIS JULY 2, 2022
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