Link: Sydney Morning Herald
Somewhat old news, but if you missed it...
Retired Australian light heavyweight Danny Green, who left the sport recently with the WBA title in his grasp, has been offered a reported $5 million to fight Anthony Mundine in a rematch of their major Australian event from 2006, but his trainer is urging him to say no.
Last news has been Green leaning toward taking the fight. Can't blame him -- that's a lot of money to pass up.
Mundine won the first fight on unanimous decision scores of 116-113, 118-112 and 118-111, and left little doubt as to who was the better boxer of the two.
But Mundine may be out of opponents. After beating Sam Soliman for a third time in three encounters, Mundine was supposedly going to move from super middleweight to middleweight. Now, he's calling out the retired Green, who last fought at 175 pounds and has no desire, apparently, to go below that weight.
How does Mundine have fans? Isn't everything he does insanely transparent? When he could have tried to avenge a defeat at the hands of Mikkel Kessler, he chose a third fight with Soliman. Now, after Kessler won the WBA super middleweight "title," which was "vacated" by Mundine after he beat Soliman (having already been essentially vacated and determined as up for grabs in the Kessler-Sartison fight that came later), Mundine again could try to land a fight there, or with a top middleweight, or with, you know, anyone but a guy he's already beaten and that decided months ago to give up the sport.
Green (25-3, 22 KO) is 35 years old, a tough fighter with nice power that never won a major fight, losing twice to Markus Beyer (once by headbutt DQ) and to Mundine.
I honestly hate railing on Anthony Mundine, but what does he do that offers anyone that isn't a loony another option? He talks the biggest game in the sport, how he won't let a Christian beat him (Kessler already has, and convincingly so at that), how he wants to fight this top guy or that top guy, and instead of any action, we find him fighting the undersized Soliman in a fight that had no reason to take place, and then offering ludicrous amounts of money for Green to come out of retirement and give him another win to put in his back pocket.
Mundine is not a bad fighter. So he didn't beat Kessler -- big deal, neither has anyone else besides Joe Calzaghe. So he got knocked out, somehow, by Sven Ottke -- umm, harder to defend. So he lost a tight one to Manny Siaca. Fighters lose close fights all the time.
I really, really do HATE never having anything good to say about Mundine's career. His personal beliefs are his own and I try not to care about that stuff too much.
But he talks and never backs it up. Yeah, he wins fights. At home. Against mid-tier opposition at best. He takes the easiest fights he can find and promises something more for the future. The future is now, though. He's 33.
Maybe he should focus on his music career.