Whether Anthony Mundine’s comments about the terrorist attacks on America were a free speech issue, or one of role-model responsibility, the real issue is this: should we give them any importance? By scapegoating him, we’re giving him a gift – victimisation. One day, he’ll use it to create yet another of those contrived analogies with the life and career of Muhammad Ali. This is the guy who said, after two professional fights, that the only reason he wasn’t a champion was “politics”.

Mundine’s good. He should be mauling prelim boys on undercards. He might as well be. He’s been fighting has-beens, never wozzers and never-will-bees. He’s been talking these non-events up, and people have paid to see them. But don’t believe all these predictions of a world title by the end of the year. Sven Ottke has good ring craft, no knockout punch, and holds a version of the Super Middleweight title that keeps him out of the orbit of the Roy Joneses of this world. Mundine’s own father would have eaten The Man alive had they met at the same age, then had Ottke for desert.

With a bit of learning, humility and experience, Mundine could be somebody. First, he has to come to terms with being nobody.

Published in Inside Sport, November, 2001