Seeking the real Mundine

Mundine stops at the end of the block, in front of a brick boxing gym painted on the backside with an Aboriginal flag. This is where Mundine - a boxer both loved and loathed, depending on the audience - trains for his December 10 fight.

On this particular afternoon, Mundine will sweat through 10 rounds of sparring in an old gym where punching bags hang from rusted metal piping and yellowed early-90s boxing posters decorate the walls. Could he find a nicer gym? Sure, he says.

But then he'd be surrounded by people who don't understand him.

And, based on history, when Mundine attempts to explain himself - when he talks in absolutes about his code or his principles or his beliefs - a caricature, rather than complexity, tends to emerge.

Here, Mundine steps out of his vehicle wearing a Yankees baseball cap, a sticker still on the brim. Four or five street urchins, middle-age guys, beg for money. One holds a Victoria Bitter bottle.

Sometimes, Mundine hands these guys, or people like them, a few bills. Sometimes, he hands his car keys to a mate and instructs him to take the neighbourhood kids on a ride. But this time, Mundine just exchanges a few brotherly handshakes and heads upstairs to the ring.

I came here myself trying for a sense of the real, honest-to-goodness Anthony Mundine - a misguided goal, I learned.

Mundine's realness, if it exists, is wrapped under contradictions.

He's weary of two-word headlines and yet by choice he's sensationalised himself into a two-word nickname: "The Man''.

By his own labelling, Mundine is a Muslim and an Aboriginal and the best ever and unequalled and real. Banner statements, charged words. Let him start talking and that's his default mode.

"People can't buy my heart, man,'' Mundine told me at the gym, where he's preparing for Monday's fight against Jose Alberto Clavero, of Argentina.

"My heart and my soul. That's who I am. I represent the people. I represent the struggle. I represent the common man.

"And they might want to portray me as a villain, this or that, a d...head, brash - there are reasons why I'm like that. One, I'm an extraordinarily athlete, the likes they've never seen before. I'll be the best ever.''

Perhaps because few others promote him well, Mundine's always been a self-promoter, and he's done so with hyperbole. But what's underneath all that?

In some ways, he's still like the boy who so loved chocolate - smearing it across his face until it resembled a beard - that friends and family called him "Choc''.

Even now, Choc stops eating dairy products four or five days before his fights, having determined that they hinder his breathing. Chocolate, though, he keeps eating until two days beforehand.

Mundine demands perfection of himself; that's his main creed. He's never drank or done drugs, even during his footy career "where they drank every week''.

He tells this story: At 16 or 17, he was hanging out with some Aboriginal mates. They'd formed a circle and were passing around a joint. Mundine realized he faced a formative decision.

After all, several years earlier, his father had driven him through Kings Cross, showing him the alcoholics and drug fiends and offering a warning about the commonplace vices. So Mundine said no to the joint and ran away from his mates in tears - and not out of despair.

"I'd realized what I did, the strength it took,'' Mundine explained. "And when I left, that's when I knew. I could be great.''

As an athlete, he's superb - no question. His jawline looks like it could draw blood. He's chiselled and fierce. A recent eye infection still isn't 100 per cent but he jokes he can see well enough to knock another man out.

He wants to fight for another three or four years and, in the process, ignite another Aboriginal superstar.

Mundine has stayed close to his roots, too, having never been sought by corporate Australia. Despite his high profile, Mundine has no sponsorships, he said.

Controversy and unpredictability don't make for great ad campaigns. One of his handlers wondered if it might be possible to establish a deal with one of Mundine's favourite products, V Energy Drink.

With the help of his right-hand man, former NRL player Wes Patten, Mundine has scheduled trips to bush towns where he speaks to the community about, as he calls it, "the traps'' - alcohol, boredom, isolation, in-fighting.

About two months ago, he and Patten and one other drove to Bourke, NSW, almost near Queensland, just to spend three days there. Mundine attended a barbeque, followed on a traditional walk with community leaders and talked to a group of troubled youngsters.

He hopes a few of them end up at the newly-formed Indigenous Boxing Academy. The thing is, I would have never heard about this trip from Mundine. Patten told me about it. Mundine later said, simply, "I'm not one of those guys who needs to bring 20 cameras. I do it out of my own heart.''

I still can't tell you what it all means. I've got no conclusions about Mundine's heart or his intentions.

But I know he's a great fighter, and as a result, people listen to him. That's both his blessing and curse.

www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22870928-5001023,00.html