For a man who once mercilessly terrorised the rough and tough for years in the ring, Australian boxing legend Jeff Fenech has the poise of a maestro on the other side of ropes.
Jeff Fenech shows a move to his student during a sparring session at the Ambassador Muay Thai Gym.
Fenech, winner of world titles in three weight classes with 29 wins including 21 knockouts against three losses and a draw, was in Bangkok last week to mind the corner for his latest student Brock Jarvis.
And it is Fenech’s association with young Jarvis that makes his boxing career go a full circle.
As a young hothead on the streets of Sydney in the early 80s, a policeman named Pat Jarvis introduced Fenech to the boxing ring and what ensued has been chronicled extensively.
In what Fenech referred to as “payback time”, the most successful Australian fighter is now training the same policeman’s nephew Brock Jarvis.
“He [Brock Jarvis] is the reason that I am back in boxing,” said Fenech, who has trained a number of big names including former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.
“He’s a real talent. Very tough and determined. I have everything planned out for him. When the time is right he will be registered with the WBC [World Boxing Council] and I think he can deliver.”
Fenech, speaking to the Bangkok Post after overseeing a sparring session of Brock Jarvis against a Thai boxer at the Ambassador Muay Thai Gym, said he also feels indebted to the Thai people for, according him, their respect and admiration since his victory over one of their boxing heroes.
“I took on Thai [WBC super-featherweight] title-holder Samart Payakaroon in May 1987. It was a big fight for me," he said.
“A lot of people, especially the Thais, were saying that he would knock me out, but the result of the bout in Sydney turned out to be the other way round.”
Fenech captured his second world crown that day by attacking Samart from the opening bell and eventually wearing him down before referee Arthur Mercante stepped in to stop the fight at 2:42 minutes into the fourth round.
Fenech said: “The Thais, instead of developing a bad feeling towards me for beating Samart, have always made me feel welcome. I owe them a lot.
“I love coming to Thailand. I make at least six trips a year to this country.
“I have been a business associate of Dean [Bourke, manager of the gym at the Ambassador hotel] for almost 20 years and together we have plans to bring some of the big names to Bangkok. Negotiations are taking place with a number of household names in the boxing world.
“I am really keen to give something back to Thailand.”
Asked if he would be interested in coaching the Thai boxers, Fenech was quick to say: “I would love it.
“Thailand is a country where they have an ideal setup in place to develop boxing. It is a perfect mould. When I started off in Australia, I had nothing.
“Here there are gyms that start grooming boxers from a very early stage. Yes, I would love to train Thai amateurs, because that is where it all begins.
“However, the people running the sport in Thailand must realise they need to invest to get the desired results at the major sporting events.
“They have talented fighters migrating over from Muay Thai to international-style boxing. They need someone who can actually show them what to do and how to do it.”
Fenech, who was nicknamed the ‘Marrickville Mauler’ early in his career, makes no secret of the troubled youth he had in Sydney and is even happy to speak about it.
“My life is an open book. I have been on the wrong side and I have made mistakes. I want young people to know about the mistakes I committed, learn from them and try not to take the same route," he said.
Soon after his first journey to the boxing gym following Pat Jarvis’ guidance, Fenech’s career shot up like a meteor.
Medals at the Oceania and world championships took him to the arena at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, where his amateur career came to a sad and sudden end.
At the Olympics, Fenech lost a controversial quarter-final bout to Yugoslavian Redzep Redzepovski. The Australian was initially awarded the decision, but an official intervention necessitated a recount and the decision was reversed, giving birth to a major controversy at the Games.
Fenech left the Games feeling he had been unfairly robbed of a chance to win an Olympic medal.
It was the Olympic grief that led Fenech to turn professional later in 1984, and in his first professional fight at home he defeated Jamaican Bobby Williams with a knockout in the second round.
Fenech soon became one of the most feared boxers as he won his first 11 bouts through knockouts and was placed No.1 among the world's bantamweights by the International Boxing Federation (IBF).
He took on Japanese stalwart Satoshi Shingaki in 1985 to successfully wrest the IBF bantamweight title with a ninth-round knockout in only his seventh bout, making him the fastest world champion behind Thailand’s Saensak Muangsurin and American Leon Spinks.
A couple of years later, Fenech moved up to the super-bantamweight division and in 1987 he took away the WBC world title for the class from Samart.
When Fenech moved up a category again in 1988, the WBC pitted him against Puerto Rico's former world super-bantamweight champion Victor Luvi Callejas for the vacant featherweight title in Sydney.
The fight ended with a 10th-round knockout which gave Fenech a place in boxing's elite group of fighters who have been world champions in three or more divisions.
However, Australian boxing might has gradually eroded and Fenech thinks it is in dire need of a quickfix.
In the space of a little more than past 12 months, boxers from Down Under have lost in 10 consecutive world title fights sanctioned by the four most universally-recognised boxing bodies.
Fenech feels it has all been the result of mismanagement. “To me it's pretty sad to see all these guys go over there and get beaten," he said.
“You've got to be the best in Australia first before you can fight anybody else. If you're not Australian champion and the best in the country, why should you get the opportunity to fight for any world title?
“There are lots of things wrong with Australian boxing that need to be taken care off.”
The consummate ease with which Fenech handled Brock Jarvis in the sparring session at the Ambassador Muay Thai Gym the other day suggests this Aussie legend has what it takes to set the wrongs right.
