 FORMER NSW Welterweight Champion and popular club member GEORGE EGGLETON says the boxing success of former Dragons star and new WBA Super Middleweight Champion Anthony Mundine is no surprise.
"He's a brilliant fighter," Eggleton said.
"I thought he was always going to be a good fighter, because he's been boxing since he was that big, you know," Eggleton earned a place on Jimmy Sharman's legendary boxing troupe before World War II and has enjoyed following two generations of Mundines.
"I knew his old man - he was a good fighter and Anthony is a complete boxer.
" Eggleton lost only two of 18 fights on points in his professional career, winning most by knockout thanks to a concrete right hand not unlike that of Danny Green, Mundine's biggest threat in middleweight division.
"Oh, Mundine would kill him," Eggleton said, citing Anthony's blinding speed and silky skills.
"When that German beat him, that was because he just got hit in the temple.
It didn't look hard but all punches are hard if they get you in the right place.
He would have won that fight easily.
" The 83-year-old called on all Mundine detractors to get behind the former Dragon with the quicksilver hands and feet.
"What most people don't know is that he's a good bloke as well.
He just gets misquoted a lot in the papers," he said.
Boxing was also Eggleton's second incarnation.
After two years working in the Snowy Mountains as a boundary rider (drover) from age 13 to 15, he moved back to his hometown of Tumut only to find his family, including ten brothers, had moved to Sydney.
So when Jimmy Sharman's famous troupe came to town, the itinerant teenager stepped in the ring and defeated local pug Lennie Fields, the brother of country champion Woody.
Thus began a career that saw him relieve the highly rated Jimmy Dundee of his NSW welterweight title in a 12-round bout at the Rushcutters Bay stadium in 1938.
After retiring from the ring, Eggleton concreted all the roadwork, footpaths, kerbs and gutters for Kogarah Council, employing several of Saint's country recruits over a 40-year period before retiring in 1990.
Eggleton is still fighting fit, swimming a kilometre each day at Carss Park Pool, under the watchful eye of Dick Caine, and playing regular games of golf.
"I hit a hole-in-one a week after my 80th birthday," he boasted.
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St George Leagues Club
LEAGUES CLUB JOURNAL
