Since leaving school around 1960, I’d just knocked about doing what I could for a quid. For about 16 months, I worked in a piggery out at Mulgoa on the outer western fringe of Sydney, castrating the boars and doing whatever needed doing. I made money on the side by going into pubs and sussing out who the local thugs were. Every pub in them days had a pug who thought he was the best in the district, so I’d challenge them and get a bet going. I did a bit of bouncing in pubs . . . whatever I could get my hands on.
I know it sounds egotistical, but I was born with the ability to knock people out with one punch. My old man and my grandfather, Joey, could do the same. So could most of my brothers. In my first fight at school, I went whack and knocked the kid out. From the age of seven, Dad used to take me to Hannebery’s gym in Newcastle, where Dave Sands – ‘the best fighter never to be world champion’ – used to train.
About 1972, word got around that Abe Saffron was going to start up an underground fight scene. It was going to be bare-knuckled. No rules. Nothing was off limits. He wanted to do it right, so he planned to bring out top fighters from all over the world and face them off against some locals. I wasn’t that interested at first. I knew what I could do and didn’t think I needed to prove anything to anyone.
But the infamous Mr Big of Sydney, Lenny McPherson, got in my ear about it. ‘Come on, you and your brothers reckon you’re pretty tough. Why don’t you prove what you can do?’
McPherson was no mate of mine. I think he was keen to see me involved because I’d thumped a few of his blokes over the years and he wanted to see me get thumped back.
I let him goad me into going down and trying out. They had auditions down at the Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo. It was still a functioning wharf back then, but it was hardly used at all. It just had this huge empty warehouse space. I decked a few blokes and I was in. I was going to be Mr Sin’s main representative against the fancy overseas fighters.
The first bloke they brought out was a six foot four African–American who used the name Ray Evans. He’d apparently been a navy Seal instructor.
I arrived in my car and was allowed to drive onto the Finger Wharf by the wharfies who were manning the gate and were effectively security for the fight. Lenny McPherson was in sweet with them, so he’d teed all that up. Everyone else had to park outside and walk up the long, thin wharf with the huge old wooden warehouse running right up the middle of it. I was alone, wearing my black satiny kyite training pants and bare feet. I saw all these people, blokes in suits and women in nice clothes, and I thought, Shit, what have I got myself into? I was always taught not to do things in front of witnesses.
I didn’t have a second, but one of the knockabouts up the Cross, Little Lenny Baker, seemed to take on the role. All I had in my sports bag was a bottle of Coke for after the fight. I didn’t think it would go long enough to justify having a water bottle or anything like that. Little Lenny said to me, ‘If you want to make the money, bet on yourself on the side. Do you think you can take this bloke?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, ask for your appearance money up front, give it to me and I’ll get it all on you.’ So we did that. I was a rank outsider, so there was potentially a lot of money to be made. And I trusted Little Lenny. Everybody did.
All the punters formed a circle behind a big chalk ring drawn on the rough old wharf timbers. I could see my opponent, Evans, at the far end of the circle. He was stretching his leg out and all this sort of stuff, so I grabbed my leg and put it up alongside my ear. He probably didn’t expect to see a big hairy biker do that. I was doing a lot of kyite – a Korean martial art – at the time and could do the full front splits. I could jump off a chair and hit the floor in the full splits.
Evans looked at me and pointed to the ground, telling me I was going down.
Big Lenny McPherson yelled at me, ‘You’re gunna get killed, Campbell.’
There were no bells or refs. The fight began with a nod of the head from Evans and me.
He came straight at me and let fly with a kick to the hip and I thought, The next one’s probably going to go to the head.
The way I was taught to fight from the age of seven with boxing, then wrestling, judo, muy thai and kyite was to just go on autopilot. There was a famous boxer who used to say that before he went in the ring he could see the fight in his head. He could see the other bloke throwing punches and how he would counter. That’s how I saw mine. I could see what was going to happen in this fight as soon as I saw Evans and the way he moved. The way he warmed up. I was zoned in.
He went to kick me in the head and I was ready. I put my arm up and moved to the side, so his foot glanced off my arm. He spun around and sprayed out another kick with the foot. I bent down and fended it with my other arm, rising as I pushed his foot away and making him lose his balance.
That seemed to rile him, because he made the mistake of spitting at me. With him doing that, and with Big Lenny still there at ringside with his voice above all the others, telling me I was going to get killed, I went into another zone of blackness. I waited for Evans to come in towards me and I drove my foot hard into his left knee. I felt it bend, satisfyingly, as his leg snapped. He slumped to the floor. There was a whole lot of yelling from the crowd, but I can’t say that I really heard it. I got in behind him, wrapped my arms around his neck and sent him on a long holiday. One-way ticket.
I didn’t feel a thing. It was just a fight. He got what he deserved.
His blokes came over and bent down to look at him. One of them threw himself over the fighter in a kind of embrace. There was just silence in this cavernous space. I turned my back and walked out through the crowd in the eerie quiet. There were a lot of fine-looking folks wide-eyed, open-mouthed, staring at me, staring at the black body on the floor.
Big Lenny made his way towards me. ‘You were lucky,’ he said.
I got Little Lenny to go to my bag and open the glass bottle of Coke for me.
The body was left for Abe Saffron and his associates to clean up. I wouldn’t have a clue what they did with it, but as I was to learn, they were pretty good at dealing with that sort of thing. There were never repercussions. My only injury was a dirty great splinter in my foot from the wharf timbers, so I decided that if I fought there again I’d better wear runners.
The fights started coming along every few weeks. They were often at the Finger Wharf, but they’d also be in garages and factories on bare concrete. Some were in disused office buildings and I’d find myself fighting on polished timber or parquetry.
Abe had the coppers on side so that, wherever the fight was, the local sergeant would make sure his boys weren’t around. When it was at the Finger Wharf, the sergeant at Darlo would send the troops up to Paddington. No copper ever came near one of my fights.
I’d never know the person I was up against until the last minute, but they were almost always guys with big reputations from overseas. It was only the ones who pissed me off who ended up on those long vacations.
More people started coming to watch, not that they allowed a lot in, but certainly more money started to go through the books and that was what it was all about for Abe and his mates. There was no entry fee, but it was only the known big punters who got invited and, if there was a blow-in who was there because they knew someone who knew someone, they’d have to flash a big wad of cash to prove that they were serious before they’d be let in. I heard about some enormous bets: $100,000, $200,000, which was enough to buy a flash house in the Eastern Suburbs back then.
Because a lot of my fights were ending so badly for my opponents, it got to the point where there were two sorts of betting: whether I would win and whether the other bloke would walk out alive.
I certainly never bet on that one. That wouldn’t be right. I never set out to deliberately send someone away, it just happened sometimes. They’d poke me in the eye or say something that’d set me off and I’d just lose it. I’d have the crowd going, ‘Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!’ That’s what a lot of them came to see.
A Miss World finalist used to be there all the time with some girlfriends. They were the worst. They loved the blood. I’d sometimes see them during the fight before mine and they’d be there with their fists clenched and the veins popping out of their necks. These good sorts going, ‘Kill him. Kill him.’
For all the victories I started pegging up, the big money blokes like Lenny McPherson never got behind me. Aussies have got this thing where they think if the bloke’s from overseas he’s got to be better. That was good for me, because it meant that Little Lenny and then later my brother Shadow kept getting good odds and we cleaned up. The prize money in the beginning was thirteen grand, but we made more from the bookies.
The only big fish who bet on me all the time were Frank Packer and his son, Kerry. Those two thought that Aussies really could be as good as anyone from overseas.
The highest paid escort in Sydney at the time was a sheila called Roberta Roberts. She was about 20 years old, studying at university, and if you wanted to spend the night with her you were up for thousands of dollars. Big Lenny and George Freeman both had a thing for her, but she used to hang around George more. To piss them both off, I’d just whistle her over and get her to plait my hair before a fight. She’d be caressing my scalp and I’d be looking at Lenny and George and they’d be staring switchblades back at me.
But for all that, I’d be concentrating on my opponent across the circle. I could tell just by the way they walked whether they had a bit of style about them. A lot of them used to spend five or ten minutes warming up and, in that time, I was picking out what martial art they practised, what type of fighting they did. The way they jabbed, the way they kicked. I always warmed up before I came in. I wasn’t giving nothing away.
Little Lenny would be hovering around. He was an old boxer in his day, a welterweight prelim fighter, not good enough to shoot for the title, but good enough to be on the card. And he loved being amongst it all. Telling me who was in the crowd. ‘Col Joye’s here,’ he’d say. ‘Brian Henderson’s over the back there.’
One time I saw this sheila in her 50s come in with a chauffeur carrying a satin pillow for her friggin’ Maltese terrier to sit on.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ I said to Little Lenny.
‘I think that’s Lady Fairfax. You know, owns the Herald and everything.’
‘You gotta be jokin’.’
‘Fair dinkum.’
I heard that she had a bet, but I don’t know who she backed.