After losing my third shot at an Australian amateur boxing title in 1990, I didn’t fight again, except in the odd exhibition, for six years. During that time I pursued my career in the law, and when I climbed into the ring for the last time, I did so as a pro. I had agreed to give my purse to cancer research, in memory of my mother. I wanted to close the door forever on boxing by bleeding for a good cause. The six by three-minute round bout, which was held on 20 January 1996, was with a 23-year-old from Penrith and it was on the undercard of Kostya Tszyu’s title fight against Hugo Pineda at Parramatta Stadium.
This was supposed to be a gift fight for me, an easy swansong. It turned out to be one of the toughest fights of my life. I was a month short of thirty-one, rusty as hell, and my increasingly heavy drinking guaranteed that I wasn’t the fighter I had been in my amateur days. But as always, I’d trained hard, got very fit, and sharpened my technique sparring with top fighters Nader Hamdan and ‘Digger’ Rowsell, brother of Justin. When I signed on to fight I was told the Penrith bloke I’d be up against, whom Johnny Lewis had signed for the bout, was having his first pro fight. As was the case with Goran Midic in the Melbourne fight all those years ago, the information was not strictly correct. This was my opponent’s debut pro boxing match, but he’d had twenty-seven professional kick-boxing bouts and won twenty-four of them. He was young, hard, fit and mean. Just as I was stepping into the ring I heard the ring announcer, Peter Peters, declare, ‘If Dack thinks he’s in for an easy night, he’s got another think coming.’ Peters was on the money.
All that day it had been a scorcher, the mercury hovering around 38 degrees. Then right before my bout a mighty southerly buster hit Parramatta. The temperature plunged to 25 degrees, the wind howled and the rain fell. As the ref gave us our pre-fight instructions I looked down into the front rows of the big crowd. I saw a sprinkling of celebrities and rugby league players, I saw Kerry Packer and John Singleton, Chris Murphy, and of course James, my biggest fan. All through the fight I could hear him yelling, exhorting me on.
I can still hear James’s voice ringing out, louder than everyone else’s, ‘You’re killing him! Finish him off!’ This is when I was getting whacked from pillar to post. Later, on a video of the fight, I heard announcer Peter Peters say, ‘Gee, listen to Steve Dack’s brother James! I don’t think he’s watching the same fight I am!’ James was trying to encourage me even though I knew he was talking rubbish. If a bloke has hit me with a good shot I know it’s a good shot! But I loved James for his support and enthusiasm. He got so emotional when I was fighting and so upset my opponent’s mates that sometimes he had to be pulled away from ringside for his own safety.
My opponent was really good. From the opening bell it was a war. I built an early points lead, but as the fight went on, I grew weaker while he got stronger. He kept coming at me. In the last round we went toe to toe. I’d hit him with my best punch and he’d hit me with his. The crowd was on its feet. James was screaming himself hoarse. The other bloke and I were both out on our feet, flailing away at each other. When the final bell rang, as boxers do, we embraced and thanked each other for the fight. The referee called us to the centre of the ring. We stood either side of him. He raised my hand in victory. I didn’t look like a winner. My nose was spread all over my face and my eyes had been smashed closed. I was bleeding from the mouth. It was time to retire, which is what I immediately did.
Boxing took me around the world, taught me about diet and fitness, gave me memories that will stay with me always. When I was at my lowest ebb in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I would wake up sick as a dog from drinking, caked in vomit, my wallet gone, and still feel positive about myself because I had been a boxer. I’m proud of what I achieved in the ring. I fought for the Australian title three times. I was New South Wales champion a number of times. I fought overseas and won a gold medal. But I can’t say how good I was, all I can say is that much more often than not, I was the victor. I learned in my fighting years that the higher I went up the ladder the more difficult it would be to win because there were people just as hungry, if not hungrier, than me; people just as talented, if not more talented, than me. I was a realist. There is always someone who is better than you. My ego was always in check. I was never one to say, ‘He got me with a lucky punch. I’ll beat him next time.’ If someone clobbered me in the ring I gave him full credit. He deserved that. I know James is proud of me, because he has photos of me in my boxing days on his wall at his home, and has kept all my press clippings. My mother would have been proud of me if she’d seen me fight. Every fight I fought, I fought for her. Even my father – I think even he might have been impressed and given me a hug and said, ‘Well, done, Sunshine.’
J.R.R. Tolkien was right. There is a fellowship of the ring. Boxers have a respect for each other that grows with the years, and mellows long after they’ve hung up their gloves. Like the Diggers and the Turks who fought at Gallipoli, men who have done battle in the ring have an abiding respect for each other. When old boxers get together we talk about our fights and the excitement of the lead-up, and the days and weeks of recuperation before preparing for the next contest. So raw are those experiences, so triumphant and in a way so sad, that the pride of having been a fighter stays with you as long as you live. I’m sure the gladiators of ancient times would have known what I’m talking about. I can put my hand on my heart and say that I’ve never met a boxer I didn’t like. In my years as a lawyer, I’ve acted for many, like Jeff Harding, whose life went off the rails when their boxing days ended. A boxing career is a hard act to follow and there is something about us that makes others try to take advantage of us. How many of us end up down and out? Sadly, plenty.
I’ve been known to while away many pleasant hours in my cafés of choice in Darlinghurst talking boxing. I enjoy reminiscing about old fights and the grand men who fought them. Sometimes, though, boxing being what it is, it attracts dodgy people. There are the rip-off merchants, and there are the bullshit artists.
Not long ago a bunch of us were sitting around in a café and the talk was all about Jeff Harding. I said I’d fought him in 1986. Suddenly a bloke I hadn’t met before piped up, ‘I fought Harding, too.’
‘Did you? Really?’ I said, genuinely interested. ‘Where and when? As a pro or an amateur?’ I wasn’t trying to catch him out, I just wanted to hear his story.
At this, and on further questioning from me, the bloke started to backtrack. It turned out he’d never fought Jeff at all. There was a remote chance that he may have hit the bag with him once, but I reckon there was plenty of doubt about that as well. I was gentle with him and didn’t expose him as the fraud he was. He knew, though, that I knew he was lying.
Boxing opened up a new world for me. It introduced me to a lot of people: some salt-of-the-earth good people, and a few not so good, but that’s the nature of that game. It’s very attractive, very dramatic and there’s a romance about fighting, the brutality, the risk of danger and death, that attracts people from the respectable and from the shady side of the street. Next time you’re at a boxing match or watching on TV, take a look at the blokes at ringside. There’ll be celebrities, sports stars, crims, everyday people from all walks of life, all mixed in together, come to see two blokes getting stuck in. My theory is that boxing connects us with something in our psyche that comes from the kill-or-be-killed days of our caveman ancestors.
I was lucky. Look at me today and you can tell my nose has been broken and I’ve got a couple of scars on my face. My joints are stiff in the morning. Other than that, touch wood, there’s been no lasting damage. To my way of thinking, my few ailments are a price I’m happy to pay for the experiences, the glory and the trophies and medals that came my way.
What is it like to fight in the ring? This is something I’m often asked. Scratch the surface and most blokes would have liked to have stepped into the ring and duked it out. As one who did it many times, I can say that boxing is the hardest, most primeval, of sports. One man pitted against another, each trying to vanquish the other. Each fighter is representing himself, his family, friends and culture. There’s nowhere to hide. Boxing is about overwhelming your opponent physically and mentally and laying him low. It’s about fighting on, even though a blow to the head has your senses reeling and rocking and you are in terrible pain from a kidney punch that will have you pissing blood for days afterwards. Defeat can be ignominious, you’re bloodied, you’ve been knocked off your feet and are lying prone on the canvas, or you’re standing there defenceless as the other fellow unloads on you again and again, trying to keep your wits about you just enough to get your head out of the way of his fists as he tries to finish you off. My attitude was always: someone’s gonna get hurt tonight and it ain’t gonna be me. But of course no boxer wins every fight. Every man who fights sustains damage, sometimes serious damage.
But, can I tell you, to me the toughest person in the world is not a boxer. It’s the person who drags himself or herself out of bed at six every morning to go to work to support themselves and their loved ones. That’s real toughness. That’s real courage. That’s what Mum did for us. James is doing it now. My brother followed my boxing career, and told me how proud he was of me for being brave enough to be a fighter. I told him, ‘Brother, that’s nothin’. You’re the one who made a career out of hard work and being responsible. I’m proud of you.’
A fear came over me when I finished boxing in 1996. I was only thirty-one. What would I do now? No more training five days a week. My law studies had ended too. Now that I was a qualified barrister, Chris Murphy was keen for me to continue working with him. While grateful for everything Chris had done for me, and loving him as a mate and mentor, I was feeling it was time to break away and try to make it on my own by establishing my own law firm. It may sound funny, but I was also loving my work sweeping the streets. I enjoyed being out and about in inner Sydney in the early morning. I enjoyed the company of the homeless people I met on my rounds. What, I thought, if I continued doing that, and spent the rest of the day representing my own clients? And, to be honest, there was a part of me lusting after the long hours I’d have to myself so I could do some serious drinking.
I tried to focus on what would be best for me. I came to believe that it was right to leave Chris. Working in law at Chris’s level is a hard gig. It’s so aggressive and so competitive and the lawyers in his firm were always undercutting each other and trying to make themselves look better for the boss at each other’s expense. That was done to me many times, and I had screaming matches with Chris when it did. We were still mates, but professionally our relationship was becoming strained.
For example, I was to appear in court for a client of Chris who had been charged with impersonating a police officer. I said to a colleague who was helping me prepare the case, ‘Mate, I’m going to need the law on this.’
The colleague replied, ‘Aw … just tell Chris the case turns on its facts.’ (‘Get me the law’ means digging up precedents of similar cases to use in formulating a defence to put before the judge and jury; ‘the case turns on the facts’ is lawyer-speak for simply handling the matter on its particular merits without recourse to documentation on anything that has happened in the past. Obviously, a case handled ‘on the facts’ is easier to assemble than one handled utilising ‘the law’.)
I said, ‘Chris is not going to wear that.’
He said, ‘Do as I say, tell Chris the case turns on the facts. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been doing this for a long time.’ I shrugged and thought because this bloke was more experienced than me he was right. He wasn’t right, he was lazy.
I had dinner with Chris the night before I was to stand up in court and defend our client. Everything was fine between us until we started to discuss the case. I outlined my strategy for the following day in court. Chris said, ‘Where’s the law on this, Steve?’
‘Sunshine,’ I said, ‘it turns on the facts.’
‘It fuckin’ what?’
I said, knowing now that I should have followed my instincts and not listened to my colleague, ‘It turns on the facts.’
Chris shouted at me, ‘You’ve been a lawyer for three minutes! That’s not long, but it’s long enough to know you don’t take short cuts in my firm! You tell me this case turns on its facts? Who do you think you are!’
It wasn’t my way to blame my colleague for talking me out of what I knew was right. I took Chris’s wrath fairly on the chin, and I deserved it.
Chris continued to give me both barrels. ‘You don’t want to work, do you? Listen, I’ll get someone else for the case. In fact, come in tomorrow and clean out your desk. I don’t want you working for me anymore.’
I stood up from my chair. ‘I’ll do better than that, Chris,’ I said, my voice now raised too. ‘I fuckin’-well quit right now! You can go back to the office and dump all my files in the rubbish bin!’
We went at each other there in the restaurant and then on Oxford Street. We damn near came to blows. Luckily, for both of us, I kept my cool and stalked off home to bed.
Next morning, Vince Murphy, Chris’s brother who also worked in the firm and was a good mate, telephoned me and said, ‘Just lie low, Steve. You know what Chris is like. He’ll get over it in a day or two and welcome you back to the fold.’
For a while I was euphoric that I’d made the break from Chris Murphy, then I realised that I owed that bloke so much, and I had made a career being on his team, and so a couple of days later I slunk back to the office ready to work and hoping he hadn’t done what I’d told him to do and trashed my files. I hated coming back with my tail between my legs but figured it was for the best. True to what Vince said, when Chris saw me he flashed me a smile as if our screaming match had never happened. Everything continued the same as before yet, undeniably, something had come between us.
I still wanted to move on, and I had decided to do so. All that was keeping me there was my gratitude to Chris and my weekly salary. By continuing to work with Chris I was living a lie. Like the hypocrite in the T.S. Eliot poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, I was putting on a false face to be what others expected me to be.
I have never been a hypocrite. Soon, I resigned and started out on my own. I hung out my shingle, Stephen Dack & Associates, in Elizabeth Street in the city. You do what you need to do to survive and to live your life.
For the next six years, I handled many cases. Some of my clients had been charged with serious crimes, mostly they were in strife for drunkenness, drugs, fighting, petty fraud. When they could afford to pay me I took their money, when they couldn’t I handled their case for nothing. I gave every case my best shot. Some days, my best was better than others. Too many times I turned up in court still stinking of alcohol from the night before, my shirt wet with the booze that was streaming through the pores of my skin, my head throbbing and my throat parched, my knuckles bruised from hitting someone or something. My thoughts fixed firmly on my next drink.