Danny Green, Roy Jones Junior Fight & Fishing Holidays
Posted by Meggs | Fishing Holiday Stories | Posted on December 3rd, 2009
Our view above the Danny Green tunnel
Greetings all,
What an evening it was last night. Skipper Meggs, his younger brother and dad (an ex boxer himself) went off to the Danny Green fight. Let me tell you the story…
Well it was an early Xmas present for my dad and to be honest apart from a couple of Kick Boxing shows in Phuket I must admit that I had never ever been to a boxing match even though they have regular bouts at my local watering hole. I was always of the belief that there’d be more fights outside the ring than inside it.
We trained it in to Acer Arena and it was a fair walk for a 76 year old so by the time we made it inside the stadium it was right on beer o’clock.
That’s when the fun began.
My brother headed off to find an ATM as the ones outside the stadium weren’t working (that’s right 3 NAB ATM’s down at the same time!) and I lined up for beers whilst dad sat down to catch his breath. When I got to the bar a good 15 minutes later I was told I could only buy 2 beers and if I wanted 3 I had to get dad to come over. I told them (nicely) the poor old bloke was having a rest after the walk from the station but they insisted on not only seeing him but getting him off his chair and standing next to me. Once he was there I asked whether or not he could go back to sit down and the young barman said yes. Off he went and then the supervisor came back and asked for him to get back otherwise she couldn’t serve me. All this for 3 lousy beers – the first ones of the night!
Anyway, time went on and it soon became obvious that Acer Arena wasn’t even broadcasting the boxing matches outside the stadium itself ie if you weren’t seated inside and you wanted to get drinks or food there was no vision of the fights. Plenty of TV screens around telling you what events were coming to Acer but no footage of what was going on inside the venue! Since there was a two beer only rule in place the queues were a mile long. Needless to say I didn’t see much of the under card.
Even the gents was a farce – the toilets consisted of 4 personal urinals so even the blokes had to queue up to relieve themselves. Any guy with a sheet of corrugated iron and a bit of imagination would have seen this potential problem from a mile away. Someone complained and I pointed out that at 2 beers per person perhaps that’s all they needed.
There was a bloke in front of us that thought he’d beat the queues and got up to buy some beers just after the bell rang for round one of the Danny Green fight. Poor bloke missed the entire fight and couldn’t believe it! Whilst Roy Jones was on the ropes I asked ex-boxer dad whether it was in the rules that he was allowed to fight back but it was all too late and the fight was stopped. I lost a few dollars on the result and my brother has to spend the next couple of weeks making up the money he lost backing Roy Jones Junior.
Now a lot of you at this point would think that I’m having a bit of a moan but on the contrary I found the whole experience very entertaining. After all – who would want a night that goes really smooth with nothing to talk about. When the fight finished I lined up in the gents behind one of the four urinals and stated that we just paid $40 a minute to watch a fight. As quick as a flash one bloke said to us “Mate, what would you have said if you saw Bradman get out for a duck in his last match – that’s history and you would’ve been a part of it!”. Of course he was right. I was actually quite chuffed to have been there to see the 122 second bout.
We were right above the area where Danny Green came out of and the atmosphere was absolutely fantastic. Ok, it was over quicker than Green’s after fight speech but I was proud to be there with both my dad and my brother.
So where’s the connection with fishing holidays? Well sometimes they don’t work out according to plan either.
I remember one we had in South West Rocks for instance. Apparently the week before our charter boat was robbed and so they didn’t have much in the way of fishing gear. The fishing for the week was really quiet with only a couple of reasonable size spotted mackerel saving the day. But off the water there were so many things that made the trip fantastic. We took some surf lessons, had a beach decathlon and at one time sent the local golf pro off with our beer order in a golf buggy and he delivered it back to us by the time we got to the the third hole.
The thing is it’s not about the fight or the fishing in lots of ways it’s all about the journey and the experience.
Robert Louis Stephenson once put it this way… “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive”.
Sea you later,
Skipper Meggs
very profound megges
seeya at the rads.