Olivares

At the time of the title fight the unbeaten Mexican had won fifty-one times, forty-nine by knock-out. I hadn't heard of him two years earlier, when I was sitting in Manny's barbershop waiting on a short-back-and-sides, reading a copy of the boxing bible, Ring magazine. Like most fighters, he'd come up through the streets, and had a right hook a heavyweight would be proud of. According to the glowing write-up he'd never taken a backward step. While most boxers adopted a menacing stance when posing, his photograph was that of a pop star. He wore a late Beatles mop-top and sweet smile. If a fight promoter had stitched the words baby-faced killer into the back of his gown, Ruben Olivares would have delivered on a title, which, for any other fighter, would have been a great exaggeration.

Most teenage boys seated along a wooden bench in Manny's of a Saturday morning sort out dog-eared copies of Pix or People, hunting images of blonde-haired girls lying on beaches or beside swimming pools, cooking their white skin brown. Like my father, I loved boxing and religiously read the latest copy of Ring. Each month it listed the world title holder and top ten ranked fighters in each division from flyweight to heavyweight. Although my hair didn't grow quick enough for a monthly trim I'd call by the shop and check with Manny if it was okay to catch up on the latest edition. He didn't mind. Although he sometimes joked that one day he'd ask me to sweep the floor in return, he never once ordered me to pick up a broom. I'd quickly turn the pages until I found the rankings, and the name Lionel Rose, the Australian world bantam-weight champion. I'd then look down the list of contenders. Each month Ruben Olivares was climbing a rung closer to the champion.

My father loved Lionel Rose. A failed boxer himself who'd lost too many times to make a go of it, he followed the game closely, went to the fights at Festival Hall whenever he could, and religiously watched TV Ringside of a Monday night. He would sit in his faded lounge chair with a bottle of cold beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My

Vernon Ah Kee, Hallmarks of the Hungry, 2012.

Graphite on canvas, 150 x 190 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

father had kept an eye on Rose as he came up through the ranks. He was both an elegant boxer and a genuine toe-to-toe fighter when he needed to be. He was also an Aboriginal kid from the bush, just like my dad. After he won the Australian title, people began talking about him as a future world champion, a title no Aboriginal boxer had held, though plenty had become world rated contenders. Lionel Rose would change all that.

He first fought for the world title in Tokyo, against the famed Japanese boxer, "Fighting" Harada. We were living in government housing at the time, a bottom floor flat in a squat concrete block, five stories high, packed with big families and rowdy kids, migrants most of them, from all over the world. It was a warm late summer night on the night of the fight. People huddled around radiograms and transistor radios across the estate, some praying, all screaming out for Rose to "Stick him! Stick the Jap!" as if we were chasing revenge for the tortures of the Kokoda Trail. I couldn't keep still during the fight, shifting from a chair to the lounge and back. My father was unusually quiet. He hardly moved during the bout, and didn't speak a word, sitting quietly in his chair, one ear turned to the radio, wearing an unusually passive face. He occasionally picked at the label on his beer bottle without drinking from it, and forgetfully left his cigarette to slowly disintegrate to ash...