The prize fight that saw Alphonse Gangitano lose a fortune – and take bloody revenge

3 months ago 7

The world champion boxer was on the floor unconscious and covered in blood but the opponent standing over him wasn’t a fellow professional fighter. It was a gangster and the blows were not delivered in a well-lit ring but a darkened Melbourne nightclub.

Alphonse Gangitano was a mobster who preferred a king hit to a fair fight. His crime file noted he would attack off-duty police, always when he had numbers on his side.

Despite falling foul of gangster Alphonse Gangitano, and having hitman Christopher Flannery come calling, boxer Barry Michael lived to tell the tale.

Barry Michael was a professional boxer who made his name in the ring as a smart and brave boxer with a kit of wicked body punches.

Gangitano saw himself as a fight promoter and was in the corner of the talented Lester Ellis. Trouble was Michael had taken Ellis’ world title and Gangitano wanted it back, demanding a rematch.

Michael has written his autobiography, Last Man Standing, which is more than a sporting memoir. It captures the intersection between boxing and the underworld.

The title is accurate: He has outlived the gangster who ambushed him, the crime boss who wanted him dead, the hitman who at the last minute was persuaded not to kill him, and the boxer who tried to bribe him to throw a fight.

He writes like he fought. Moving forward, throwing shots and not afraid to cause damage.

Born in England, Michael migrated with his family to settle in the Williamstown Housing Commission flats.

His father, Len Swettenham, almost identical looking to his son, boxed in the RAF and flew 29 missions as a bombardier in Lancaster Bombers. “Dad was my Rock of Gibraltar. He was an amazing man, incredibly tough, too.”

Inspired in 1968 by Lionel Rose winning the world bantamweight belt, Michael went to a boxing gym. Within weeks, he was fighting as an amateur.

He went through the ranks, turned pro and was world rated. He won plenty of titles but injuries and bad luck meant he fell short of the world crown.

It looked like his time had passed. A new fighter, Lester Ellis, had won a world title – a fighter who at the age of 12 Michael had predicted would become a champion.

It was 1985 and Michael was 30 and past his prime.

To challenge Ellis, he had to weigh in at 59 kilograms when his walk-around weight was about 66 kilograms.

Michael lands an overhand right on Ellis in the title fight.

As a younger fighter trying to make that weight, he would dehydrate, making him too weak to win. For the Ellis camp, this was the perfect match – a local legend, on the decline but internationally ranked, who would drain his energy reserve to make weight.

This time, Michael was going to do it right. With the help of a professional dietician, he made the weight easily.

He sparred four opponents (none of them mugs) for 15 rounds. He was ready.

But the Carlton Crew, including Gangitano, couldn’t be told, and bet a fortune (thought to be $500,000) on the younger man.

On July 12, 1985, Michael took the decision over Ellis following 15 savage rounds.

In his book, Michael recalls: “I was on top of the world. My management team had organised a drink at some Chinese restaurant where we first went to celebrate. I was really looking forward to a drink, but I was passing blood and, to be honest, I was a bit of a mess, so I started drinking Kahlua and milk.”

A perfectly sensible compromise.

Two years later, Gangitano struck back.

At Lazar’s Nightclub, the gangster sent the boxer a bottle of champagne, then started talking of an Ellis rematch.

Then the ambush. Michael’s mate was king-hit and the boxer was surrounded. “I just said to Alphonse, ‘You so-and-so you’ve set me up’. I don’t recall much after that, until, well, he jumped me, and I remember going onto the couch. I remember him latching onto my left and my right cheek. He actually tried to bite my cheek off.

“I was pinned, and they just smashed the living crap out of me. My nose was under my left eye and smashed right across my face. I had ring marks all over my head.

“Chopper Read (underworld standover man) was there. He actually said he thought I was lucky to survive it, and I would never be the same. I probably wasn’t the same in the boxing ring.”

Read said Gangitano had beaten Michael with a large glass ashtray. “I remember, in the end, one security guy said, ‘Stop it. Stop it. You’ll kill him’.”

Having defended his world title three times, Michael stepped in the ring on August 9, 1987, against Rocky Lockridge. His reconstructed nose collapsed and with two burst eardrums, he couldn’t continue past the eighth round.

Michael (right) with Rocky Lockridge before the fight.

It would be his last fight (well, there would be one more, a charity bout against me. More of that later).

Ron Feeney, who part-owned St Kilda’s Mickey’s Disco with hitman Christopher Dale Flannery, was the gangster other gangsters didn’t trust. Michael didn’t know that, and when Feeney suggested they buy a run-down restaurant at Surfers Paradise, the deal was done.

Business boomed but Feeney was stealing all the profits.

“Feeney started robbing me. I went to the bank. They pulled out 20 cheques, and five of them were blatant forgeries. I closed the restaurant underneath him because I was a licensee.

“Anyway, the next thing I know, one of my sparring partners, a police officer who I’d been training with, a ripper bloke, rang me and he said, ‘you know what’s going on?’

“I said, I’ve heard that Chris Flannery has been brought to the Gold Coast to bump me off. He goes, ‘Yeah’, and he said, ‘I’m gonna go and see him, but you be careful. Keep your head down, and don’t stay anywhere more than one night’.”

Flannery, known as Rent-a-Kill, was a gun for hire who in May 1995 was lured to his death in Sydney. His body was never found.

“He used to hand out business cards with the name Rent-a-Kill on it,” says Michael.

The boxer’s police training mate found Flannery for a chat.

Michael says the cop told Flannery, “Barry’s a very good friend of mine, and he said, between you and me, I’m the only one with a licence to kill. So if anything happens to Barry Michael, you’re in serious trouble. Flannery said, I’m not interested. I’m not interested. I didn’t know who it was (the target) ’til I got here.”

Turns out, he was a boxing fan who had seen Michael in 1983 win the Australasian title.

It was not the boxer’s only stint with the dark side. Three times, he was offered bribes to throw a fight. Three times he refused.

Fortunato “Lucky” Gattellari was anything but. After his boxing career, he became a shadow businessman and underworld dealmaker.

In 2013, he was jailed for seven years and six months for facilitating the 2009 murder of millionaire property developer Michael McGurk.

Back in 1979, Gattellari was making a boxing comeback and was about to step into the ring with the battle-hardened Michael.

“I was getting $1500 a fight. At the press conference, he made a big deal about how he’s going to knock me out and all that, and then, and I’m thinking to myself, he hasn’t fought for quite a while.”

After the press conference, he asked Michael to hang around, then he made the offer.

“He said to me, he said, ‘I know what you’re getting for the fight … I’ll give you 10 times that amount if you lose’.

“I said, ‘Sorry, mate, I’m not interested’.

“Anyway, I dropped him a couple of times, and they quit in the corner at the end of round three.”

Michael was a wicked body puncher who could drop heavyweights with his signature left rip.

I was to learn this the hard way.

One of my favourite journalists was George Plimpton, a gifted US writer and gifted athlete. He wrote fascinating stories when he placed himself inside the world of professional sports, once challenging light heavyweight champion Archie Moore to a spar.

And so I thought I would do the same with Michael.

The boxer and the idiot. Silvester goes three rounds with Barry Michael.

In hindsight, the spar should have been a warm bubbly one with essential oils, not one in a ring that smelled of sweat and fear.

It was the 2009 3AW Pancake Parlour charity bash. Michael would use his share of the loot to pay for the rehabilitation of a former opponent who was living on the streets.

The opponent was Rocky Lockridge who had taken Michael’s world title from him.

We started with a spar at his gym. I threw a powder puff left jab. He countered with an overhead right that re-arranged my nose. I began sniffing as if I had hay-fever. At the end of the round, a nice young man approached me with a white towel and an instruction to blow. The white towel turned red.

Later, I survived the three-round fight, largely due to a sympathetic time-keeper and a compassionate opponent.