Jones puts up dukes to take on Melbourne
The Age
Friday March 12, 2010
RADIO personality Alan Jones is usually reporting the news. Now he is the news. Everyone loves a fight and we've got a beauty coming up. Jonesy and his 2GB people are about to take on Melbourne's winning talk station, 3AW.I declare an interest at the beginning €” I am a good friend of Jones. He's a rugby man and we rugby people stick together, but I like the people at 3AW too.Fight night is in about six weeks, although the Sydney people aren't yet telegraphing their punches.The fights, as Charlie calls them, are a great spectator sport. Louise thinks fighting is cruel, but given that it involves men beating up other men, she thinks its OK.The A-list crowd usually hire stretch limos and arrive in style. They book a dinner at some lavish steak joint (joint is the way boxing folk talk) €” probably Rockpool at the casino or Vlado's.At the stadium they make sure that they arrive just before the main event. The "pre-lims", the name the fight folk give to the earlier fights, are often with the unknowns. No one can tell how long each of these bouts will last so the $1000 front-row seats remain empty until the main event. But what the heck, it's fight night.Jones is Sydney's star and has won the main event forever, topping 148 consecutive surveys.His new station is 1377 on the AM dial €” the old 3MP, which used to play "beautiful music" but no longer. Soon it will be talk, talk, talk and if they're successful, money, money, money.They take on Melbourne's heavyweight champions €” Ross Stevenson and John Burns, and Neil Mitchell. Talk radio, as we in the business call it, is all talk. Which is a good thing because about half the talk is about advertisers and that makes the stations a bundle of money.But they aren't cheap to run.Jonesy doesn't do his stint on air for nothing. But he makes it worthwhile for advertisers, so who's complaining? The other thing he hates me saying is, he gives plenty of it away.Fights, especially in Melbourne, can be unpredictable and we only have to go back to a wet March night in 1992 and the junior lightweight world title fight between Jeff Fenech and Azumah Nelson. Fenech sustained his first loss when he was knocked out in the eighth round. Fenech relaxed and paid the price.The Fairfax people who own 3AW don't look too relaxed to me. I expect them to welcome the Sydney mob with a big-budget campaign to remind everyone that they are the champs.The Fenech/Nelson fight was a big night for another reason. As the high-rollers were waiting for the main event, Charlie and I were in the cheaper seats further back watching the preliminary bouts. We saw an amazing match featuring a young Russian immigrant with short-cropped hair and a little pigtail. No one took him seriously as we waited for the main event. He couldn't even speak English.As it turned out, he had another language that people learnt to respect. He stepped into the ring and knocked out his opponent Darrell Hiles in round one. His name was Konstantin Borisovich Tszyu. Louise chirps in: "Don't you call him Kostya Tszyu?"He went on to become one of our greatest boxers with 31 professional wins €” 25 by knockout. So watch out for fight night and the people from Sydney. And probably a few with pigtails.Harold Mitchell is the executive chairman of Mitchell Communication Group.
© 2010 The Age
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