{"id":874422,"date":"2026-08-31T00:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874422\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T00:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:38:12","slug":"tony-mundine-from-baryulgil-to-boxing-legend-dies-at-75","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874422\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Mundine, from Baryulgil to boxing legend, dies at 75"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"564\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_7889-e1788136116203-900x564.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-85745\"  data-\/>Tony Mundine, boxer. Photo: Contributed<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Susanna Freymark<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Boxer Tony Mundine died of a suspected heart attack on Sunday, August 30. He was 75 years old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">He was born at Baryulgil and retired from professional boxing in 1984.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">During his boxing career he was in the ring 96 times and won 80 of those fights with 64 knockout wins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Before boxing, he played rugby league for Grafton, then was invited to play for the Redfern All Blacks in Sydney at 17.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Rather than return to Baryulgil to work in the asbestos mine in the off-season, Tony trained at Ern McQuillan\u2019s gym in Newtown, Sydney.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">McQuillan spotted his boxing talent and signed him up as a fighter. Tony turned pro in 1969.<img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"447\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_7886-447x600.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-85744\"  data-\/>Tony Mundine the boxer. Photo: CAMPIONI dello SPORT 1973\/74-Figurina n.308- MUNDINE \u2013 AUSTRALIA -PUGILATO-Rec<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">He was the only Australian boxer to compete professionally in four weight divisions and held the Australian middleweight, light heavyweight, cruiserweight and heavyweight titles, as well as the Commonwealth middleweight and light heavyweight titles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1986 for services to sport and Aboriginal youth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">His son and former world champion boxer, Anthony Mundine wrote on social media \u2013\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t know what to say, I\u2019m broken.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">He said he was flying back to Australia from Saudi Arabia for the funeral.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m on my way home to say goodbye one last time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0Like his father Tony started in league and then turned to boxing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Boxing talent definitely runs in the Mundine family with Tony\u2019s grandson Rahim Mundine winning his fourth pro fight on the Gold Coast last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Tony is also the uncle of Beau Mundine (former South Sydney Rabbitohs centre) and cousin of Warren Mundine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Details of the funeral have not been released yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Mundine, boxer. Photo: Contributed Susanna Freymark Boxer Tony Mundine died of a suspected heart attack on Sunday,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,443736,802,116013,56322,85],"class_list":["post-874422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baryulgil","tag-boxing","tag-clarence-valley","tag-obit","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}