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Cary Young's Impressions

by Cary Young
[21 November 2003]

I never did get to see Barry Michael and the boys in training camp at Tony Barber's Red Hill farm. It was a year later before I came down from far North Queensland to live.

However I did have a lot to do with Tony Barber. From 1982 through until 1990 I was appearing on his top quiz show "Sale of the Century". Do I recall any boxing questions that came up? The first night I appeared was in March 1982, announced as a meatworker from Charters Towers, Queensland who is interested in boxing. Tony couldn't resist asking me who I thought was Australia's best boxer. I harked back to when I first landed from New Zealand in 1968, and replied that Lionel and Johnny, the big two, both impressed me. Lionel I felt was a marvellous boxer-fighter. Johnny's hit and not be hit skill amazed me.

In that very first "Sale of the Century" game a boxing question came up. Which former heavyweight champion of the world died in a plane crash in 1969? Rocky Marciano was right up my alley. No one says the questions are hard. But you have to be fast and brave enough to press before Tony has got all the words out. That was the trick to "Sale."

Five nights later, as I played for "Sale of the Century's" first BMW car, a 528i (up till then the car had been a Mercedes), I got the question "Who beat Sonny Liston for the world title in 1964"? "Muhammad Ali," I answered, "though he was Cassius Clay at the time".

In 1983 "Sale" decided they had enough champions to stage a champ of champs tournament. Here the next boxing question I struck was one involving Gerry Cooney's unsuccessful go at Larry Holmes that year. An opponent beat me to the buzzer but the lady got it wrong anyway, so I was no worse off.

I don't remember any other boxing questions in my games after that, but sometimes I would see Tony Barber after a boxing show and we'd discuss the main bout. Tony knew that I had fought Manny Santos as amateurs in New Zealand, but he never quite got the record straight. He usually thought Manny beat me two to one.

WHEN I boxed as an amateur, rounds were of three minutes duration, certainly at championship level. We always trained in three minute bursts. In a fight, it gave boxers time to settle down, then have to last the distance as the fitness started to tell.

The only time I recall fighting two-minute rounds was when they matched me and Manoel (later Manny) Santos over 6X2s in a special annual amateur fight night in Auckland. That year Manny had been light-welter runner up at the Nationals, and I the lightweight runner- up. I had beaten him at the lightweight limit twice and thought I could do the same again at light-welter.

As it happened, though, the fight was outdoors on a mild night, and by the time I had warmed up the round was over. A minute rest to cool right down again. Then another round, which was over before it started.

Manny won well. Don't talk to me about two-minute rounds. I always thought three minutes the right distance and I sure did after that night, one better forgotten.But for Manny it was a sign of his liking for the longer professional distances he was to grace in his colourful pro career.