I went to a lunch the other day with a hundred other punters and ended up in the bar post-event, talking babble. As always there were several knowing voices ruling the roost, mine unfortunately being one.

The risk, of course, is that in drinking beer and talking loudly, you’ll miss something really good because you aren’t listening.

So it could have been yesterday.

At some stage in the high octane motormouth sessions, I had my jaw in neutral while I waited at the bar for a lube job. During this pit stop, I got chatting to the fellow who had been sitting opposite me at lunch, but to whom I had spoken nary a word.

It turned out his name was … well, he’d be embarrassed if I named him, so let’s just call him Benny.

Benny was from Liverpool and although he’s been in Australia for several years he still has that tremendous scouser accent that denotes the true Liverpudlian.

“Where are you from Benny?”

“Liver-pewl!”

He was a trim man of middling height and the lean frame of the welterweight that he once was. A gently broken nose marked out the territory between his twinkling eyes and he had a naughty grin full of unfeasibly straight pearly white teeth.

Like I said, Benny was once a fighter.

I sparred a few training rounds here and there in a past life and when he heard that I had worn the gloves once or twice, we shaped up briefly at the bar, laughing.

It was play, but Benny had the cool appraisal of a true boxer. He would have taken me to the cleaners. Luckily, we were too busy talking.

Benny was born in Liverpool in the mid nineteen-fifties and began fighting as a boy. He was better than most and made progress, having some wins and some attention along the way.

He once sparred with the English Amateur middleweight champion, giving away some eight kilos, in front of a small gym crowd of good judges. They shifted ground and sparred for wind for a full three rounds in silence, until the final bell.

As they touched gloves and retired to opposite corners, the small crowd applauded quietly for some minutes. This, he told me, was his proudest moment in sport: acknowledgement of his skill from a small crowd of peers in a nondescript Liverpool gymnasium.

Later, he entered an amateur boxing contest in a small town nearby. Working his way through the competition, he finally won the contest and received his prize from a young up-and-coming British-Hungarian pro-boxer whose name was Joszef Bugner.

The glowing young professional accepted the accolades of the crowd and then, whilst posing for a souvenir photo with the victor and the vanquished, whispered into the teenage Benny’s ear through mischievous, grinning teeth, “Smile, peasant”.

A bemused Benny was too stunned to reply, and before he recovered, Bugner was gone.

Time passed.

The young boxer worked hard and eventually migrated to Australia. The country was kind to him, and he prospered, making good money in construction and taking his place among the new young aspirants of the day, though he still remembered the slight from Bugner.

He worked hard and played hard, and as such found himself one day with a loose group of several friends, enjoying the fruits of their labour at a harbour front party in Double Bay.

His last meeting with Bugner had been 20 years and 17,000 kilometres away, so the older, wiser and wealthier Benny was understandably astonished to see his erstwhile nemesis Joszef ‘Aussie Joe’ Bugner threading his way through the party smartly dressed and wearing a gold Rolex.

Memories flashed before his eyes and an intense burst of the outrage he felt as a boy surged into his stomach. The distant voice again echoed in his ears and as his rage flowered, Bugner appeared in front of him, hand outstretched.

Benny snapped.

He was in front of Bugner, behind was the dimly lit swimming pool. Without thinking, Benny lowered his head and charged, hitting a gobsmacked Bugner amidships and toppling him into the water.

A snapshot of the scene at that moment would have shown the heads of a hundred party goers turned in disbelief as a surprised former heavyweight champ hung suspended for a moment above the still water.

Then came the splash, like a depth charge going off.

Bystanders were soaked to the skin. Joe’s wife, Marlene, understandably squealed. Joe struggled to come to the surface with one arm, as the other was held valiantly above the surface, protecting the gold Rolex.

Finally he found his feet, stood, and waded to the pool stairs, methodically mounting them one at a time before reaching the top and approaching Benny, dripping as he came. Oxygen levels dropped as the crowd collectively drew breath. The two came face to face.

Bugner looked hard at Benny (possibly as a prelude to knocking his head clean off) and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Benny looked him in the eye and growled “Smile, peasant”.

Perhaps Bugner remembered his comment from all those years ago. Perhaps life’s experiences had made him humble. He certainly had little left to prove after twice going the distance with Ali.

Or perhaps he simply remembered the brash young man he once was. Whatever the cause, his stony face cracked, then broke into a smile. The crowd laughed and the party continued.

Benny told me this story with a hoot of laughter.

He still talks to Joe from time to time since that night where “they all had Sav Blanc coming from every orifice anyway”, and have chatted about their lives, loves and failures.

Joe he says, is a wonderful man.

As for Benny, well he’s a pretty good bloke himself.

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