MICHELLE Geale could never have known that a trip to the movies to see The Karate Kid with nine-year-old son Daniel would inspire one of the most superb careers in Australian sport.
It was Mr Miyagi and another kid called Daniel who inspired Geale to take up fighting -- but not boxing.
Geale instantly related to the Karate Kid's main character, Danny LaRusso, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who had to fight for everything he ever got.
Plus he thought karate looked cool.
He begged his dad Wayne to take him to his first lesson but it wasn't the "wax on, wax off" moment Daniel had expected.
"I hated it," Geale said.
"It was crap. It didn't suit me at all.
"So Dad suggested I try boxing, and there was a gym, Lilydale Boxing Club, just down the road.
"I said: 'OK, I'll give it a try'.
"From my first training session I loved it. I made a heap of friends and that's how I got started."
It also suited nine-year-old Daniel for another reason.
"I was carrying a bit of extra weight as a nine-year-old -- I had a little bit of a belly on me," he said.
"When the coach put me on the scales I weighed 42kg as a nine-year-old, which wasn't great. The boxing got me fit and I lost weight."
A month after his 10th birthday, Geale had his first fight.
"By then I was 38kg -- so I'd lost 4kg in that first year and got fit and probably grew a bit as well," he said.
"I thought boxing was a great challenge."
As well as attending high school, Daniel liked to go with his dad -- aka "Cowboy" -- on his dump truck.
"I used to do some work with Dad and I'd wash the truck," he said.
His first real job was as a cook at KFC in Mowbray, where he worked for three years, starting at 16.
"It was a good experience -- it was good to have money," he said.
Geale would go to school, train in the afternoon and then cook chicken at night.
"It worked in perfectly with what I had to do with boxing," he said.
"I knew whatever job I had, boxing came first."
Geale's skills as a boxer won him a scholarship with the TIS and he soon became Australian welterweight champion in amateur ranks. Aged 19, he represented Australia at the Sydney Olympic Games -- he was personally sponsored by the Mowbray KFC.
Despite his loss in Sydney to Italian Leonard Bundu, who had won bronze at the world championships, the Olympics were an inspirational experience for the teenage Tasmanian.
After the fight, the Italian's praise of Geale was prophetic. "I think in the future he will be a very good boxer. He has character," Bundu said.
How right he was.
At 31, Daniel is one of the world's finest professional boxers, with 28 wins and one loss. He holds two world championship middleweight belts (IBF and WBA) and is in search of a unification bout to claim the third.
While he waits, he agreed to a rematch against motormouth Anthony Mundine, who beat Geale in a controversial points decision three years ago.
A lot of people feel Geale shouldn't even give Mundine the time of day, let alone a title fight.
"I mostly agree with what people say, that I shouldn't give him this opportunity," Geale said.
"I also wish I had another 10 guys to choose from in Australia to be able to fight, and to be able to make a living.
"There are other fights I could take, but I wouldn't make any money.
"A fight against him [Mundine] attracts attention in Australia, if it didn't we would have definitely overlooked him."
Geale's dream is to fight on boxing's biggest stage, Las Vegas, and a trip to the US last month to watch the WBC middleweight title bout between Julio Cesar Chavez Jr and Sergio Martinez only strengthened that resolve.
"Unfortunately those fights haven't come around at this stage," Geale said. "We've got a bit of time in between, and for us this is the right time to right that wrong from a few years ago."
At their fight announcement last week, Geale was cool and calm while Mundine disrespected him and his Aboriginal heritage, as well as his wife, kids and Tasmanian Aborigines.
Mundine said: "I thought they wiped all Aborigines from Tasmania out, that's all I know. I don't see him [Geale] representing us black people. I don't see him out in the communities doing what I do with people. He got a white woman, white kids."
Geale, who wears the Aboriginal colours on his boxing trunks, maintained a dignified silence.
"Inside I was tossing up whether or not I should jump up and punch the guy," Geale said.
"That definitely went through my mind. But our sport takes enough hits without people doing that sort of stuff."
After sinking in a public relations cesspit of his own creation, Mundine apologised to Geale three days later in a TV face-off.
"It's easy to say things in the heat of the moment about the guy you are fighting," Geale said. "But when you say it to them about other people, there are a lot of other people who probably needed that apology more than me.
"They need to accept that apology -- like my wife and kids and the people of Tasmania -- they're very angry at what he said."
Daniel's wife Sheena was particularly upset. "She didn't like the comments at all," Geale said. "The first thing she said to me after the interview was 'you can't accept that apology on my behalf'."
It was a low blow for Daniel, to whom family -- Sheena and kids Bailey, 8, Ariyelle, 6, and Lilyarna 4 -- comes first.
"Family is what it's all about," he said.
"For me, we didn't have it easy as kids -- me and my brother. My mum and dad worked very hard for us all the time and we didn't have everything we wanted.
"They tried to give us everything, and for me that's always been great motivation, to be able to give my kids us much as I could and work hard for my family."
Boxing won't last for ever, and Geale is already preparing for the next phase of his career.
"I've already got plans to own my own gym," he said.
"We've been in Sydney for about nine years now, and we're going to start setting up a gym here soon, but there are other opportunities as well to maybe own gyms around Australia as well."
Even though Geale left Launceston in search of opportunities, his love for Tasmania will never fade.
"Other than Tassie being such a beautiful place, and the scenery everyone probably takes for granted, the people are different," he said.
"People in Tassie are relaxed and it's a lot easier to get along with people.
"Walking around the streets, even when people didn't know me, you can just walk up and talk to a stranger, no problems. In Sydney, it's different, people aren't usually that friendly and I like that about Tassie."
When the boxing game ends, the likable Tasmanian will have deserved everything he earned.
"My plan was to work as hard as I could at an early age and hopefully set ourselves up and be able to relax a little bit when I'm a little bit older," Geale said. "At the moment things are going OK, I just have to keep going along those lines.
"I talk to people to motivate them and tell them be hard-working now and it will be easier later. If you don't work hard now you'll be working hard later."
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