The Moree Mauler: A rich life in the ring -- and out

Somewhere in the harsh Australian Outback lurks the Prince of Outsiders, living large in his outdoor kingdom, day after day, pandemics be damned.

Brendon Prince, a.k.a. The Moree Mauler.

Punch-thrower extraordinaire.

I met Mauler a few years ago in the unpeopled Northern Territory. He’s a traveling tent boxer, part of a fight club that competes at county fairs, outdoor bars and anywhere else hard-drinking Aussies gather to knock a few back with their mates.

Part Aboriginal, from the town of Moree, Mauler is a huge complex slab of man with a powerful left hook. Without the gloves, he’s a brooding philosopher and grifter who avoids all work or industry of any kind. 

Mauler is a lumbering contradiction. A grade school dropout-turned savant, an avid reader and backroads philosopher, he promotes the planet’s oppressed peoples, especially Aboriginals, his fellow Murri people.

The Big Socrates.

At age 50, he’s a consumer of illicit passions — mostly alcohol, weed and women — often partaken at once. He sports an angry red scar on one ear that suggests harder times, fights lost.

Because his biggest challenge is the full-time job of just being Mauler. 

His motto: "Home is where my bong is."

He’s homeless, but not in the way we think about such things in the U.S.

Mauler’s just not roof-inclined. 

He’s a long-grasser, living out among the elements, sleeping in fields or public parks.

He leads a Bob Marley life, expressed in that rapid Aussie drawl.

High. Unfettered. Roofless.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Australia, Mauler hit the road. I can’t remember how, whether he hitchhiked or drove one of a succession of run-down beaters he collectively calls the Mauler Mobile, but he landed in Darwin, on Australia’s far-north tropical coast, to wait out the virus.

He occasionally posts on social media missives from the Mauler Front: 

“I'm living on the streets of Darwin at the moment Im a long Grasser I lived like this for years I'm stuck up here for a cuppla months at least I just got a bag of clothes and a dusty quilt which I sleep on at the Anglican church it's too hot to cover over at night and I get drunk everyday while I'm here and I'm allowed to buy grog coz most long Grassers can't but I don't buy grog for fuckall so I got a little hustle going on that keeps me going and some other shit.”

Some other shit, indeed. 

I have always been drawn to characters like Mauler, who make few bones about what they have or don’t have. They’re mostly happy with who they are, comfortable beneath the skin.

They arrive each day in a comedic effort to make it better than the last one.

I judge the mark of a man’s character by how much of the boy he can preserve deep inside. And while Mauler is surely all man, he’s also an oversized kid at heart.

His mates will tell you that.

Mauler sits upon no man’s pedestal. He makes no excuses for who he is. He’s particularly Australian in that way.

You may not like him. You may disapprove of his sloth, his wanton appetites, occasional turns to violence and politically-incorrect ways, but in the first five minutes of meeting him, you will laugh.

Not at him, but with him.

“I don't know if I'm single separated divorced or married.”

I met Mauler in 2017 while researching a magazine story on Outback tent boxers. I’d heard a lot about him before he landed in Alice Springs to begin a four-town tour.

From my notes:

“Mauler had shown up in Alice Springs fat and out of shape. He arrived by bus from Katherine, 750 miles away, his small bag containing all he owns.

Right off, he bummed a cigarette, helping himself to four from the offered pack. Mauler has a defense about his weight: he’s spent four months in a Darwin prison for domestic abuse — his third stretch for the same offense.

“But the women in Mauler’s life have wreaked their own damage; more so than any tent boxer. Especially Marlene, who hit him with a brick when he told her he didn’t love her, leaving an angry red scar that bulges beneath his left ear. She also struck him in the eye with a frying pan, opening a gash that she sewed up herself to save money.

And she stabbed him with a steak knife “right up to the handle” after she caught him out on the town. He wears a tattoo of a lizard on his left arm to cover up the scars from attacks with a wrench and even a guitar. Marlene’s passion-thrust with a pair of scissors just missed his heart.

“She’s jealous; like I’m Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington,” he says. “But look at me; I got scars on my scars.” Yet Marlene remains the love of his life. “Love is love. You think you break my jaw and I’m just gonna go away?”

Mauler has spent much of his life homeless, or long-grassing, scrounging cigarette butts and money for liquor and pot. He began collecting government welfare after doctors diagnosed fight-related brain damage. 

“But really,” he says, “I’ve been this crazy all my life.”

“Soon after he arrived, Mauler vanished as the men labored to set up the tent for the tour’s first show. Everyone was sweating as they hammered iron pegs and carried heavy beams. They’d just finished raising a big center pole, working together like U.S. Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, when Mauler returned, blabbering into his cell phone that he was helping his mates set up the tent. 

In truth, he’d been taking a “dry shit,” a run to the bathroom to smoke a cigarette on an unsanctioned break, only to return when most of the work is done.

On past tours, he’s pulled what’s known as a midnight, walking away from the tent for good. The troupe boss rarely allows such deserters back into the fold. But he accepts his feckless fighter.

“That’s just Mauler,” he’ll say.

Mauler used to be a contender, but the years have not been kind. Somehow, he lost his fight mojo.

He keeps a love-hate relationship with the ring: He loves the scrap, but stage-fright drives him to the bottle or bong, often both. He can’t fight unless he’s drunk or stoned. “It gives me the wind,” he says.

Once, in the cowboy town of Katherine, he got hit by the pre-punch jitters.

On fight day, he shaved his head like he always does. Then he walked into town to buy a fifth of rum, just to get his mind right.

As the restless crowd gathered, he stayed inside the tent, throwing punches, sipping the last drops from a bottle hidden under some boxing gowns. 

He wore sunglasses, his “Straight Outta Moree” T-shirt and black knit cap.

“Mauler,” the boss snapped. “You can’t wear that beanie or glasses. Go put on a gown.”

“I’m on it,” Mauler said. “I’m confident now.”

Then he took on two contenders at once, dancing around (and in between them) like a big dancing Russian bear at the circus.

Finally, in round three, he collapsed.

Not from any blow, but from the booze and the exhaustion.

“I'm punch drunk I size people out all the time I know the weak from the strong.”

Mauler grew up in a rough as guts town. One day, he lay inside his tent on the road and tried to describe just how he got to this rambling life.

From my notes:

“The big man lays on his back rolling his own cigarette, a money-saving habit in a country where single packs can sell as high as $40. Intelligent and well-read, Mauler keeps up on land issues regarding Aboriginals, whom he calls the nation’s traditional owners. He grew up in the racially-segregated town of Moree, a place that had all the racial tension of a Detroit or South Philly, but without the guns. 

Both rivals and friends faced off with their fists. “We just fought to see who was the better man,” he says. “We did it as sport, out of boredom. Even best mates had a go.” Mauler never met his father and his mother rejected him at birth, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother, who ran a gambling house in town. 

As a teen, he wandered the streets looking for whites to beat up, committing petty crimes and developing a distaste for authority.”

So that’s where the Big Socrates comes from.

Now, with the boxing tent on hiatus, Mauler appears adrift.

He drives here, hitchhikes there, scores weed and booze, and he waits.

He waits out the pandemic, waits to get that call that the boxing show is back on the road.

I remember one night Mauler and I and some of our mates drank a few pints at some roadhouse. Then we stumbled back to our sleeping bags.

I was ready to turn in, happy with my buzz.

Mauler rolled one of the biggest, fattest, cartoonish joints I’d ever seen.

We toked it down and laughed at the moon.

We partied Mauler style.

Later, I lay in my sleeping bag, staring up at southern skies, I felt far from home. There was the Southern Cross, exotic stars and galaxies, an expanse I knew displayed a new and different part of the universe

I got up to take a leak and the world was spinning.

That’s what meeting Mauler was like.

And so I keep my eye open for those missives from the Great Beyond.

I hope he is able to fight off his darker side, to keep his spirits up, as he looks for his next score, his next work gig, a hookup with his next Mauler Mobile or Mauler Girl.

The other day, though, I saw this:

“The city lights are driving me crazy as I walk the lonely streets of old Darwin … Yeah folks I'm in sorrow too and I'm living in the gutter.”

No you’re not Mauler. You’re living large.

You’re the Prince of Outsiders.

Bob Marley.

The Big Socrates himself.