Boxer Recalls 1962 Minerva Shipwreck

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30981, 10 February 1966, Page 10

Boxer Recalls 1962 Minerva Shipwreck

"The Press" Special Service AUCKLAND. Sipa Fine, the 23-year-old Tongan, who will fight the American, Eddie Cotton, at Carlaw Park on February 17, belives that only in the last few months has he regained full strength after the physical hardships he suffered when shipwrecked on Minerva Reef in 1962.

Fine, who with nine companions was rescued on October 16, 1962, after being on the reef for three and a half months, said last night that he had built up his weight quickly after the shipwreck but not his strength. “But for the last year, I have felt my natural strength returning to me,” he said, “and I now believe that I am stronger than I was before the wreck. “My power is back and I am working harder for this fight than ever before.” Fine, who in his last fight knocked , out the Australian light heavy-weight champion, Fred Casey, in two rounds, said he would be after a knock-out against Cotton. “I feel I can beat him,” he said, “and I think a knock-out will be my best chance. “I fought in a preliminary when Cotton beat Johnny Halafihi and was impressed by him. He is very fast and clever.”

Despite this, Fine feels that he is now a better fighter than Halafihii', with whom he has sparred, was at the time of the Cotton fight.

“I am stronger than Halafihi,” said the sft 7iin Fine, who expects to enter the ring at a little over 12 stone. At present Fine, a sheetmetal worker at Mt Roskill, is sparring eight rounds a

day during the course of an hour and a half of gymnasium work.

His main sparring partners include his brother, Kanavale Fine, who will fight Johnny Greb in an eight-round preliminary on the 17th. He also spars occasionally with Tuna Scanlan. As well as this he rises at 5.30 each morning and runs in the Balmoral playground, which is near his home. “I don’t let my body have a rest all day,” he said. “1 have been training since December for this fight and will have the advantages of being young, strong and very fit.”