Jack Hassen training at Ern McQuillan's Gym in Newtown on 26 November 1948, photographed by Maurice Wilmott (Mitchell Library, State Library NSW and Courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd, ON 388/Box 008/Item 010, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/YK5r2JXn/R2rRLgPRJN8e)
Author: Professor John Maynard
Ern McQuillan was born at Newtown in 1905, and was, from the outset, a kid on the street trying to earn a buck. He was given boxing lessons from a local trainer, Yank Pearl (aka Albert Charles Baylis). It was Pearl who gave McQuillan his first job after school in his wood and coal yard. On leaving school, McQuillan was for a short time employed at a local jam factory but was sacked for fighting. He then took up cabinet making and started boxing professionally. He had 23 fights, losing only three.[1]
McQuillan began training with a young sailor named Johnny Chisolm, who became the first of his boxing stable. He started his first gym in Marrickville in 1925 in a loft with a makeshift ring. The place became so popular that he had to move to larger premises at 16 O’Connell Street, Newtown.[2] At the height of the Great Depression, McQuillan trained his first Australian champion when Pat Craig took the bantamweight title. McQuillan had a host of great champions including Vic Patrick and the power punching Aboriginal fighter Jack Hassen.[3]
Jack Hassen was a Kalkadoon Murri man born at Cloncurry in 1924. Hassen looked a world champion in the making winning a string of fights in emphatic fashion. He won the Australian lightweight championship in 1949 knocking out champion Archie Kemp. Sadly, Hassen’s victory saw his career nosedive when Kemp died from the results of the beating in the ring. Hassen, who had repeatedly asked the referee to stop the fight, was left with terrible guilt over the death of Kemp, who left a young widow and two-year-old son. Hassen was never the same after the fight and he lost six of his last eight fights, as he was reluctant to hit opponents with any force.[4]
Jack Hassen became a wharfie, and in November 1963 he became a member of the Sydney branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation. He retired in July 1984. Hassen participated in several deputations to Canberra to campaign for union rights. In 1967 he was present at a rally at Sydney Stadium to support American boxer Muhammad Ali’s protest in the United States against his conscription to fight in the Vietnam War.[5] Hassen passed away at his home in La Perouse in 2002.[6]
Ern McQuillan’s gym on O’Connell Street closed in 1967 and he moved to Wilson Street, the gym’s final home, by 1971.[7] During the 1970s some of the prominent Aboriginal fighters in training at McQuillan’s gym included Ted Bonner, Les McHughes, Tony and Kevin Mundine, Wally Carr, Bobby Taylor and Ricky McGrady.[8]
Tony Mundine would be the last of McQuillan’s great fighters. Mundine had come to Sydney hoping to get a go as a rugby league player and started attending McQuillan’s gym for fitness. McQuillan had a knack for spotting talent and encouraged Mundine to pursue a boxing career. Mundine would hold at various times the Australian middleweight, heavyweight and cruiserweight titles. Mundine captured two Commonwealth titles: the middleweight and light heavyweight championships. Mundine gave McQuillan his last shot of training a world champion when he fought Carlos Monzon for the WBA world middleweight title in 1974. The Argentinian Monzon is still recognised as pound for pound one of the greatest fighters of all time and he stopped Mundine in the seventh round.
Ern McQuillan continued to operate his gym, and work out of his little office adjoining it, until 1988, when he died of cancer.
About the author
Worimi man Professor John Maynard is a leading historian based with the Purai Global Indigenous History Centre at the University of Newcastle.
References
[1] R. I. Cashman, ‘McQuillan, Ernest Edward (Ern) (1905–1988)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcquillan-ernest-edward-ern-14219/text25235, published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online 26 November 2020; ‘Men who sit in boxers’ corners’, The Sunday Herald, 2 October 1949, p. 14, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28664838; Kieza, Grantlee 1990 Australian Boxing: The Illustrated History, Gary Allen, Smithfield NSW, p.109.
[2] ‘Advertising’, The Labor Daily, 8 November 1932, p. 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article237046210.
[3] Kieza, Grantlee 1990 Australian Boxing: The Illustrated History, Gary Allen, Smithfield NSW, p.109.
[4] Kieza, Grantlee 2015, Boxing in Australia, National Library of Australia, Canberra, p. 78.
[5] Jack Hassen, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hassen, viewed 17 July 2020.
[6] ‘Final bell for Gentleman Jack Hassen’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 December 2002, https://www.smh.com.au/sport/final-bell-for-gentleman-jack-hassen-20021210-gdfxz6.html.
[7] 69 Wilson St Newtown. Use premises as a Gymnasium. Ern McQuillan, 1971-1972, [A-00184951]. City of Sydney Archives, https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/808122; ‘Sport comment’, Tribune, 18 October 1967, p. 12, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article237357097.
[8] ‘Aboriginal Boxers in Sydney’, New Dawn, August 1970, p. 8, https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/dawn_index/v19/s05/10.pdf.
