WORKING-CLASS WARRIOR: Rendall Munroe profiled

Rendall Munroe, who challenges Toshiaki Nishioka for the Japanese boxer’s 122-pound title in Tokyo on Oct. 24, has been described as a working-class hero in Britain — and so he is.
 
Although the European champion and WBC No. 1 contender, Munroe, 30, stays grounded, a man without pretensions. He works as what is called a binman in Britain, emptying garbage bins on an early morning shift in his hometown of Leicester in the English midlands. He will, he says, keep his day job, even if he wins the world title. Munroe says he enjoys the job because it helps to keep him fit and he likes socialising with people when he is out and about emptying bins. His nickname “2Tone” is a tribute to his Jamaican-English background: he wears the flags of both countries on his boxing trunks.
 
Munroe is promoted by Londoner Frank Maloney, and his manager, Mike Shinfield, 70, who has spent his life in boxing, told me in a phone conversation this week: “Rendall is the most dedicated lad I’ve ever had. The first day he walked into the gym he said he was going to be world champion. Everything he’s asked to do, he does it." Shinfield’s son, Jason, is Munroe’s trainer.
 
Years ago, a garbage collector was called a “dustman” in Britain, and Munroe’s walk-in music is the 1960 U.K. hit My Old Man’s a Dustman by Lonnie Donegan. (Note to U.S. readers, the term “old man” in Britain in the 1950s was an irreverent term for “father”).
 
“The Shinfields chose it but, hey, everyone knows it’s me [when the walk-in music is played],” Munroe said over the phone from Leicester this week.
 
He is a popular figure in Leicester and when he fights his supporters wear the fluorescent jackets issued to garbage collectors in the U.K. Munroe expects 200 of his fans to make the long trip to Tokyo. “It just shows that I’m a down-to-earth guy and people respect what I’m doing and are willing to put their hands in their pockets and travel out there to support me,” he said.
 
Munroe has a quiet confidence as he looks forward to the biggest fight of his life. He met Nishioka when the two attended the WBC’s Night of Champions in Wales a couple of months ago. "I think he’s a little bit small,” Munroe said. “Sometimes size doesn’t make a difference, but I think my strength is a lot more than his.
 
“I walk around at nine stone ten [140 pounds] and when I get in the ring I’m probably nine stone five [135 pounds].”
 
Munroe says he doesn’t struggle to make 122 pounds, though. “I think what it is, because I’ve got muscle definition, I think the muscles fill back up straight away [when he rehydrates], and that’s where the weight is, in the muscles — I’ve got a big upper body,” he said.
 
Although Munroe has a reputation as a slow starter he feels it is more a question of the other man starting fast. “I think a lot of people are realising that as the rounds go on, I get stronger and I’m a lot fitter,” he said. “A lot of fighters try to come out early, and try to get on me early doors [from the outset], so it’s not like I’m going really slow, but then I start stepping it up. I’ve got a high workrate, high energy levels, and I do what Jason Shinfield asks me to do. If he’s telling me that I need to throw more punches, then I throw more punches.”
 
Munroe said that although he expects to win he certainly doesn’t underestimate Nishioka. “I respect every boxer in there,” he said, “and he ain’t a world champion for nothing, is he? You have to show respect. The game plan is to go out there and do what I normally do, keep tight defensively] and box the way I’m asked to box.”
 
Perhaps surprisingly, he hasn’t watched Nishioka on video.

“To be honest I don’t watch no other fighters,” he said. “I listen to what my trainer has to tell me, obviously — my trainer watches them and he tells me what we have to work on and what I need to do.”
 
Nishioka, who, like Munroe is a southpaw, hasn’t lost in six years and might be considered the better technical boxer and definitely the harder one-punch hitter, but Munroe brings a high level of conditioning and the sort of punch-volume that can discourage an opponent.
 
“I’m a bit of a fitness fanatic as everyone always tells me,” he said. “Even after a fight, I’m off for two weeks and then I’m back in the gym again. I believe that you get one chance in life and you have to take the chance while it’s there. So it’s best to keep on top of it [the fitness side of boxing].”
 
The Munroe team is leaving nothing to chance. They have a nutritionist monitoring Munroe’s diet, Munroe spent 12 days in Portugal running in the hills and doing conditioning work and, yes, he will take a break from binman duties in the lead-up to the biggest fight of his life.
 
“They’ve given me nine weeks off to prepare myself properly,” he said, “but when I come back from Japan as a world champion I’ll be going back to work."
 
Munroe said he isn’t concerned at meeting Nishioka on his opponent’s home ground. “Like I’ve said, to become a world champion and a world-class fighter you have to fight in world-class places and fight world-class people,” he said, “and Nishioka’s a world-class man and Tokyo’s a world-class place, and I’ve just go to go there and do what I have to do to become a world champion, and that’s what I’m looking to do.”
 
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