DANIEL Geale is putting up all he has and wants Anthony Mundine to do the same.
Geale is risking his IBF title and future riches in America to fight Mundine and believes Mundine, whose career is fast fading, should also have something significant at stake.
"If he loses then that's it, he can finish up," Geale said.
Geale wants Mundine to do all of Australia a favour and retire if he is beaten.
Oh, to dream.
The irony of it, though, is it might be an easier choice for Mundine than most think.
Despite his ongoing claims about conquering America and all the great names within it, the truth is Mundine is next to unwanted in the States.
For some reason, his seventh round stoppage of Bronco McKart, a 41-year-old has-been who was world champion when Paul Keating was still Prime Minister and has been in steady decline since, failed to convince even one main event promoter to pick up the phone to Mundine and book him on a card in America.
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MoreWhy Mundine needs to be hated
On top of that his pay-per-view sales were waining, talk of fighting the Miguel Cottos and Floyd Mayweathers was simply gibberish designed to keep his name alive and to manufacture some false injustice if it fails to come off, and the landscape in Australia was drying up.
The only other fight in Australia to bring the kind of money he used to demand, besides Geale, was a rematch with Danny Green, but they have been campaigning in divisions more than 15kg apart since their 2006 fight, meaning only money could make that happen, and there probably was not even enough of that anymore.
So Mundine was in boxing Siberia until Geale's management reconsidered an offer to fight Mundine, the last money fight left for Mundine.
If Geale loses it will not only cost him his title but set him back years, while potentially ending this one chance he has to make significant money.
If Mundine loses there is nowhere to go but to keep making noise, so Geale wants him to go into retirement.
"I don't feel anything for him," Geale said.
"I don't dislike him and I don't like him."
MoreMundine versus the nation
Trying to incite Geale at last Thursday's press conference, Mundine joked that he thought all the Tasmanian Aborigines were dead - a joke about the extinction of his own people, from a man trying to set himself up as a leader - and that Geale had a "white woman, white kids".
"I never realised the magnitude of it until when I was probably driving back home," Geale said.
"Thinking about it I realised how stupid some of the things he said were."
Mundine apologised yesterday, three days too late, on Nine's Wide World of Sports.
Geale accepted the apology because he recognised that for all the nastiness of the original comments the apology was heartfelt and sincere.
He also recognised that once more Mundine is making this fight about him, but this time it is a ride he is happy to take.
Geale is his own worst salesman - and so the better Mundine can sell their fight the more he benefits.
But he wants Mundine to have something at risk, too, and so has challenged him to retire if he loses.
It is as combative as Geale is likely to get before their fight, expected next January - although he did prefer the apology had been to his wife.
When Geale spoke to his wife Sheena after Mundine her first words were: "You can't accept the apology on my behalf."
So Mundine still owes an apology to Sheena Geale.
"Whether she accepts it or not is a different story," Geale said. "She can be a bit fiery."
