Meet the ‘wizard’ who turned bullied teen Jeff Horn into a world champion
Related Story: From victim to victor: The making of Jeff Horn
With its foam-panelled floor, piles of worn gloves and heavy bags swinging imperceptibly in the Brisbane heat, the Stretton Boxing Club is a typical fight gym in almost every respect.
You can't help but notice it's attached to a colossal Hollywood Hills-inspired mansion, though. Perhaps it's the concrete fountain in the shape of four leaping dolphins that gives it away.
"You must be looking for the wizard," says a young boxer as I walk through the door. He leaps up and darts into the cavernous house in search of his master.
A few minutes later, Glenn Rushton emerges looking very like a Queensland sort of wizard, in a short-sleeved shirt undone to the third button.
Rushton is a fourth-degree karate black belt, property developer and millionaire fund manager. He also happens to be the trainer of World Boxing Organisation welterweight champion Jeff Horn, who walked into this gym as a bullied teenager 11 years ago.
'Jeff was a bit nerdy looking'
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear," Rushton says in his gravelly voice.
"Jeff came in, he was a bit nerdy looking; I could see why he'd get picked on.
"He was like George McFly from Back to the Future, a character that had a soft look about him."
Two years later, Rushton told Horn he could take him to the Olympics. It was an extraordinary statement: Rushton had only recently switched his focus from training martial arts to boxing. Horn was already 20, old to be starting out as a boxer, and was yet to have a fight.
"I said to Jeff, I wish I'd met me when I was your age. But you have," Rushton recounts.
"You've met a mentor, a guide who has felt all your pains, everything you've ever felt, someone who has the technical knowledge and the drive and the belief.
"Nobody understands both armed and unarmed combat better than I do, the amount of research I've done. I can be that guide to make you world champion."
Incredibly, the wizard's prophecy came true. Horn became the Australian amateur welterweight champ, made it to the quarter finals of the London Olympics and last year shocked the world by beating Manny Pacquiao, one of the greatest boxers of the modern era, in front of 50,000 people at Lang Park.
The story is the stuff of Hollywood. Indeed, Rushton says he is working on a movie adaptation to be produced in Queensland. Who would play the coach? "I'm leaning towards someone like Hugh Jackman," he says.
For his part, Horn is quick to credit his coach's powers of motivation.
"He gives me inspiration and confidence," says Horn. "He always believes in my ability and what he teaches me. He knows that if I can do what he says in there, I can beat anyone in the world. That's inspiring."
Holding the dream
Sitting next to Rushton, looking into his unwavering blue eyes, the whole story is somehow more believable than it should be. Confidence radiates from him. His utterances have the air of mantras. The way he tells it, his life has been a Horatio Alger story.
Rushton describes his family situation growing up as "complicated". His parents split when he was a toddler, and today he has 19 siblings, most of them half brothers and sisters. As a child, he bounced between his father in Townsville and mother in Brisbane, suffering physical abuse at the hands of an alcoholic stepfather. He worked odd jobs from a young age, including stints as a fruit picker and a door-to-door salesman.
When Rushton was 12, two things happened that he credits with changing his life. First, his brother lent him a copy of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
Rushton, who describes himself as "a rich man born in a poor man's body" absorbed Hill's message of self-belief.
He has read hundreds of self-help books since (and is in the process of writing one of his own, titled Hold the Dream).
Second, Rushton was violently attacked at the local cinema. When he nipped out to go to the bathroom, a grown man grabbed his head and smashed it into the brick wall. Rushton crawled into the alley next door, where he was found by a friend. He believes his attacker thought he was someone else.
From that point onwards, Rushton became obsessed with self-defence and financial independence.
"I set about slowly changing my self-image," he says.
"I basically decided who I wanted to be and just started becoming that person."
Preaching 'survival'
The young Rushton pursued boxing for a while, but his father wouldn't let him compete. Frustrated, he became fascinated with Bruce Lee, and drove to Melbourne as soon as he turned 17 to link up with Australian martial arts pioneer Bob Jones.
The certificates lining the walls of the "House of Dreams" testify to Rushton's lifelong fascination with combat. He's been teaching self-defence since 1979 and even invented his own fighting style, Sasori, or "scorpion". He still wears a necklace to remind himself of the scorpion's power.
"As you would know if you study scorpions, they can be found in deserts, in the North Pole, anywhere," he says. "They can survive in incredible conditions. They can be virtually dormant for six months and spring to life if some prey walks past. They are an amazing creature, which is why I used them as a metaphor.
"Survival is not only about physical survival, it's about psychological survival. Survival is what I teach."
At the same time as he was working to master martial arts, Rushton was trying to make his financial dreams a reality. While working a series of sales jobs in his twenties, he decided to get into real estate after noting how many property developers there were on the BRW Rich List.
Later, after some success in the property market, he formed Rushton Financial Services. Today, he is in partnership with his son Lee and says the firm has nearly $40 million under management, with ambitions to increase that into the billions.
Banking boosts boxing
Rushton's background in martial arts and finance makes him an unlikely boxing trainer, but he believes it gives him an advantage.
"There are a lot of similarities between finance and boxing," he says. "I'm always talking to people about risk and return.
"You can't just look at the returns. Boxing is the art of hitting without getting hit."
"When I was with Bob Jones, he came up to me when I'd been training there for less than a year, and he said to me, 'You've got very dangerous hands. Be careful when you hit people.' I've always been more into hands than legs, though I developed very good kicks as well.
"Studying combat is just science and psychology when you break it down. It's like Einstein said, 'Keep things as simple as possible but no simpler.' I'm very mindful of doing that, and if anything, I'm probably in a better position than a lot of boxing trainers, because I have such a diverse combat background rather than just boxing."
Tackling the 'princess'
Now Rushton and Horn face perhaps their biggest challenge: a fight with rising American star Terence Crawford on June 9 in Las Vegas. In the lead up, it's been Rushton who's been doing the talking for Horn, who remains quiet to the point of shyness.
When Crawford injured his hand in March, postponing their fight, Rushton made headlines by telling Crawford to "toughen up princess".
Most American boxing experts laughed off the coach's bluster. They don't rate Horn's chances, and believe his decision win over Pacquiao was undeserved, a gift from the judges. Crawford is undefeated, with proven power and sublime skills.
Rushton, in his best wizard voice, says he sees something else when he looks at Crawford.
"I just see a man. I see a man with skills and weaknesses. I've seen 45 years of combat and I've seen all these guys.
"They're just men, they bleed. If they bleed we can beat them."
Jeff Horn will fight Terence Crawford in Las Vegas on June 9, which is Sunday June 10 Australian time.
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