Fellow boxer Jeff Fenech said Rose was "not only an awesome fighter but a amazing human being".
LIONEL ROSE THE BOXING LEGEND "He was an absolute legend and I was honoured to know him as a friend," Fenech told The Daily Born and raised at Jackson's Track near the Victorian town of Warragul[1], Rose grew up in hardship, studying to box from his father, Roy, a valuable fighter on the tent-show circuit. According to the boxing historian Grantlee Kieza, Rose "sparred with rags on his hands in a ring created from fencing wire stretched between trees".
At the age of 10, Rose struck up a friendship with a press photographer, Graham Walsh, who encouraged him and bought him his first pair of gloves. Aged about 15, he came under the tutelage of Frank Oates, a Warragul trainer (whose daughter Jenny he later married). He won the Australian amateur flyweight title at age 15.
[edit]Boxing career
Rose began his expert boxing career on 9 September 1969, outpointing Mario Magriss over eight rounds. This fight was in Warragul, but the majority of Rose's fights were to be held in Melbourne. Along the way he was helped by Jack and Shirley Rennie, in whose Melbourne residence he stayed, training every single day in their backyard gym.
