This week Knuckles sits down with Michael Crossland, one of Australia’s most in demand inspirational speakers, who made the trip up from Coffs Harbour to share the parts of his story he never tells on stage. Fair warning, Knuckles was in tears two minutes in, and this is only part one.

Diagnosed at 11 months old with stage four neuroblastoma and sent home with a 96 per cent death rate, Michael’s life was shaped by his mum’s decision to see it as 4 per cent full instead of 96 per cent empty. Chemo started on his first birthday. Then came the 11 hour train rides between Sydney and Coffs Harbour, an 11 kilo tumour wrapped around his heart, and his mum carrying him into surgery because the doctors told her it might be the last time she held her little boy alive.

When the treatment stopped working, the family signed onto an experimental drug being trialled on 25 kids around the world. Within a day they were all in the burns unit, wrapped in bandages and laid in ice baths, burning from the outside in. Within 90 days, 24 of the 25 were gone. Michael was the only survivor, and he’ll tell you he’s one of the lucky ones, not because he lived, but because he wasn’t his mum.

Find Michael’s speaking work and his bestselling book Everything Will Be OK at michaelcrossland.com

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The tables get turned this week as Knuckles puts Zak Palmas, the man behind the cam, in front of it for some proper true yarns from growing up on a cane farm outside Ingham, North Queensland.

First up, the story of two 16 year old mates who couldn’t find a car to get from a bush doof into town, so they took a lawnmower instead. Twenty minutes of road, a pair of L plates, and a phone call to the cops later, both of them were done for drink driving and ended up on the news.

Then the big one. Zak was slashing water furrows in the dry season when a worn slip clutch threw sparks into a trash-covered paddock, and by the time he noticed, the tractor wheels were already hot. What follows is a flat-out sprint, a one-man water tanker hookup that should’ve been impossible, and every farmer in the district turning up unasked to cut breaks and save the uncut cane. His dad’s favourite tractor didn’t make it, but as the boys say, you can get another tractor, you can’t get another life.

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A 22 seater fixed wing, four hours, no toilet, and you can't stand up in it. That was the ride home every swing.

So the boys would hit the bottle-o before the hangar, sink tins waiting for the plane, keep going once they were on it, and bring an empty Gatorade bottle for the obvious reason. One bloke had about six beers after a ten hour shift, filled his bottle, and kept going. The plane sits on a slight angle. Everyone's in boots so nobody notices. The admin lady up the front had her shoes off.

That's the flight they got banned from drinking on. They drank anyway.

Then the other one. They flew directly into one of the biggest dust storms in New South Wales history, dropped what Zak reckons was a thousand feet in one hit, and the bloke next to him wasn't belted in. Zak watched him go into the roof and stay there. He watched the pilots come out of their seats. He rang his mum. Fifteen minutes of it, a crosswind landing at 45 degrees, a go around straight back into it, and a pilot of 35 years standing on the tarmac afterwards saying that was the worst turbulence he'd ever experienced and he thought they were dead.

Cheers, cunt. So did we.

Which is why the episode ends where it does. When they tell you to belt up, it isn't because they're wankers.

#propertrueyarn

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Zak spent years underground before he got into coal, and the mine he won't name was the most eye opening job of his life.

There was a bloke dealing gear out of a lunchbox in the workshop. There was a group of them at it, and they never got caught, because between them they had fake dicks and bottles of clean piss ready to go. Right up until the day the site tested everyone in the morning, brought them all back up to the surface mid shift, and tested them again.

There's a fitter knocking on Zak's door at four in the morning holding an oil sample bottle. There's a bloke sitting in a jumbo in his jocks because it was too hot, doing racks, because he was bored waiting for a sparky. There's a fist fight that broke out beside Zak while he had his hands in a thousand volt cabinet. There's a store lady, a diesel fitter, and a set of cameras that nobody told them about.

And there's a leading hand who was asked to fill a condom, filled it right to the brim, and got it slapped straight back across him.

Underneath all of it: Zak started having nightmares about the roof coming in. That's why he moved to coal.

#propertrueyarn

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Drake has cycled more money through a betting account in one month than most towns are worth, and he still can't pick a winner.

Zak's got Google out and we're going through the whole lot. A 37% strike rate. $770k on Canada. $1.5 million on Argentina to beat Spain, and Spain get up 1-0 in extra time. A million dollars on Argentina to beat France in 2022. Argentina win, and he still loses on a technicality. And then the one that started the whole curse conversation: a million on Conor McGregor against Max Holloway at UFC 329, and Conor's leg goes seconds into the comeback.

The UFC and boxing list is brutal. Tyson. Usyk. Tommy Fury. Adesanya. He does win occasionally, Izzy in the rematch and Jon Jones by submission, but the man once posted a screenshot showing $124.5 million wagered in thirty days.

Then we go looking for the biggest punts ever laid. Mattress Mack turning a $3 million bet into $75 million US when the Astros took the 2022 World Series, which is $117 million in real money. And a bloke in 1980 who walked into the Horseshoe with a suitcase holding $777,000, put the lot on one roll of the dice, and won.

Baked beans or rib fillet. The choice is yours.

#propertrueyarn

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The last two fights on the card, and the main event is a bloke who fights for a living against a bloke who eats for a living.

🎟️ TICKETS → alphaevents.com.au, hit the Fight Night button.

Fight 12: Zayden Bryant (Dead Arse) vs BJ Wallace (Into The Green). Not heavyweights. Super heavyweights. Zayden got the call and went straight into gorilla mode, heavy bench, heavy squats, heavy deadies — and had to be told he's boxing, not entering a strongman. He's got Bryce in his corner and half of Rocky behind him. BJ's the lawn care king, a genuinely great bloke, and enormous with hands to match. Neither of us reckons this sees the end of three rounds.

Fight 13: THE MAIN EVENT. Jock vs Jimmy Judge (Judgement Entertainment). Jimmy's got about 18 amateur fights. Jock's had roughly 800 and doesn't care who's holding the other pair of gloves, big, small, day or night, he'll bash blokes in a paddock. Jock's movement is genuinely slick. Jimmy hits like a truck, and when he commits to something he goes all the way down, you've seen the assault bike stuff. But Jock's running his own promotion up in Yeppoon at the same time, and we both know what a thousand other things on your plate does to a fight camp.

Then everything else: the free live show the night before, the press conference, the Sunday sesh at the casino, a celebrity singing the national anthem, and a bloke potentially flying in from Norway for one chant. Sam O'Connor's skipping being best man at a wedding to fight on this card. That's the level.

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Three fights this episode, and one of them we genuinely cannot call.

Fight 9: Tylen Wallace vs Josh Moss. Reef versus beef. Josh is off Love Island Australia and the No Hard Feelings podcast, all his photos are at the ocean, and right now he's training somewhere between Japan and Barcelona. Tylen's in a paddock. Tylen took last year's fight on a four week call-up straight off the farm, copped a hiding to the neck and just kept walking forward. Both of us are backing the bloke with the mongrel.

Fight 10: Liam Moore vs Nathan "Curly" Marks. Liam off the Inspired Unemployed Impractical Jokers, who in last year's card didn't just win, he looked like an actual pro boxer, two pros sitting next to Knuckles were calling his setups before he threw them. Against Curly, who lives in his van, won the Oak milk challenge, and has fought half the trades in the country. Zak's got him because he trains at Undisputed under current world champions. Knuckles reckons he's never met a structured fighter yet. This one splits us.

Fight 11: Jeremy Latimore vs Jarrod Wallace. Nelson's Knockout Bout. One Queenslander, one from New South Wales, both flattened by Nelson Asofa-Solomona, both with everything to prove, and the whole fight is really about who's second to Nelson. Knuckles was ringside for both and walked out with Latsy. It's like your parents breaking up, you can't pick a side, and we had to.

#propertrueyarn

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First up the tag team, The Better Bloke Project's Matt Rogers and Rob Sutherland against Now Thats Dramas' Tommy Allen and Brody Hetherington. Except the card might not stay that way. If Matt's out and Big Kyle steps in, everything flips. Kyle got fed to Latsy last year and got well and truly smoked, but twelve months training out of Undisputed Boxing is a long time. There's also a rumour going round about Matt and bare knuckle. Can't confirm, can't deny.

Then Fight 8, the Seven Man Blindfold, where the defending champ is Ben Pettingill: blind, undisputed, and one of the best humans either of us has ever met. Which makes it awkward, because we're sending two fighters in against him: Casey, one of the best electricians in the world, and Johnny Rayner, the Mudgee lumberjack with the swollen budgie.

Strategy discussed at length: hooks over straights, and whether dick punching is legal. It is not clear that it is not.

#propertrueyarn

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We got the two Proper True Yarn boys sorted last episode. Now we need to know what we're up against.

So Knuckles got on the blower mid-shoot and rang every director on the card to find out who they've thrown into the Seven Man Blindfold : and why.

Buster's crew have gone with Welchie, a Cargill farmer who was told 75 to 95 kilos, turned up at 105, and is now sitting at 94. He's also carrying the world's biggest testicle, which four of us have signed. One side of it. And Joey, a four-foot-eleven butcher with a big head and small hands who missed out on the antweight and is now planning to sucker punch his way through a field he can't see. Six bruised navels incoming.

The Alpha Blokes have gone Team Double Champ : Tommy Duncan and Davey Cook, both double champs, one of them the owner of the only ABC pokie machine ever made.

And then there's Ben Pettingill. Blind. Defending champion. Undisputed. Every single person on this call rates him as a bloke and reckons he's going to get done anyway.

#propertrueyarn

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The fight card breakdown rolls on. Knuckles and Zak run through fights five and six on the Podcast Royale 3.0 card.

First up, the one everyone's talking about. Shauny 'The Whip' takes on Micah from the Alpha Blokes Podcast in the Ant-Weight Bout, and the boys break down what makes this one must-watch.

Then Rob Huston from the Hard Yards Podcast squares off against Justin Becker from Reuben's Ranch Podcast, and the boys get into who's got the edge and why.

🎟️ Tickets at alpha-events.com.au. Fight night is 26 September at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, with the Friday night press conference and live show included in your ticket.

⚠️ Explicit content.

#propertrueyarn

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The fight card breakdown rolls on. Knuckles and Zak run through fights three and four on the Podcast Royale 3.0 card.

First up, Tom 'Barbs' Barbary from The Reggies takes on Beetle from the Two Flogs Podcast. Two big units who'll bring the crowd, and the boys break down who's got the edge when they finally square off in the ring.

Then the one billed as the Sit-Down Showdown, Clancy Barden against Sam O'Connor. The boys get into the story behind this one and why it's shaping up as one of the most personal matchups on the card.

🎟️ Tickets at alpha-events.com.au. Fight night is 26 September at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, with the Friday night press conference and live show included in your ticket.

⚠️ Explicit content.

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