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Podcast Episode

The Army Knocked Him Back for Being a Psychopath

Proper True Yarn··13 September 2026·11 min

About this episode

Fresh out of the Proper True Yarn fight camp, John Rayner sits down with Knuckles ahead of the seven man royale at Podcast Royale 3.0, and he's not there to make friends. No gym, no weight set, no boxing gloves. Johnny's training farm strong, throwing 44 gallon drums and tyres around and belting the bag in riggers, and reckons the city pricks on the card are in for a rude shock. There's respect for the legend Benny, but as Johnny says, no more sympathy votes. Whoever fights the best gets the win.Then the yarns start. Growing up in Mudgee when it was still a small country town, the unspoken deal where the league boys did the fighting during union season and vice versa, and punching their way to a famous schoolboy rugby title against one of the biggest schools in the state. Later came the Woolpack in its days as the most violent pub in Australia, and the army application where he passed everything with flying colours until the psych test, where a contractor heard how many fights he'd been in, told him getting smacked as a kid was domestic abuse he should sue over, and marked him down as a psychopath.From there it was industrial tiling in the mines and a proper welcome to manhood alongside wiry blokes with man strength, 18 hour shifts, poly welding out in the bush, then giving up two and a half grand a week for a $750 national parks traineeship he's never regretted. Twelve years on he's still a parks man, and part two digs into the national park yarns.#propertrueyarn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.