Irish Boxing

Feel sorry for poor Andy hes getting a bit of a schooling here,Brave a feck though.

 

Getting a bit carved up now, hopefully he can come on strong in the last few hopefully the drop in weight for Rees will damage his stamina not looking like it now though

 

didnt frampton fight out of Midland ABC?

 

gotta Give Rees all the credit in the world:deal Making Murray look less than ordinary

 

I taught Gerry trained him...., I could be wrong though, i taught gerry been the trainer now Carl just wanted to stick with him....

 

Sure is would love to see Rees v Dudey at light welter.

 

Dunno weather that will work in Murrays favour or not, win or lose other fighters might see him as an easy nights work, But we all know Andy is a warrior, and will stand his ground with the best of them

 

It was Midland ABC and Billy McKee, but Storey's gym is a stone's throw up the road.

 

Have to agree there

 

murray might win this on a DQ

 

rees looks ****ed

 

Essential reading for all boxing fans. The way McGuigan united a very divided UK and Ireland at the height of the troubles is phenomenal. Full version in the link as I had to cut a little at the end.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jun/04/barry-mcguigan-carl-frampton

Barry McGuigan's past compels him to make Carl Frampton the future
The former world featherweight champion is haunted by the death of Young Ali but his hunger to succeed is as fierce as ever

Barry McGuigan will be fevered again on Saturday night. Just below a darkened corner of a boxing ring in Cardiff, as the punches land with sickening force and memories of his own tumultuous nights between the ropes reel through him, McGuigan will feel intensely alive. His gifted protege, Carl Frampton, the unbeaten super-bantamweight from Belfast, faces his most difficult test to date in a British title fight eliminator against Robbie Turley. McGuigan, who crossed Ireland's sectarian divide during the bleakest years of the Troubles, and won his world featherweight title 26 years ago this month in front of 20 million BBC1 viewers on an unforgettable night at Loftus Road, now manages and trains Frampton.

The old fighter will suffer anew in the grip of this addictive business which saw him reach unparalleled peaks of popularity for a boxer in Britain and Ireland while also leaving a haunting reminder of the man, the Nigerian fighter Young Ali, who died beneath his fists in 1982. "I'll be suffering all right," McGuigan says as he counts down the hours to Frampton's contest. "I suffer vicariously and now I know how my father suffered, watching me. When one of my sons, Shane, started doing well as an amateur it was even worse. I was no good with Shane. I used to ask this stupid question when he came back to the corner. I'd say: 'Is he a hard puncher?' Shane would look at me and say: 'Yeah, he's a hard puncher.' I'd think: 'What an idiot I am. How can you ask your fighter, even your son, that question?'"

McGuigan sounds stunned by his tangled emotions. "I'm getting better," he says, "and Shane's no longer fighting. He's doing a grand job helping me look after Carl. When I first started working with Carl, in the Irish Under-21s, he had four fights and I was thrown out of the corner twice for shouting too much. I'm calmer now. I do a lot of work with Carl but, as soon as the bell rings, Gerry Storey runs the corner. I stand and watch a few feet away. I assimilate everything more clinically. I can pass on my instructions in a coherent way."

He has long been the most astute and lucid boxing analyst in the country – for McGuigan has experienced a fighting life as profound as it is grave. Even Saturday night, on a tense but small-time bill, it will be hard for him to forget Young Ali. "He's never far from my mind," McGuigan says of the fighter who fell into a coma and eventually died after their bout at the Grosvenor House hotel in London. "I'll think of him again [tonight]. In this game, on fight night, you think of Michael Watson, Gerald McClellan, Paul Ingle, Bradley Stone and Young Ali – fighters who ended up damaged or dead. They're constantly there. They're never far away."

Last month, at the Sony Radio Awards, McGuigan returned to present a prize at the hotel where his fateful contest against Ali unfolded 29 years ago. "Every time I go to that Great Room it gets me," he says. "It's a beautiful room and it was once an old ice rink where the Queen learnt to skate. But, for me, it represents something else. I sat there a few weeks ago, at the Sony Awards, and I thought: 'No one knows what happened to me here. No one here has even heard of Young Ali. But I knew him. I fought him to the bitter end in this room.'"

There are tears in McGuigan's eyes and his face crumples. For a few moments he cannot speak for crying. I have met many fighters and, like McGuigan, I've fallen for the risible and the ruined. But I have not often been lost for words when sitting so close to a boxer whose enduring success and happiness is etched with tragedy.

"It's impossible not to feel guilty," McGuigan eventually says. "I think of Young Ali every day of my life. Every day I wonder about his wife, and the child which she was pregnant with when Ali died. I have tried to find ways of tracking them down but it wasn't possible. I just hope she remarried and is happy in Nigeria. For a long time I felt so sad I couldn't think about boxing again. But my own wife was pregnant and I had to snap out of it. I had to go on. In my next fight, I hurt Jimmy Duncan and stopped myself hitting him again. I was scared of another tragedy. But Jimmy nearly took my head off while I was worrying about him. I was OK after that."

McGuigan laughs, his face now crinkling. But empathy is rarely far from the surface. "I would think I'm more compassionate than most fighters. But I had a killer instinct and this ability to turn on a switch and go bingo. In the ring, something took hold of me. Maybe I got that killer instinct because I worked from fear. The kid opposite me could beat me real bad, he could humiliate me. He could ruin everything I'd worked for. Later, I'd be distressed because I took him out and, without hesitation, I finished him. I struggled with that side of myself all my life – but the death of Ali took it the next level. It sickened me."

Working relentlessly with Frampton in the basement of McGuigan's home in Kent, the echoes and contrasts between a 24‑year-old Belfast boxer and his 50-year‑old Irish mentor are obvious. They are not only similar in weight and size, but the intelligence they both bring to a brutal trade, against a divisive political backdrop, binds them together. The past and the present have fused as Frampton's big fight coincides with the publication of McGuigan's gripping new autobiography.

In a book he has written himself, rather than hiring a less eloquent ghost, McGuigan has remembered Ali in detail as tender as it is compelling. It also offers a vivid depiction of the night when he won the WBA featherweight title against Eusebio Pedroza on 8 June 1985 – as the largest television audience in the history of British boxing watched 27,000 people roar on McGuigan against an imposing champion who had made 19 title defences.

McGuigan leaps from his chair to showcase the combination with which he dropped Pedroza in the seventh round. He dances around me, throwing big punches with rasping grunts as he imagines the great Panamanian in front of him again. You can take a boxer out of the ring but, when the talk turns personal, a fighting cyclone can't help himself. McGuigan also grins as he remembers the people who crowded into his dressing room that night. The usual Irish contingent – George Best, Alex Higgins, Dennis Taylor, Pat Jennings, Willie John McBride and JP McManus – were joined by some less expected fans.

"Can you believe it?" McGuigan exclaims. "Lucian Freud, the greatest painter in Britain, was there. Lucian Freud is a massive boxing fan … and he came to watch me beat Pedroza. Incredible."

Is McGuigan a connoisseur of Freud's work? "I love art and I love Lucian Freud," he says before breaking off into a characteristic chuckle. "I can't afford any of his paintings … even though I'd love one. But he was there that night. Irvine Welsh is another. Have you read what he wrote in Glue?"

Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, was lost in the crowd that wild night. He has since written about the response of his father, a Scottish hardman. "Irvine Welsh went with his dad to the fight and, just before the first bell, he turned around to look at his father. In the ring my dad was singing Danny Boy and Irvine was amazed to see his own father crying. He'd never seen his dad cry before."

Does McGuigan ever watch his greatest night in the ring? "No," he says, sighing. "I get embarrassed. I seem so bumptious … "

But that night, in all its savage innocence, captured McGuigan at his most powerful as he briefly united Britain and Ireland. As a fighter from southern Ireland, who boxed for Ulster and won the British title, McGuigan refused any sectarian allegiance. He was loved all over Ireland, both north and south, and his defeat of Pedroza made him BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1985. As a Catholic, who has been happily married for 29 years to a Protestant, Sandy, McGuigan has always transcended the divide. "Why was I different?" he asks. "Why did I get such special support – more than any other fighter from Northern Ireland or Ireland? The answer is simple. There was so much sadness and people were just fed up."

All those years of violence, of bombings and kneecappings, of futility and death, rise up again on a beautiful afternoon in rural Kent. McGuigan pauses, turning the days over in his head. "The sadness was unbearable for so many. And, strange as it sounds, boxing gave them a bit of light. It took their minds off the darkness.

"You know that line [in Danny Boy] my father used to sing? 'I'll be there in sunshine or in shadow … ' Well, the shadows ran deep. And my fights felt a little like sunshine. Both sides would say: 'Leave the fighting to McGuigan.' You see, it was also entertainment – people loved to forget the Troubles a while.

"The fact that I wouldn't wear green, white and gold or put on a sign that said this is who I represent was powerful. It was a very mature and dangerous thing to do. I wouldn't choose sides. People appreciated that. Even now there's still tension; but people on the Protestant side of town like me just as much as the Catholic guys. So the politics made it unique. I was a political mishmash, coming from the south, going north, winning a world title in London. Looking back, I see it was special."

Barry McGuigan's "Cyclone: My Story" is published by Ebury (£18.99)

 

Yeah dont see him droppin Rees though cant see a ko comin!

 

How long until Rees/Murray starts?

 

in the 11th now