Tell me about ... Sean O'Grady

The illness was covered the immediate post fight wrap up in Ring Magazine and it was referred back to in retrospective articles on Kenty's career and O'Grady's reign. I don't think I'll be able to jump up and search through a couple hundred back issues to find the exact articles.

And if you're going to say its not real because the broadcast team didn't mention it? Really? Do you think Kenty and Steward were walking around the hotel telling people about the illness before the fight? No. They would try to keep that under wraps. If Kenty was looking to put a spin on a bad performance, there are a ton of more accessible excuses than pneumonia. Why not: I had a bad training camp/my hands hurt/I was weight drained/I had a fight with my wife/I just felt lousy?

 

Sean himself commented to the effect afterwards that those 15 rounds seemed much faster to him than they actually were, such was the pace.

Concerning your reservations about the question of illness, Kenty certainly produced a bizarre career ruining allegation later with his French Exit quit job after two rounds against Elizondo. Hilmer had a far better round one than Roberto did a second round. Elizondo was certain his vaunted body attack was responsible for Kenty's claimed abrupt enervation during his post fight interview [spoken in Roberto's inimitable mouse squeak of a barely audible voice].

Hilmer seemed all right sitting on his corner stool when the camera and microphone were brought over to him. He said he didn't know if it was something he ate, or what, but he just couldn't go on. Jersey Joe Walcott said he'd never witnessed anything like it, but announced he was holding up Kenty's purse pending further investigation. There was an expressed intent for Hilmer to go to the nearest hospital for a physical examination of cause, but Kenty was not quoted in connection with this for the next magazine interview I read ascribed to him. Regardless, it was essentially over for him, and this after he'd looked so good decisioning John Montes over ten in his previous outing [this is the one time he displayed his natural style before a nationwide audience]. Today, all he says about Elizondo is, "I quit."

Like O'Grady, it may have been better for Hilmer that he didn't linger on too long for too many more bouts. Although he'd defeat Freddie Pendleton after Elizondo, and never lose again, he wasn't the same. Like Sean, he's been solid in his post boxing life, running an electric supply business he sold in 1997. O'Grady and Kenty have publicly expressed respect for one another, and appear to be on excellent terms.


Just how good was Sean O'Grady? Decent power, well conditioned, smart, good height and reach at his natural weight of 135, he could move well laterally or attack with equal proficiency, and had every punch in the boxing repertoire. Anybody who's read Jay C. "Champ" Thomas knows his personal connection to Sean. [He refereed a over a number of sacrifices to Sean in Oklahoma City.] Pat and Sean provided commercial endorsements for all of Champ's pamphlet material before Thomas had his own falling out with Pat [complete with competing WAAs, which Flash Gordon derisively called the "WAO'Grady" and "WAThomas"]. After Arguello, he was the best tall body puncher of his era at 135.

Weaknesses? A severe bleeder until he had the protruding bone beneath his eyebrows surgically filed down [the same operation Antuofermo waited far too long to undergo for saving his career], he remained somewhat susceptible to cuts even after, and Arguello might have slashed him to ribbons with those Reyes Gloves.

Sean was not very elusive defensively. Dancing with his gloves down Ali style in the early going against Watt, Jim nonetheless wasn't having much difficulty landing his right jabs, from what I recall. [Until Arguello dethroned him, I considered Watt the number one LW after Duran vacated, superior to Espana, Kenty and O'Grady.]

Faster than Watt [most world class lightweights were], not nearly as fast as Kenty, Davis, Jr., or possibly Arguello [who Busceme said was quicker than expected].

Could he ever have been the best LW in the world during his time? I don't see him dethroning the version of Espana who came off the deck to hook Johnny Lira into a fractured jaw. [The tall Venezuelan definitely would have tested Sean's chin with that hook during this time frame. Kenty really took it out of Espana.] I don't see him winning most times against the physically stronger and more experienced Watt on neutral turf.

It could be argued that on paper, Howard Davis, Jr. had a better resume for challenging Watt after 13 professional bouts than Sean had after 74 fights. [I do think Howard cleanly lost to Vilomar, but Usai was a good scalp, and so was Termite Watkins. Norm Goins was a reasonable win, and 11 of his 13 opponents had winning records.] Fewer than 20 of Sean's 73 wins going into Watt were over opponents with winning records, and he essentially got to Glasgow on the strength of the Montellano MD. [Head to head though, I do see Sean taking Howard. Davis, Jr. was a vegetarian who consequently had neither the power to hurt Sean, or punch resistance to stand up to him. O'Grady would also be going downstairs immediately.]

Vilomar Fernandez had the toughness, quickness, mobility, speed and skill to give Sean a lot of headaches over the distance.

Ranzany-O'Grady was televised on ESPN, and should be on youtube. That might be the best match for fans to use in assessing both combatants for themselves.

 

It is as good an excuse as any -- I doubt Manny would want a "bad training camp" hanging over him, since that was his responsibility. Cla

 

My post somehow got cut off. Here it is:


It is as good an excuse as any -- I doubt Manny would want a "bad training camp" hanging over him, since that was his responsibility. Claiming a hand injury makes no sense when a guy threw both hands without reservation for 15 rounds.

It's possible they claimed "walking pneumonia" as an excuse, true or not, but if it was referred to in Ring then it seems to have made a jump from there to message board lore without any other reference -- none that I can find -- in the media. You'd think others would have picked up on it if it was true.

As for the telecast, I've seen numerous times when fighters or their camps have talked beforehand about a fighter being less than 100 percent for one reason or another. He was well enough to pass a prefight physical, which means he was well enough to fight.

UPDATE: I have found one reference where Kenty, looking back years later, says he had a cold -- not pneumonia -- when he fought O'Grady. As evidence he points to mucus coming out of his nose after he was knocked down. As someone who has literally had the snot knocked out of him in sparring (pretty much anyone who has been in the ring has probably experienced this), I am still skeptical.

He also makes excuses for several other fights (the heat for having a tough time early with Espana, cutting weight for leg cramps late in the fight against Vilomar Fernandez, weight loss for the fight where he quit (this in an immediate postfight interivew, in retrospect he admits he just quit).

I'm sorry -- every loser in boxing usually has an excuse, and Kenty seems to have more than most. Guy would have been Sugar Ray Robinson, apparently, had he been 100 percent all the time.

By his own admission, if you take him at his word years later, he had a COLD, not PNEUMONIA. Not the first guy ever to enter a ring at less than 100 percent, but somehow people act like he was wheeled into the ring in an iron lung and had to be held up by puppet strings -- which is pretty unfair to O'Grady.

Sean himself, ironically, summed it up best years ago (post-retirement) when he was commenting on USA Network, capturing perfectly any boxer's mentality:

"When you lose, you're never at your best. Because if you were at your best, you would have won."

That's the way fighters have to think. But to take away from a magnificent win because Kenty had an exuse afterward, let's rewrite history and put an asterix by every win of any fighter when the other guy had an excuse.

 

I saw that, and had an issue of my own posting yet again at precisely that same moment. Man, I'll tell ya, not too thrilled with that!

Muchas gracias for your persistence, my friend. [I shouldn't be using Spanish phraseology in my posts though. My mother's the one certified to teach it. The language wasn't even taught in any of the schools I ever attended!]

I spotted what may have been the same reference you're referring to, probably at about the same time you were looking for it. SP, was it the interview article by Ken Hissner for Doghouse Boxing? However, as you correctly pointed out, it needs to be on a link or citation dating from 1981, not something from Hissner's distant recall profile published 30 years later. TFM7 and I share the same recollection, but substantiation beyond our corroborative testimony from contemporary sources needs to substantiate that. TFM7 cited Ring Magazine as one such source documenting this, but yeah, I also agree with him that sorting through a couple hundred back issues [which in my case are often in deep storage] would be a rather burdensome task for purposes such as these.

Aggravating thing about this internet. Oftentimes, if it was published, existed or took place before the advent of cyberspace, there's frequently no link to it, or evidence on-line that it ever was or ever happened. [Every time some techno-snob arrogantly proclaims, "If it exists, you can find it on the internet," that is mindlessly spouting ignorant malarky, and I can't tell you how many such egos I've deflated by producing items created in the late 1980s and early 1990s which these uber-geeks haven't been able to locate with a deep web search.]

Steward was castigated for the fact so many of his charges looked like emaciated road runners, critics in the press claiming it was due to Manny maintaining Kronk Gym's climate like a sauna, but other Kronk guys like Mickey Goodwin and Caveman Lee didn't look like Hearns and Kenty. At the time, I chalked Hilmer's leg cramping up to low body fat, having seen it before.

Vilomar started out well, then Kenty turned the tide due to the characteristic inactivity of Fernandez causing him to fade. [Doesn't matter how well a precision instrument like Vilomar trained, one also has to maintain competition readiness by competing, and he often wasn't sharp through longer bouts, due to those extended periods of inactivity.] Hilmer's leg cramping reversed the tide again in favor of Fernandez just when he needed something in Kenty to go wrong, and I thought at the time [although I wasn't scoring it] that Vilomar should have left the ring with the title.

Thumbing through "Against the Odds" in a bookstore several years ago, it seemed to me that Holmes had an excuse for sub par performances in many of his wins! Now, I'm a fan of Larry's, but I wasn't about to buy that book.

Less than a year later, Don Curry competed in a match against Mike Senegal with a severe bout of the flu, running a high fever [extremely dangerous when considering outcomes like Carnera-Schaaf], and it was known by everybody going in how sick he was. That was virtually the only topic of conversation I recall by the announcers broadcasting the match, until a trio of identically torn right gloves afforded the Lone Star Cobra valuable periodic respites to carry on. [Dave Gorman was his manager, Paul Reyes was his trainer, Ace Marotta his cut man. I suspect Marotta put his skills to use in a way other than his officially assigned purpose.] One doesn't get sick when in peak physical condition, but very often so when training to get there. Donald was extremely susceptible to the flu, and could have benefited more from modern flu vaccines than any other top boxer of his era.

Heaven knows how far Cubanito Perez might have gone without crippling allergies. He was out of action for ten months after giving Camacho hell in a match I thought Irleis won. But just when it looked like Cubanito was going to take off, he was forced onto the sidelines, and it became known that allergies were the culprit which ruined his career momentum. [While this was well documented in 1983, the internet didn't exist yet, so you had to be alive and following boxing at the time to be aware of this today, or have access to the published reports which do not exist on-line, at least not yet.]

Obviously, Donald and Cubanito suffered far more serious chronic health issues than a mere head cold.

"Mentality" is the key word here. Tommy Burns was at his best for Jack Johnson, and so was Marvin Johnson for Franklin/Saad Muhammad II and Gregory/Mustafa Muhammad. Sometimes, excuses just really aren't available.

Gene Tunney wrote that simply because of the nature of training and preparation for competition that no boxer ever stepped into the ring at 100%, because complications like injuries were inevitable. Gene may have been the most anti-superstitious champion of all time in any sport. Crazily, he actually flew from his training camp to Philadelphia the day he dethroned Dempsey. At a time before Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, this dangerous stunt gave him severe motion sickness, but the mano a mano toughness of heavyweight championship fisticuffs [or boxing in general] should defy excuses.

In that respect, Don Curry was one of the most responsible combatants of the early 1980s. When one of his bouts was stopped on a cut inflicted butt by an opponent [with the DQ win correctly in the Cobra's favor], he even owned up to responsibility for it in the post fight interview, reproaching HIMSELF for the fact his head was available to be butted. [This was actually a sensible stance to take, as he could ultimately lose a key match by not adequately safeguarding against this inherent risk, something Sean certainly learned all about in Glasgow. And the outcome of that accidental butt could just as easily have turned against Watt rather than O'Grady.]

Certainly Pat O'Grady made the claim that Ganigan blew his son out because they didn't realize that Sean had simply outgrown 135. I don't think Pat believed it, I think he knew truths he was countering via assiduous spin doctoring, and he was surprisingly effective, giving his son every chance to extend his athletic career long enough for Sean to segue back into broadcasting on USA's Tuesday Night Fights by 1984, just a year after Verderosa retired him, a solid 14 year gig for O'Grady. [Actually, a solidly steady job for ANYBODY by television standards. Tuesday Night Fights was eventually the longest continually running boxing show ever produced by the medium.]

Sean was continually in the right place at the right time, whether between Duran and Arguello at 135, on the ground floor at ESPN, or not long after Tuesday Night Fights got going. In many ways, it's been a charmed life. [Again, since Pat still had four years to live in 1984, I wonder what involvement he had, if any, in getting Sean on Tuesday Night Fights. One more feather in his cap if he helped set his son up with that arrangement before he died. Certainly, it would make major amends for costing Sean his ESPN blazer, but even if not, Pat helped Sean establish a broadcasting resume with those early stints on ESPN and CBS.]

 

It was interesting, I was taking a law class and one of the cases they discussed was involving his dad.

Might have been this one:

http://law.justia.com/cases/oklahoma/court-of-appeals-civil/1980/4922.html

How do you think O'Grady does against some of the recent lightweight titlists in recent years?

Guys like Freitas, Diaz, Campbell?

 

All you guys' descriptions of the Lightweight Division of that era shows how active those boxers were.
I saw a young Sean fight in OKC in some hotel ballrooms against the standard Mexican "opponent" who just arrived from Laredo the nite before. That was before the Indian Casinos in Oklahoma have the boxing matches like today.

 

He was solid

But after winning a portion of the title over a good fighter, Hilmer Kenty, he fell fast and hard.

His father screwed up big time, trying to be manager/promoter - basically trying to call all the shots and not abiding by the rules of the WBA.

His dad should have kissed the WBA's butt and fought some of the weak guys in the WBA top ten.

But he balked at fighting Claude Noel, who Sean probably had a 90 percent chance of beating, and O'Grady was stripped.

He could have milked the WBA title fighting handpicked mediocrities like Ray Mancini did later with the guidance of Dave Wolfe.

Sometimes, it really does come down to proper management.

 

Pat should have let Bob Arum promote the Noel defense. Arum had the legal position. Pat broke the agreement.

He screwed up. There is no way to sugar coat it.

BTW: Noel beat Gato Gonzales for the vacant title, then lost to Frias.

But, I agree, Sean would likely have beaten Noel if they had fought.

That make Pat look all the more stupid.

 

You actually think Pat let Sean get stripped because he was fearful of Claude Noel?

Ganigan punched harder than Noel and was coming off a win over Gato Gonzales.

Noel hadn't beaten anyone really noteworthy recently. He was overrated by the WBA.

Why would Pat purposely avoid Noel, only to take a fight with a more dangerous opponent for less money?

He wouldn't

What really happened was he was having a dispute with the promoter and the WBA and wanted to call the shots. His ego ruinied Sean's title reign.

Even limited as he was, with proper management and matchmaking, Sean could have held the WBA title for awhile. Look what the equally limited Ray Mancini was able to do with solid management from David Wolfe.

 

Sean "The Champ" O'Grady was a very good and funny commentator on USA's much missed Tuesday Night
Fights. I would love to hear him on HBO or Showtime....he brought the experience of being in the ring
to the TV audience like George Foreman used to do, but in a very personably and amusing manner.

 

I met Sean at the Chavez vs Gamache fight, very friendly guy. As of 2015 he was selling commercial real estate in OKC.

 

I remember him more sa an announcer than a fighter except for the bout where he kept fighting this Japanese fellow despite the horrendous damage to his eye and how his corner-which included his father-allowed that fight to continue despite blood streaming down Grady's face splattering the ref and his opponent.

His father was greatly criticized for having permitted it. The stoppage in favor of Ogrady was highly controversial since it was argued that his opponent was not in that much trouble to warrant a stoppage. So the stoppage was viewed as ref favoritism by the losing side.

 

True! Good commentator. I remember his asking Merciless Ray Mercer who kept boasting about having planned everything in the fight with Tommy Morrison if he had also planned getting all the lumps on his face which Tommy Morrison had savagely inflicted.

 

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