Barry McGuigan: The fight goes on

For Barry McGuigan, arguably Ireland's most talented professional boxer, 1982 is the year when the worst thing imaginable happened. In a London fight in June, McGuigan knocked out a 20 year old Nigerian featherweight, called Ali Mustaffa. the Nigerian boxer fell into a coma shortly after regaining his feet and he now lies clinically dead in a Lagos hospital. Mustaffa has been kept alive only by the functioning of a life support system.

"It was awful. I didn't want to fight at all. I just did not have the heart for it …. I found it very hard to get back into training after that fight. Even during my next fight in October with Duncan, images of the Mustaffa fight kept coming back to me and I would lose concentration for a few seconds before Duncan hit me with a couple of punches and brought my mind back to the ring."

Boxing has long been a controversial sport. There are many who would like to see it banned completely. To those involved in boxing this line of thinking is incomprehensible. You might as well ban motor cars because a lot of people get killed in them. Boxing is an immensely tough, aggressive sport. Fatalities are rare - Mustaffa was the first boxer in over 30 years to be so seriously injured in a British boxing ring. (The Welsh boxer Johnny Owen died last year as a result of injuries sustained in a title fight in the USA.)

Barry McGuigan thought long and hard about the Mustaffa experience and then climbed back into the ring. That fight may have marked him, but it has not quenched his ambitious desire to become a World Champion. For the professionals, the show goes on.

"I remember, early in the fight going back to the corner and saying to Eddie (Shaw) and Mr Eastwood that this boy can really take his punches. I hit him hard and yet he seemed to recover, so I would keep hitting him. That's what the game is about, you have to keep on working at it, trying to land punches. After the fourth round, I thought I had done enough and that the referee would stop the fight ..... When I caught him between the eyes in the sixth round, that finished him. He took a while to get to his feet and although he was obviously in trouble, I didn't think that there was anything wrong. It was over an hour later before I was told how badly hurt he was. I was horrified."

The Mustaffa tragedy has been almost the only hiccup in the quietly developing professional career of the 21 year old featherweight. A sparkling amateur career which saw McGuigan win a Commonwealth Games Gold Medal and experience controverlial decisions in both the European Championships and the Moscow Olympics ended two years ago in October 1980, when McGuigan turned professional. It had always been his intention to turn professional. But the controversial decisions which he experienced in his fights with Winfred Kabunda of Zambia in the Moscow Olympics and with Uri Gladinov of the USSR in the European Championships of 1979 finally made up his mind for him. The three round sprint which is amateur boxing has always contained an element of lottery. In a professional contest which may go on for eight or ten rounds, a decision as to who is the winner is inevitably much easier. A weakness which might be effectively masked over the hectic three rounds of an amateur contest will gradually become exposed in a longer fight.

McGuigan's professional career - 14 wins in 15 fights - is now approaching its first peak. His last fight, against the British boxer, Peter Huggins, was a British Featherweight Title eliminator, and his victory gives McGuigan a crack at the British title. Huggins, according to the McGuigan camp represented the most difficult task which Barry had ever faced. Unbeaten until this fight in 15 contests as a professional, Huggins had won 12 of them with knockouts. The referees intervention may have come early in the fight, in the fifth round, but there is little doubt that McGuigan would have won anyway. Given the Mustaffa experience the referee's stopping of the fight may well have been no bad thing.

McGuigan had already shown in his previous fight against Duncan that the fighter with the big punch holds no fears for him. There is no doubt that McGuigan is a settled fighter. He is more than happy with his manager, Barney Eastwood, and his trainer, Eddie Shaw. When it became apparent that he was contemplating the move to a professional career, McGuigan was approached by Mickey Duff, the London promoter. His obvious talent was such that Duff, untypically, made the first move, rather than wait for the boxer to come to him. McGuigan has no regrets about turning down Duff. He recalls how, on the night last April, when Charlie Nash got badly beaten by Joey Gibilisco in Dalymount Park. Duff, the then manager of Nash, had little time for his battered fighter. McGuigan feels that, by contrast, he is in the hands of a caring team.

It could hardly be anything else. McGuigan splits his training time between his home in Clones, Co. Monaghan and his manager's home in Holywood, Co. Down. He tends to spend the quiet period immediately following a fight at home, whereas in the run up to a fight he is based in Holywood where he has access to a variety of sparring partners. Barry McGuigan is no reluctant 'Crainer. He often sleeps badly because he is anxious, anticipating when it will be time to get up. He rises every day at 6.30am and goes for an eight mile hill run, equipped with heavy army boots. The idea of the heavy footwe'ar is both to make himself work harder, sweat a lot and to build up leg strength and stamina. The morning run is usually followed by a lie down, when he often sleeps more comfortably than during the night. If at home, he will work out, on his own, in the custom built McGuigan gym, which leads straight off the family kitchen. Here he will go through a combination of work outs which involve heavy and light punch bags. Often he is helped through these sessions by his brother and keen admirer, Dermot McGuigan.

In technical terms, the move to professionalism has meant two radical improvements for Barry McGuigan. His actual punching technique, the way he held his left hand has been radically altered. As an amateur he tended to punch with such an open fist that he consistently suffered injury to his left hand. Even at the Moscow Olympics he had had to fight his final contest with a painkiller in the left hand. This inadequate technique has been worked on by his present trainer, Eddie Shaw, and he is more than hopeful that his problems with the hand have finished. Attention to detail is all important. As an amateur, McGuigan was so rushed and keen to get on with the business of training that he was careless about the way he bandaged his hands before a session. Now he wraps them up with loving care.

The second radical improvement which McGuigan has enjoyed as a professional is the frequency with which he now spars. Most amateurs tend not to do enough sparring. Now in an average pre fight sparring session, McGuigan will spar eight rounds with three different fighters. The opponent changes from round to round so that McGuigan is constantly forced to keep thinking, keep anticipating the different tricks of the different boxers. As Barry McGuigan talks about his chosen craft, he is consistently shifting and moving, illustrating his point with a pretend punch, with a sideways shimmey. In the best featherweight tradition, he is the personification of quickness of mind, quickness of hands and twinkle-toed mobility. On the wall of his Clones gym, there is a motto:

"Work hard, think fast and you'll last".

Despite the trauma of the Mustaffa fight, Barry McGuigan looks like he will last for some time yet. He is certainly working hard enough and thinking fast enough.