Pádraig Hoare: Stain of Kinahan criminality taints Irish boxing
Disgustingly feted by professional boxing's biggest fightmakers, such as Bob Arum of Top Rank, Daniel Kinahan's reputation has been sportswashed in the years since the Regency Hotel nadir. File picture
Of the 35 precious Olympic medals claimed by titans of Irish sport going back to the first in 1928, some 18 of those have been won by men and women inside the loneliest and most unforgiving place in sport — the boxing ring.
From the silver in Helsinki for John McNally in 1952 to last year's gold medal in Tokyo for Kellie Harrington, the so-called 'sweet science' has brought this small island unbridled joy and pride in nearly every four-year cycle.
Yet amateur boxing has never truly captured the public's imagination because of its perenially wayward cousin, professional boxing.
Organised crime has long been a cancer on professional boxing across the world, and metastasised in the most brutal fashion in Ireland in 2016, when murder came to Dublin's Regency Hotel at a pre-show weigh-in for fighters.
People were shot at a hotel in broad daylight at a boxing show weigh-in in Ireland. It's hard to make up, let alone believe.
The intended target for gunmen that day was Daniel Kinahan, who six years later instead finds himself in the crosshairs of anti-organised crime law enforcement.
Revenge for the Regency Hotel attack was swift and bloody, with shooting after shooting in a feud between the Kinahan cartel and the Hutch gang. Besides the many who have been killed or maimed in the aftermath, professional boxing in Ireland was also a victim that day, never quite recovering.
Honest and hardworking small hall professional boxing promoters — an increasingly endangered species at home and abroad — and honest and hardworking prizefighters have been left to deal with the fallout in Ireland, barely landing a venue in the Republic as hotel and property owners baulked at having anything to do with a sport that brought some of Ireland's greatest warriors such as Steve Collins, Wayne McCullough, Bernard Dunne, and Katie Taylor.
Disgustingly feted by professional boxing's biggest fightmakers, such as Bob Arum of Top Rank, Daniel Kinahan's reputation has been sportswashed in the years since the Regency Hotel nadir. A boxing "consultant" these days, Daniel Kinahan and his henchmen have thumbed their nose at the authorities, brazen in their takeover of the professional side of the sport, unafraid to emerge from the shadows.
Professional boxing has always had a criminal element, from Mafia involvement in the American scene since time immemorial to Mike Tyson's conviction for rape and his promoter Don King's conviction for manslaughter back in the day.
However, it is rare to see organised crime outfits responsible for murder and mayhem embraced by Middle Eastern government departments and UK and US television channel executives quite like the cosying up to Daniel Kinahan we have seen in the past two years.
Involved in the careers of prizefighters such as heavyweight Tyson Fury, Daniel Kinahan insists he is merely a businessman with good intentions. Sickeningly, television executives and professional boxing sanctioning bodies have chosen to play ball with him. As long as everyone makes money, it's all good, right?
I have reported on boxing since 2006, amateur and professional. I loved it, to the extent that I turned a blind eye to some of the nefarious people involved, much to my eternal shame. I walked away from the sport I loved around five years ago, no longer being able to stomach what it had become.
But then I think of people such as Mick O'Brien, who have given their lives to amateur boxing.
Mr O'Brien, of the Cork County Boxing Board and the Cork Ex Boxers Association, is quick to express his disgust at organised crime in professional boxing, and at pains to point out the virtues of the amateur.
"They may be related, but I have always said they are two vastly different sports. The professional game has become a place where people are used and abused. The purist who loves the sport lives for amateur boxing, where young men and women can forge paths in life, instilling discipline and values. It may be naive, but we like to think of it as a noble art.
Cork City councillor Fergal Dennehy was in Dublin some days ago, when he happened upon the scene of the 2016 shooting, now a hotel under a different name.
Mr Dennehy was involved in setting up Togher Boxing Club, where dozens of youngsters have come through the doors since 2013 as the amateur ethos thrives.
"We set up the club to have young people away from the streets, and to give them purpose and spirit. We like to think we have done good things for our community. It's demoralising to think that amateur clubs and a fine sport can be tainted through association with criminal elements in professional circles far removed from them. The cancer of organised crime must be cut out, and like Mick O'Brien says, this must be a watershed moment for the professional sport."
The Cork Ex Boxers Association will host its Golden Jubilee event on April 30. One of the organisation's founders was the late Paddy 'The Champ' Martin. Mr Martin's son will give the keynote address at the jubilee. He said, upon the news of the Kinahan crackdown: "There can be no place for criminality in any aspect of society, including sports like professional boxing. These sanctions are a very significant step in tackling organised crime, and I want to praise the co-operation and tireless work by gardaí and police forces across the world to bring these criminals to justice."
Paddy 'The Champ' Martin's son often speaks of how his father's craft in the ring helped instill in him a work ethic, discipline, and values that helped him forge his own career — proof of the good boxing can do. The son's name? Micheál Martin.
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