Handling our boxers with care on the road to Rio
Our man in New York, John O’Riordan, has written about Conor McGregor already this week so there is no need for those of you for whom the sight and sound of ‘The Notorious’ is akin to fingernails on a blackboard to worry. This is not another column about the UFC’s newest poster boy.
Like John, though, this column was somewhat taken aback to see McGregor pop up at intervals during coverage of Sunday’s NFL game on Fox between Green Bay and Seattle. There he was, sporting the sort of flat cap and tweed that would slot snugly into a scene from ‘The Quiet Man’, and bad-mouthing opponent Dennis Siver.
Like him or not, the guy knows how to sell himself and his sport and his little promo slots before his headline appearance later that evening in Boston got this viewer thinking. Not least because his road to martial arts riches started in the ring rather than the octagon where, for all the hype, he has yet to prove his walk matches the talk.
Ireland’s boxers have already delivered astonishing levels of success. Olympics, worlds, Europeans: you name it and our lads and lassies in the ring have probably delivered it at some point, but McGregor has hogged all the headlines in a week which sees the National Elite Boxing finals take place tonight and tomorrow here at home.
Apologies if you have read this here before, but how is it that a sport that captivates us with such levels of excellence every four years can be left to go on about its business the rest of the time, with ne’er a speck of interest from most of the sporting public? And this at a time with no major GAA, soccer or rugby alternatives on the menu, too?
We could go on about the lack of publicity, the absence of leadership from the governing body and the image problem it has as a largely working-class sport, but there are more pressing issues facing amateur boxing here.
They are obvious, in fact, with one glance at the card for tonight’s 10 title bouts.
It isn’t that there is nothing to pull people in to the National Stadium over the next two nights. There clearly is. If the place isn’t sold out, it should be close to it and there are more than a few bouts that would make the pilgrimage worthwhile. In fact, with 13 counties and all four provinces represented, there should be something for everyone.
Former Olympians and international medal winners feature, including London 2012 team captain Darren O’Neill, who chases a first heavyweight title having made the step up from middleweight.
The welterweight bout between Beijing Olympian John Joe Joyce and London qualifier Adam Nolan is another that stands out, but it is those absent who come to mind more so than the actual competitors tonight — and tomorrow, when an injured Katie Taylor will be missing from the bill.
Since 2012, Billy Walsh has lost John Joe Nevin, Jason Quigley, Tommy McCarthy and, just this month, Con Sheehan to the professional ranks. The ongoing blurring of the lines between the pro and amateur games in recent years has deprived Irish boxing’s biggest night of still more gilded names. Paddy Barnes and Michael Conlon are ‘hors de combat’ having signed up for the Italia Thunder team in the World Series of Boxing and Steven Donnelly (Poland Hussars), Dean Gardiner and Gary Sweeney (both Mexico Geurreros) are others to have opted for the WSB route this year.
Joe Ward and David Oliver Joyce, meanwhile, will both be at the nationals tonight but only as spectators. Both have signed up to the AIBA’s Pro Boxing (APB) ranks which allows boxers fight as professionals but, like the WSB, will also provide an alternative pathway to Rio in 2016.
Routes towards Olympic qualification continue to multiply, in fact, but that isn’t to say that getting there is any easier. Quite the opposite, and that clouding of lines between where the amateur game ends and the professional gig kicks in amounts to a risky strategy by the AIBA, the game’s amateur governing body.
The decision to do away with headgear and another to bring scoring systems closer to those used in the pros are seismic shifts, but with so many similarities between the two now, the main difference — the amount of money to be potentially made — is only heightened and that leaves the Olympics as the amateur game’s only real ace.
Even that has its limitations, though, and Quigley spoke about the thin line between hero and zero for those chasing that Olympic dream when talking to irishboxing.com a while back. “One clash of heads or a cut with an elbow and that’s you gone,” explained Quigley as he took his leave of the amateur ranks for life in America and Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions operation. It’s not yet panic stations — not with the likes of Ward, Barnes, Conlon still targeting Rio — but it’s worth monitoring. Boxing, after all, is the sport that has delivered most of our Olympic medals. Seven of eight collected by Ireland between Beijing and London alone.
* Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie
Twitter: @Rackob
