Barry McGuigan Signs Onto The Contender

Great Britain’s leading promoter Frank Warren, and Jeff Wald, the executive producer of the TV show the Contender, drew plenty of publicity last week with the announcement of what they hope will be an annual match between fighters from both sides of the Atlantic. Sugar Ray Leonard will captain an American team against a British team supervised by Barry McGuigan in seven bouts to be staged in Newcastle on March 30 and screened on ITV as one-hour episodes.

Until recently Leonard has been restrained about profiting from the prestige he acquired during a magnificent career but last week in London he sounded about as genuine as snake oil salesman as he hailed the Contender, the show that merged the fight business with reality TV in the US, as one that has “taken boxing back to where it was in my era, where people know who the fighters are.”

McGuigan had no problem with recognition. My friend was persistent. “You should come over and see his kid,” he said all those years ago. “You’ll like him. Fast hands, big heart. He’s fighting next week.”

Belfast. Roadblocks and police patrols. “Send the children over until things calm down,” I had said. Those children were now grown but there was no end to the trouble.

I took my seat at the Ulster Hall, nodding to acquaintances, marvelling at their cheerful resilience.

Barry McGuigan from Clones, a gold medallist at the Commonwealth Games in 1978. On the other side of the card it read Peter Eubanks, Brighton. Fighting for the sixth time as a professional, McGuigan was seeking revenge for a points defeat and when he came to the ring I remembered: a pale, busy kid winning at Wembley the night Alexis Arguello took the world lightweight championship from Jim Watt.

My editor agreed that it was worth deserting the 1986 soccer World Cup for a couple of days so I left Mexico City early on the morning of June 23, reaching Las Vegas in plenty of time to see McGuigan defend against Steve Cruz the featherweight title he had taken from Eusebio Pedroza 12 months earlier.

A Texan from Fort Worth, there was nothing in Cruz to suggest that McGuigan was approaching a crisis, but as the contest progressed he began to experience withering distress that by the bell that there was nothing left but his gameness: the title had gone.

McGuigan did not fight again for 22 months and by February 1986 what had been  Barry and Barney was McGuigan and Eastwood, a case to be heard in a Belfast courtroom, the most conspicuous of modern Irish heroes attempting to prove that that was nothing to come for his manager.

When McGuigan returned to the ring he had formed an alliance with the London promoted Frank Warren who was on his way to becoming the most powerful figure in British boxing. Worrying though was the thought that McGuigan was not responding entirely to that mysterious instinct that persuades retired fighters to return to the ring. Was he doing it merely to project his commercial potential?

It is not enough to be back with the running and the sparring and the slap of a rope, to know again those fierce disciplines required of fighting men: to know the truth about himself a fighter must fight.

McGuigan sought the truth when he faced Nick Perez, the North American super-featherweight champion at the Alexandra Pavilion in north London on April 20, 1988. Despite hours of dedicated preparation, the 150 rounds of sparring and the admiration of all who had watched him at work, McGuigan couldn’t be sure. “It takes time to clear the head,” he said. “This fight will tell me a lot; another fight will tell me more. If I sense it’s all a mistake, then I’ll not be wasting people’s time. I’ll be out of there.”

Perez, a Mexican boxing out of Tucson, Arizona, was not thought to be a problem. He had lost 16 of 75 professional contests since turning professional at 17, three of those defeats by world champions; Wilfredo Gomez, Salvador Sachez and Julio Cesar Chavez. At 28, he was well past his best; the fight lasted four rounds.

Two months later McGuigan, stopped Francisco Tomas Cruz in four rounds and was then matched with Julio Miranda of Argentina. As the World Boxing Council , an organization notable for generous assessments, rated 17 men above Miranda in the super-featherweight division McGuigan appeared to be marking time while negotiations preceded for a championship fight.

McGuigan was never seriously threatened by Miranda, winning all but two of the rounds, but when set against the grim threat of heavier artillery, the performance gave rise to concern. The future was now blurred by a sense of disenchantment with the rigors of a trade that never fails, one way or another, to take something from them all. Drama is essential stuff for heroes and it helps to explain why boxing history is littered with tales of good men who did not perceive the passing of their time in the ring.

There would be no title. McGuigan accepted an offer of around $500,000 to fight Jim McDonnel and that was the end of it.