You?ve heard of club fighters, right? In the good, old days that used to be a compliment for a fighter.
It denoted a complete, disciplined boxer who has truly learned his trade. He might not have the God-given talent of a Sugar Ray Robinson (who did?) but he could handle himself between the ropes with nearly all styles, all comers. A club fighter was rarely embarrassed in terms of professional effort.
I once referred to Vinnie Pazienza as a glorified club fighter and his excitable father, Angelo, literally tried to strangle me. But that?s not a tale for the Day of Saint Patrick, the icon who drove the snakes out of Ireland but not out of boxing.
I?m a club writer compared to my ex-New York Post colleague Pete Hamill. He can knock the likes of me out in a parenthetical phrase without wasting one word.
Boston pal and fight scribe Irish Don Stradley had an ESPN.com piece about a historical display of Irish boxing legend and lore on May 27 of last year. The New York exhibit included the fabled arm of Irish Dan Donnelly.
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3411762
When I was growing up, nearly every American city had an active Irish or Irish-American boxer of note or more. Around Boston, we had a game tryer named Irish Larry Carney from the mean streets of Lowell. I hear Carney was unbeaten in saloons and on the street but he was a pedestrian talent with gloves on.
New York boasted of Jimmy and Joey Archer and others.
Today, the only real Irish boxers scrapping here are imports from the Old Sod, lads like Andy Lee and Ireland?s Own John Duddy. Before them, came Barry McGuigan, Stevie Collins and Wayne McCullough.
Leave it to Brother Hamill to summarize this boxing demographic change in a perfect way:
Pete Hamill’s program notes put it nicely: “In the years after [1950s middleweight contender] Joey Archer, there was no longer any need for Irish fighters to act out scenarios of courage, ambition, endurance and the ability to absorb pain in order to triumph. The long tale of the Irish-American, which began with such deprivation and turmoil in the 19th century, had become a different story. “There was nothing to prove. We had our American president,” Hamill said. “We had our splendid novelists. Today, we have our company presidents and our chairmen of banks, our teachers and scholars. In that sense, we do have something to teach all those who came after us, including the new immigrants. In spite of everything, the Irish won all the late rounds.”
I can?t improve on that except to add that the ascent of Obama, as was the ascent of John F. Kennedy to the American Irish, coincides with fewer and fewer African American fighters, especially heavyweights.
Why be a prizefighter when you can get the prize at a lesser price in accounting, medicine, law or even at the White House?
The Irish presence in US boxing is not completely gone.
There?s this Boston Irish trainer, you may have heard of him, Coach Freddie Roach.
May the wind always be at Coach Roach’s back as we say.
And may a devil named Floyd Mayweather Sr. never catch him.
