MY FIRST TIME: BARRY MCGUIGAN
harder than everyone else. They’d say, ‘Why do you train like that?’ I said, ‘Because I have to.’ The coach would have been happy with what the other guys done, but I liked to do a bit extra. I knew three three-minute rounds wasn’t enough for me. I grasped that. I turned professional with [promoter] Barney Eastwood. “It was at Dalymount Park on the undercard of [European lightweight champion] Charlie Nash where he got battered by Giuseppe Gibilisco. I was fighting this guy Selvin Bell. I didn’t know him from a hole in the wall. He was a journeyman, but he was one of these guys that nearly always lasted the distance and gave you rounds. It was outside. It was in May. It drizzled most of the day. Thankfully, it dried up about three hours before the fights started. “There wasn’t a lot of people in the audience. Charlie wasn’t a great seller; he could sell in Derry City, but they were putting the show on in Dublin. “I remember sitting near the back, near the dressing rooms with plastic bags on my boots. I had my gown and my boxing shorts on. They brought me out. We were both in the ring, we were sizing each other up, and then the MC came running over and said, ‘It’s too late. We can’t take the risk.’ It was six three-minute rounds. They couldn’t take the risk of the fight going the distance, therefore running into the main event. “So I had to go back to my dressing room and take the gloves off and put back on my gown, put the bags back over my boxing boots and sit out in the audience and watch Gibilisco beat Charlie up and stop him in six rounds. “I came out afterwards, and it felt like there was still enough people in the audience. But I stopped him in the second round. I dropped him, he got up, and I battered him back into the corner, and the referee jumped in and stopped it. I was thrilled, jumping up and down, and I remember [boxing journalist] Harry Mullan said, ‘McGuigan is jumping up and down like he just won the world title instead of being the 43rd guy to beat Selvin Bell.’”
At 17 years old, McGuigan took gold at the Commonwealth Games in 1978.
MY PERFECT PUNCH April 12, 1983 • Opponent: Vernon Penprase “You can over-muscle a shot and hit guys and they can take it, and you think, ‘I hit him with my best shot and he took it.’ The truth is you didn’t hit with all your might; you hit him with a forced shot and didn’t get all the weight on the end of your shot. “The left hook I knocked Vernon Penprase down for the British title was probably one of the best shots. I was really sharp that night. I was like a bullet. I was most destructive in that fight. I was punching really hard, and that takes commitment, because if I miss him, I’m in position to be hit with a counter. You have to take that into consideration. Those two rounds of me being brutal, punching with real authority. “I also hit Laporte with a tremendous right hand over the top. I touched him with a right, and then I stepped across and he moved to his left onto my right hand. It would have knocked out half a dozen guys, but he took it. He had a phenomenal chin, but it hurt him. It wobbled him. His legs went a bit funny. “I dropped Pedroza in the eighth round of the title fight. It didn’t feel like a great shot, but it was good technique. And I dummied a shot to the body twice, and the third time – and I practiced in training – halfway through at the start of the punch, instead of the punch going to the solar plexus, I turned it to the head and hit him on the cheekbone, and it was enough to drop him. “There were loads of opponents that I got rid of, but I don’t think I was ever sharper than the night I got rid of Vernon.”
Questions and/or comments can be sent to Anson at elraincoat@live.co.uk, and you can follow him on X @AnsonWainwr1ght.
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