I saw my dad’s eyes all watery. He’d been sparring with Danny McAlinden, the reigning British Heavyweight Champion. I was about 8. I thought boxing was his job. It became mine. Dad had designed my life for me to become the world heavyweight champion. He’d pack my younger brother John and I into the car, drive around the neighborhood, stopping when he saw a group of kids, grab the boxing gloves, ask the biggest boy if he’d box me, lace up the gloves.....I don’t recall much else except the time when I was punched in the face and my head went back and slammed into a concrete street lamp;I ripped off the gloves, ran home crying and hid under my bed. Go back to your corner and come out fighting.
I really didn’t know who this man, my dad, was. I’d seen him in the house and remember wondering what he was doing there. The next heavyweight champion of the world was a painfully introverted, fat, freckle faced kid and being the champ, was going to take care of everything-I mean everything. I believed it all through my childhood, into my twenties; I still believe it. It was just going to occur. So I really didn’t have to worry about money or an education or anything really. THE CHAMP -it’s just a knowing that can’t be explained-and doesn’t need explaining to seasoned fighters.
I didn’t get suicidal until my family left Birmingham, England and moved back to Ireland. Jim, my dad always found work and made plenty of money in England but Ireland was bleak and with 8 children to feed, times were rough. His obsession-boxing, and my brother John and becoming world champions, kept him going. When your obsession involves other people, the relentless drive can hurt.
Enfield, where we lived was a 4 bar, 5 stores, 3 petrol stations little village. My first job was at Jimmy Gorry’s Shell Petrol Station. I filled the huge cattle lorrys with diesel-the same vehicles that I later considered jumping in front of. Jimmy would nab me on the way home from school and I’d be stuck there until he returned from the bar.
Jim (my dad) started Enfield Boxing Club. It’s first location was in a building behind the Shell station. He was the trainer and my brother John and I were his main students. Within a few years we had one of the best clubs on the east coast of Ireland. At 13 I won my first national title at the Parkway Hotel in Limerick-along with another Enfield boy, Ben Gillespie. I went on to win 4 national titles, losing twice in the finals and at 18 was invited to box with a Mayo team in Chicago-where my dad stayed and took up residence. No dad at home.
I was free. No monster to worry about, looming, controlling every move, commenting on everything I did or tried to do. I lost 3 fights in a row. That had never happened before. I had no reason to make an effort to win because there was no one to answer to. I was free-I thought. I’d never experienced that before. I loved it. Especially the freedom to drink. Go back to your corner and come out fighting.
When I graduated secondary school, the Irish equivalent of High School, I just assumed I’d go to college. But that required money. It was a huge shock after graduation when I found myself at Leaf Chewing Gum Factory, across the street from the girls high school where my sister’s went. I worked in the warehouse with Mick O’Neil, Seamie Hynes, Willie Terrell, Paddy O’Dowd, Dessie, Bernie Tallon and Tom Lennan. First time getting a paycheck-I loved it.
Pay day, Thursday’s, Anthony Ford, Paddy O’Dowd and I cashed our checks at the bank and went next door to O’Keefe’s for a few drinks-it was the payoff for having to be in this world and endure this life. I experienced joy sitting at the bar and being transported to heaven.
Back at Leaf-Tom hadn’t heard that I was a champion boxer and wouldn’t stop antagonizing me, so one day when we were stacking boxes 50 feet up in the rafters, he did it again-so I grabbed him by the throat, and dangled him over the edge, threatening to drop him onto the concrete below. Sorry Tom. Almost everyone is suffering. Go back to your corner and come out fighting.
When boxing tragically ended for me with a criminal pummeling after a head butt from a fighter named Jessie S and an ill-informed trainer Joe F., a yearning for the seeming ultimate freedom returned-suicide. Two days after the fight, laying on a bed in an apartment on West 75th street, NY, NY., I wanted to end it all. I’d tried with pills when I was 21, in Brooklyn. I was then 28, having been almost beaten to death-fighting the last 5 rounds in a black-out. Because some creep had obviously perfected using head butts to disable his opponents. He disabled me. From becoming the next champ to another brain damaged washed-up pug in one fight. But I had alcohol and now I could drink like I wanted to.
I just saw Michael Bentt’s episode of Losers on Netflix so I feel okay revealing what Joe Fariello who trained 10 world champions said after training me for 6 months, “Right now, you are the best cruiserweight in the world”, Joe wasn’t the complimentary type. I just wish he was aware of the condition of over-training. Go back to your corner and come out fighting.
Every time I work out or go for a run the thought is still there that I can become the champ. I forget the terror and life and death seriousness that boxing is. I guess I sometimes still think that I need to prove something to somebody, justify my existence. After years and years of applying a methodology using a 12-step formula-surrendering my fears on paper, followed by transcendental meditation, what’s been revealed to me is that there’s nothing to prove to anyone. There are no rules in this world, only the ones that my controlling brain tries to impose. Go back to your corner and come out lighting.
I no longer can live comfortably with just being a product of the past-I have to have it removed-the fabrication, the fears about it. Most of the time I no longer think that I have to try to justify my existence. I don’t regret a thing and love my dad who always did the best he could. No one is to blame for anything. Everyone is just a product of the past until they can clear it away.
SEAMUS
I really didn’t know who this man, my dad, was. I’d seen him in the house and remember wondering what he was doing there. The next heavyweight champion of the world was a painfully introverted, fat, freckle faced kid and being the champ, was going to take care of everything-I mean everything. I believed it all through my childhood, into my twenties; I still believe it. It was just going to occur. So I really didn’t have to worry about money or an education or anything really. THE CHAMP -it’s just a knowing that can’t be explained-and doesn’t need explaining to seasoned fighters.
I didn’t get suicidal until my family left Birmingham, England and moved back to Ireland. Jim, my dad always found work and made plenty of money in England but Ireland was bleak and with 8 children to feed, times were rough. His obsession-boxing, and my brother John and becoming world champions, kept him going. When your obsession involves other people, the relentless drive can hurt.
Enfield, where we lived was a 4 bar, 5 stores, 3 petrol stations little village. My first job was at Jimmy Gorry’s Shell Petrol Station. I filled the huge cattle lorrys with diesel-the same vehicles that I later considered jumping in front of. Jimmy would nab me on the way home from school and I’d be stuck there until he returned from the bar.
Jim (my dad) started Enfield Boxing Club. It’s first location was in a building behind the Shell station. He was the trainer and my brother John and I were his main students. Within a few years we had one of the best clubs on the east coast of Ireland. At 13 I won my first national title at the Parkway Hotel in Limerick-along with another Enfield boy, Ben Gillespie. I went on to win 4 national titles, losing twice in the finals and at 18 was invited to box with a Mayo team in Chicago-where my dad stayed and took up residence. No dad at home.
I was free. No monster to worry about, looming, controlling every move, commenting on everything I did or tried to do. I lost 3 fights in a row. That had never happened before. I had no reason to make an effort to win because there was no one to answer to. I was free-I thought. I’d never experienced that before. I loved it. Especially the freedom to drink. Go back to your corner and come out fighting.
When I graduated secondary school, the Irish equivalent of High School, I just assumed I’d go to college. But that required money. It was a huge shock after graduation when I found myself at Leaf Chewing Gum Factory, across the street from the girls high school where my sister’s went. I worked in the warehouse with Mick O’Neil, Seamie Hynes, Willie Terrell, Paddy O’Dowd, Dessie, Bernie Tallon and Tom Lennan. First time getting a paycheck-I loved it.
Pay day, Thursday’s, Anthony Ford, Paddy O’Dowd and I cashed our checks at the bank and went next door to O’Keefe’s for a few drinks-it was the payoff for having to be in this world and endure this life. I experienced joy sitting at the bar and being transported to heaven.
Back at Leaf-Tom hadn’t heard that I was a champion boxer and wouldn’t stop antagonizing me, so one day when we were stacking boxes 50 feet up in the rafters, he did it again-so I grabbed him by the throat, and dangled him over the edge, threatening to drop him onto the concrete below. Sorry Tom. Almost everyone is suffering. Go back to your corner and come out fighting.
When boxing tragically ended for me with a criminal pummeling after a head butt from a fighter named Jessie S and an ill-informed trainer Joe F., a yearning for the seeming ultimate freedom returned-suicide. Two days after the fight, laying on a bed in an apartment on West 75th street, NY, NY., I wanted to end it all. I’d tried with pills when I was 21, in Brooklyn. I was then 28, having been almost beaten to death-fighting the last 5 rounds in a black-out. Because some creep had obviously perfected using head butts to disable his opponents. He disabled me. From becoming the next champ to another brain damaged washed-up pug in one fight. But I had alcohol and now I could drink like I wanted to.
I just saw Michael Bentt’s episode of Losers on Netflix so I feel okay revealing what Joe Fariello who trained 10 world champions said after training me for 6 months, “Right now, you are the best cruiserweight in the world”, Joe wasn’t the complimentary type. I just wish he was aware of the condition of over-training. Go back to your corner and come out fighting.
Every time I work out or go for a run the thought is still there that I can become the champ. I forget the terror and life and death seriousness that boxing is. I guess I sometimes still think that I need to prove something to somebody, justify my existence. After years and years of applying a methodology using a 12-step formula-surrendering my fears on paper, followed by transcendental meditation, what’s been revealed to me is that there’s nothing to prove to anyone. There are no rules in this world, only the ones that my controlling brain tries to impose. Go back to your corner and come out lighting.
I no longer can live comfortably with just being a product of the past-I have to have it removed-the fabrication, the fears about it. Most of the time I no longer think that I have to try to justify my existence. I don’t regret a thing and love my dad who always did the best he could. No one is to blame for anything. Everyone is just a product of the past until they can clear it away.
SEAMUS