Hard to believe it's 20 years since Barry McGuigan's Icarus-like fall in a car park in Las Vegas, writes Frank McNally. All right, the comparison is overstating it a bit. Unlike the legendary Greek, McGuigan was able to get back on his feet afterwards. He even made a boxing comeback until his skin, softened by a two-year lay-off, started cutting up and forced him to quit for good.
In contrast to many fighters, he also still had enough of his wits left to master a new profession as a media commentator. But that fateful hour in June 1986 effectively ended a career that had transfixed two nations. And just as with Icarus, McGuigan's mistake was getting too close to the sun.
The denouement was terrible to witness. Late in the fight, between rounds, he sat slumped in his corner, dazed and exhausted, the trainer tugging at his ears to try and keep him alert. His early lead had long disappeared in the 110-degree heat of the Caesar's Palace parking lot. The man in the opposite corner, Texan Steve Cruz, was supposed to be a mere journeyman, but his economical style was as suited to the conditions as McGuigan's flailing attack was not. Floored in the 10th round and twice in the 15th, the Irishman was heroic just to finish the fight. Afterwards he was taken to hospital - vomiting, severely dehydrated, and a former world champion.
The trauma for his fans was only exacerbated by the subsequent break-up with manager Barney Eastwood. McGuigan's post-fight habit of thanking everyone, especially "Mr Eastwood", was a source of national amusement. The late Dermot Morgan lampooned it in a hit song. But so inseparable were the boxer and the bookmaker that when the relationship disintegrated into a bitter court case, it was just embarrassing. The split of Brad and Jen, or even Paul and Heather, was nothing by comparison.
It was a combination of naive charm and shrewd management that helped McGuigan grip Ireland - and to a lesser but still large extent Britain - like no other boxer of modern times. Long before British mobile phone companies took to claiming Clones was in the UK, the town's favourite son used its proximity to the Border to roam the boxing networks. He won a gold medal for Northern Ireland in the Commonwealth Games and, after turning professional, used the British title as a stepping stone to bigger things.
But at a time when the North's status was being disputed with bombs and bullets, McGuigan's boxing career was a masterpiece of ambiguity. That he was the Catholic half of a mixed marriage helped. Untroubled by the contradiction, he fought under a flag of peace, which featured the colours of the UN (and, if anyone was asking, Monaghan). Political anthems were banned, wherever the fight was held. Instead, the boxer's father - a fine singer who represented Ireland in Eurovision - would perform Danny Boy, to the enthusiastic if not always tuneful accompaniment of Catholics and Protestants alike.
The theme from Rocky and the chant "Here we go, here we go, here we go" were the only other musical accompaniments. And like all brilliant public relations campaigns, this one even had a slogan. "Leave the fighting to Barry," boxing fans were told.
With the exception of his mother (who never watched), everyone in Ireland was a boxing fan in the mid-1980s, when McGuigan's career gathered pace. It had its setbacks, the worst by far when one of his opponents, Young Ali, fell into a coma after a knockout and never recovered. If nothing else, that should have put later events, including Caesar's Palace, into perspective. In the boxing ring, losing a title is not the worst thing that can happen to you.
McGuigan's hour of glory came during another June - 1985 - at London's Loftus Road football ground. Some 27,000 fans packed the venue, few of them there to cheer the ageing champion, Eusebio Pedroza, for whom you had to feel sympathy. He would have been prepared for most tactics. But 27,000 fans singing Danny Boy was a new one, not in the textbooks. Pedroza was several points behind before the fight even started.
The Clones Cyclone had exactly a year at the top. Or at one of the tops, since boxing was already a three-ring circus at the time and there were competing champions. The Irishman was arguably not the best of them. But there was plenty of scope for lucrative confusion on the issue before any unification bouts were entered into, or before the champion left his safe havens of Dublin, London, and - safest of all - Belfast. After two successful defences, unfortunately, the world beckoned. And in boxing the world was America.
Maybe had he fought in Madison Square Garden, rather than the Nevada desert, the story would be different. Maybe he had already fulfilled his potential anyway. He was a very brave, technically limited boxer who, in winning a world title and later joining the sport's Hall of Fame, went further than many who were more talented. But this was no consolation in June 1986. In a depressed Ireland, his fate seemed like a moral for the times. If you flew too high, sooner or later, your wings would melt.