Last bell sounds for lion-hearted Finnegan

AMERICA AT LARGE:The British boxer proved his bravery in the ring before, unusually, becoming a gifted artist, writes George Kimball

HE HAD the courage of a lion and the tender skin of a newborn baby, not a great combination for a man who tries to earn his living in the boxing ring. By the time he was in his 30s his face looked as if he had spent his adult years trying to shave with broken beer bottles, and when he described himself a "painter", they sometimes smiled tolerantly and asked "houses, or interiors?"

Kevin Finnegan, who died a couple of weeks ago, was an accomplished artist whose work hangs in the National Portrait Gallery at Trafalgar Square. And while no one who saw him box would describe him as an artist in the ring, he was for a decade among the world's top middleweights, and won the British and European titles twice apiece.

I hadn't seen him for ages, and when, a few days ago, I learned of his death, at 60, I found myself thinking back not to his 47 professional fights but to a wild and misspent weekend over a quarter of a century ago.

Finnegan had hung up his gloves and become a full-time painter two years earlier, but when Tony Sibson challenged Marvelous Marvin Hagler for the world middleweight title in Worcester, Massachusetts, he knew he had to be there.

Intimately acquainted with both men, he had battled Hagler in two brutal wars in 1978, losing both times on cuts, and a year later had been the last man to defeat Sibson, whom he outpointed in a British title fight at the Royal Albert Hall.

On Friday, February 11th, 1983, at the Worcester Centrum, Hagler stopped Sibson in the sixth round of a one-sided bout. A massive storm dumped over two feet of snow on Worcester that night, turning the journey from the arena back to the Marriott Hotel a few hundred yards away into a Polar expedition.

With the roads all closed, hundreds of homeless fight fans wandered through the lobbies and hallways of the hotel, and our arrival there coincided with closing time at the bar. Two former world champions, Tony DeMarco and Vito Antuofermo, sat on the floor, propped up against the wall, and I invited them, along with Kevin Finnegan, back to my room for a drink.

We soon exhausted the supply on hand, but Antuofermo was working for a beer distributor, and remembered he had a case in the boot of his car. An intrepid outdoorsman was dispatched to retrieve it, and by the time that was gone, much of the company, with no place else to go, nodded off to sleep right where they were.

By the next morning it was clear nobody was getting out of Worcester anytime soon. We stayed for another night, and by mid-morning Finnegan and I set off to obtain emergency supplies, negotiating four-foot snowdrifts as we wandered through the streets until we miraculously came upon an open liquor store, and the round-the-clock party shortly resumed.

It was Sunday evening before the roads had sufficiently cleared, and we decided to risk the drive to Boston. Kevin and another stranded British boxer, former world light-middleweight champion Maurice Hope, piled into my car. They vaguely hoped to reach the airport in time to catch a flight back to London, but we wound up making a refuelling stop at an Irish pub, the Black Rose in Quincy Market, and the next thing I knew Finnegan and Hope were up on the stage with the band, being introduced to the crowd and then gleefully participating in a sing-along. They eventually did get back to London, but it was about a week later.

Five years earlier, Finnegan had been in Boston for the first of his only two fights in the US, both against Hagler. The first was postponed twice but eventually took place on March 4th.

The audience of 5,300 at the old Boston Garden that night bore witness to a brutal war. Referee Billy Connelly didn't break a single clinch for the eight rounds, and when the end came, even though he was by then blinded in both eyes by his blood, Finnegan was still hammering away at Hagler, giving as good as he got.

By the time Dr Nathan Shapiro (at Mickey Duff's behest) ordered Connelly to stop it just after the bell had signalled the ninth, Finnegan was bleeding from cuts above both eyes, another in the middle of his forehead and a severe gash to his left cheekbone. The crowd, though pro-Hagler, saluted Finnegan's gallant display with a heartfelt ovation.

"I'd heard Hagler was as strong as a horse, but he wasn't all that strong," said Finnegan that night. "I would have knocked him out if I could have seen him, but the blood kept getting in my eyes."

Finnegan, who had rocked Hagler on several occasions, was trailing on the scorecards, albeit narrowly so. A rematch was scheduled for two months later, with a near-identical result: this time the bloodied Englishman was rescued in the seventh.

The two Hagler fights occurred in what appeared at the time to be the nadir of Finnegan's boxing career, a stretch in which he lost five of six bouts, but four of the losses came against men (Hagler, Alan Minter and Ayub Kalule) who would go on to win world titles, and the fifth was to South African Charlie Weir, who would go on to fight for a world title.

And Finnegan would go on to reclaim both his British (vs Sibson, in 1979) and European (vs Gratien Tonna in 1980) titles after that.

He retired after losing his Euro title to Matteo Salvemini in San Remo in 1980. His final, 37-11-1 career ledger included three narrow losses, all over 15 rounds, to Minter, and memorable wins over the likes of Bunny Sterling, Jean-Claude Bouttier, Sibson and Tonna. But the crowning moment of his career may have been that first Boston fight against Hagler.

Back then regulations weren't what they are now, and it later came to light that Finnegan had suffered a detached retina, probably in the first fight against Hagler, but he soldiered on for almost two years after that.

Determined to pursue his dream, Kevin moved to Spain in the mid-1980s to paint full time, intending to support himself by running a pub he opened in Marbella. But he turned out to be his own best customer, and by the time he shut the bar down five years later he had gone through a quarter of a million pounds and his marriage was in tatters.

He continued to paint, and even came to look the part of the bohemian artist. (He had reportedly taken to walking the streets of Hillington affecting a beret that made him look like an defector from the Rive Gauche.) He had been living there in Middlesex, with only his dog for company, when he died of a heart attack a couple of weeks ago.

The date of his demise was fixed as October 23rd, but that's really only a guess. Neighbours who hadn't seen him or the dog about for several days alerted police, who broke down the door and found him dead on the kitchen floor.

When I heard the news, I thought back to that evening in Worcester. Soon after he had disposed of Sibson at the Centrum that night, Marvelous Marvin Hagler was answering a question at the post-fight press conference when he spotted Finnegan in the crowd. Surprised, the middleweight world champion paused in mid-sentence and pointed to his old rival.

"Right there," he said "is the toughest man I ever fought."