John Duddy left Derry to become a professional boxer in New York. Now he is winning fans all over the city. As the middleweight prepares to defend his title, Ger Gilroy visits him in training on Long Island - and hears about the other John Duddy, the first victim of Bloody Sunday
Only ever visible in the half-light, what looks at first be a heavy-set figure beats a rhythm each morning and evening across Juniper Valley Park, in Queens. It's just a silhouette in the New York gloaming, moving at a pace too intent to be a casual jogger and too fast really to be someone heavy. It's John Duddy, wrapped in layer after layer to keep the sweat going, to keep shaving ounces from his weight. In the background the rise and fall of the skyline is pure Manhattan.
Duddy has been running these tracks for almost two years, interrupted by a seven-month blip in Derry. He's an unbeaten middleweight fighter taking on the world from the Irish Ropes Gym, in Far Rockaway, the subway's final stop at the end of Long Island. Morning brings a quick run from his town house, past giant cemeteries that contain, among others, the mobsters John Gotti and Lucky Luciano, and on to a few other local landmarks, including pubs where tickets for Duddy's bouts sell very well. As he points them out, it's clear that this is Duddy's neigbourhood now. He's as local as the A train.
Back in Derry the name Duddy is famous. John "Jack" Duddy died on Bloody Sunday, in January 1972. Official reports record that "Jack Duddy was killed by a single shot that passed through his upper chest from right to left and slightly forward. Four witnesses, Edward Daly, then a Catholic priest, Mrs Bonner, Mrs Duffy and Mr Tucker, all stated that Duddy was unarmed at the time he was shot and that he was running away from soldiers when he was shot. Three of these witnesses stated that they saw a soldier take deliberate aim at Duddy as he fled across the courtyard of Rossville Flats. Lord Widgery concluded that he was hit by a bullet meant for someone else. Jack Duddy was probably the first person to be shot dead on 'Bloody Sunday'."
Murray Sayle was the Sunday Times correspondent dispatched to find out what happened. His article never appeared, as it didn't tally with the official version of events. "At this point," he had written, "another shot rang out, and Jack Duddy, 17, a weaver in a Derry textile mill, fell dying in Chamberlain Street. A Catholic priest ran to him and, as Duddy's body was carried away, walked in front, waving a blood-stained white handkerchief." You know the image.
John Duddy is a boxer on a different continent and has decided that his story will be his alone. His name "is not that famous until people look into it", he says. "I'm here on my own, and New York is the best place in the world to learn how to be a professional fighter. That's what I'm here for."
He tends not to bring up Bloody Sunday, not to wear it like a badge. "It was never talked about. It's not that we're embarrassed about it or anything. My father was 12 when my uncle was shot. My father got into boxing through him, and I think I got into boxing because of my father, and that's where the connection stops. This is too hard a sport to be doing it for anyone else bar yourself.
"My family and the families of the other victims fought hard over the years; they've been working tirelessly for the tribunal; and my father backed it but was never involved in it. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon. I wouldn't want to insult my family and start saying, Oh, I'm this and I'm that. That was my uncle, and I'm proud to say that."
The sense that Duddy is re-creating himself is overwhelming. As an amateur he won 100 of his 130 fights, but in the end he burned out. His style as a professional boxer is entirely different from what it used to be; he also talks of the better coaching he's getting and about how he's changed, too. He's driven now. Duddy has turned from an amateur going nowhere to a puncher who's causing a stir.
Rich O'Brien of Sports Illustrated magazine says: "Is he ready for the likes of Jermain Taylor or Bernard Hopkins or Winky Wright? Not yet. He doesn't have the quickest hands in the world, and he still tends to stand up too straight and come in too directly, and thus he gets hit too much, although it doesn't seem to faze him. But I get the sense that Duddy recognises how much, and what, he has to learn. He's got the right attitude and he's in the right place to do it. He's also a tremendously personable and attractive young man who clearly has a gift for exciting a crowd - even non-Irish ones."
Duddy's time back in Ireland was forced on him after some immigration trouble, when it emerged during a trip back to Derry that he'd overstayed a previous US visa. Two fruitless immigration interviews in Belfast led to a period of desperation. "That's the times and the way life is. I was wrongly advised and did overstay. If you ever do this again, they were letting me know, we're not going to let you back in. It was my worst and best experience."
What did he do back at home? "Work. Drank. Cried. No sleep. I was working three or four jobs to keep busy. I was a lifeguard in my old leisure centre, a postman and a bouncer, and I started running triathlons just to keep my head straight. When I went up to the gym back home it broke my heart. I'm not coming back, no backwards step. So I did nothing, but I haven't lifted my head up since I got back. Whether I like it or not I'm just listening to Harry Keitt. No matter how tired I am I still listen."
Keitt is Duddy's trainer - and, as it happens, the star of On the Ropes, an Oscar-nominated documentary from 1999 that could be described as a boxing version of Hoop Dreams with none of the NBA glamour. The story of Keitt's progress, from being a sparring partner of Muhammad Ali though struggling with booze, homelessness and time in prison, adds weight to his words. He's on his fighters' side, and he's training the man within as well as the boxer without.
The gym they spend their days in is in an area once known as the Irish Riviera. It's not a place you'd holiday, though. Tower blocks reach for the clouds, and the only work is in fast-food outlets and tyre shops. Similarly sized blocks on the Upper East Side have marble halls, doormen, elevator operators and guys to walk residents' dogs. Some of them probably get the A train back to Far Rockaway every evening, after taking off their uniforms and leaving the buildings through the side doors. McLoughlin lives among them. It's not for glamour, not for money, just for boxing. He's at the gym each morning, from 7am until lunchtime, and back each evening, until closing.
Late last year Duddy became the first boxer to sell out Hammerstein Ballroom, in Manhattan, when 1,700 fans came to see him fight Bryon Mackie, a Canadian middleweight who had won 25 of his 37 fights, against Duddy's 12 out of 12.
Ringside that night were Ali's biographer Thomas Hauser, who has long been smitten with Duddy's style; George Kimball, of this newspaper; O'Brien, of Sports Illustrated; and the legendary boxer Roberto Duran.
After the fight there was a scrum. "Gee, I went to the fight and a fight broke out," said the ring announcer, who hadn't looked so exercised since he was helping the ring-card girls - decked out in string bikinis in shades of green, for the old country - negotiate the ropes in their high heels. At the centre of the scrum was Duddy, drinking in the moment, sweating but unbloodied after a brilliant, devastating victory that had given him his 13th win and 12th knockout.
At an impromptu post-match press conference Duddy analysed his own strengths and weaknesses and those of his opponent. He also described the match in detail. He could talk, he could fight and he was beginning to inspire devotion from the Irish in America.
One fan was drunkenly asking journalists if Duddy had said hello; another was desperately trying to hug him - which meant fighting off a burly security guard and stopping his beer from spilling. The beer went, Duddylaughed and the security guard loosened up. The crowd dispersed quickly, sated for another night by Derry's newest hero.
It was an atmosphere that Duddy is in no hurry to leave behind. "You're very lucky back home to have your job, your house, your car and your family," he says. "It's a great place to live, but there's very few jobs that let you get that sense of contentment. I had friends at home who were happy to go to the factory until Friday and then to go to the bar for the weekend. But I thought: There has to be more than this. I never gave too much care for school, because I wanted to be a boxer and they wouldn't listen. I'm kind of happy that I stuck by my guns."
He's smiling now. "My friends have gone through that stage, and they went back to school and they're doing well for themselves. They finally realised they had to change - said to themselves they weren't going to piss their lives away. Once I saw them do that - and there I was living at home, amateur boxer, 23 years of age, tapping my da up for cash occasionally - I realised something had to give."
Duddy shows no signs of stopping pushing. On the eve of St Patrick's Day, Duddy became only the second boxer to sell out the Theatre, a 5,000-seat arena at Madison Square Garden, for his bout against Shelby Pudwill. The night ended with another victory - and with it came the World Boxing Council Continental Americas title. It is an obscure prize. "But," as Hauser says, "if Duddy stays on course, more credible belts will follow." Eight weeks from now, on June 10th, Duddy will head back to Madison Square Garden, to defend his title for the first time. Until then, it's back to pounding the paths of Juniper Valley Park.
Ger Gilroy is head of sport at NewsTalk 106