BOXING INTERVIEW:Seán Mannion tells KEITH DUGGANabout his boxing journey from Connemara to Madison Square Garden and back again
ON THE blackest night imaginable in south Connemara, Seán Mannion sits on a wooden stairway leading up to the only boxing ring that matters now. High on the whitewashed wall behind him is an oil portrait of Mike Flaherty, the local man who first taught Mannion how to hold his fists and who watched the improbable rise of his protégé from the innumerable ranks of amateur hopefuls to a transcendent night in Manhattan when he fought Mike McCallum for the world light middleweight title.
Gusts of rain move across the dark lake and drum the windows of Pearse College where inside Rosmuc kids are jumping rope and shadow boxing and pounding the heavy-bag.
Later, Mannion will head over to Leenane with some friends for a card drive but Thursday night is a training night and it kills him to miss it. It has all come full circle for the Rosmuc man, the gallant contender who, for the nameless exiles of the 1980s, became a fleshed out version of the American Dream when he rose from the dust of the Boston construction sites to stake his claim for sporting immortality in the most evocative arena of them all, Madison Square Garden.
This was late October in 1984, when Ireland had precious little to shout about. RTÉ broadcast the fight live at 2am. The 22,000 people in the arena were predominately Irish. Famously, Mannion's green shorts were emblazoned with the legend ROSMUC: he turned down lucrative advertising invitations to acknowledge his home place.
He went 15 honest rounds with McCallum, absorbing heavy punishment and winning public admiration for an example of bravery that seemed drawn from the long lineage of battling Irishmen who made reputations for themselves in America.
McCallum was declared champion and went on to prove himself a potent and brilliant pound-for-pound classicist who never quite got the fame his talent deserved. Mannion boxed for another seven years and had plenty of good wins but never again got the elusive shot at a title belt. A few clippings and mementoes of that fast, electric night, when Connemara decamped to Midtown, are taped to the wall and although Mannion is in terrific form and talks about his long career with ease, his gentle features cloud when he is asked if the memories of the fight revisit him much now.
"It did bother me for a long time," he says in a voice that never lost the local lilt.
"And it still haunts me. I feel like I let down my country and my people. They had faith in me to win it and I didn't. That was one of the reasons I trained so hard. I feel like I let them down even though plenty have told me otherwise. Now, I couldn't have boxed any better because McCallum was a way better boxer. He was a three-time world champion and people rate him as one of the best ever pound for pound fighters. He never got the recognition that [ Thomas] Hearns or [ Marvin] Hagler or [ Ray] Leonard got. But they didn't want to fight him - Goody Petronelli [ Hagler's trainer] told me that just a few weeks ago.
"And he said: 'If I had managed you, you wouldn't have fought him either. You would have got a title shot but not against Mike.' I just feel like I should have found a way to win that fight."
Mannion was 28 years old that night in the Garden and had earned his stripes the hard way. He had been, by his own admission, a talented but inconsistent Irish amateur with over 180 bouts on his record.
He resisted the obvious path of following his brothers to America after leaving school. He worked for a time in Rathcairn in Meath, a place with Rosmuc connections dating back to 1935, when Eamon DeValera's administration, in an attempt to spread the Irish language, enticed Connemara people into resettling elsewhere.
He was blissfully happy there but returned home to work in the local factory when his father, Pat, became ill. Boxing was his lifeblood. Rosmuc can be paradise in summer but it was the black winters that Mannion yearned for because they meant boxing.
But work was scarce and after his father's funeral, he joined Tommy and Colm in Boston. His passion for boxing might have easily dwindled in the long, cold days on the building sights and the raucous Friday night dances in Forest Hills, where the Dorchester crowd would gather to hear Noel Henry and Mike Glynn, Ray Lynam and other troubadours who were the superstars of the Irish ex-patriot social club scene. Mannion was in his early twenties and just caught the waning days of those massive dancehall extravaganzas. And, to confound the Wild-Irish-Rover myths that would plague him as a boxer, he did not even drink then.
That came later. But in the early days, it was no trouble to lay brick from eight to five and then address the heavy-bag. Mannion came under the tutelage of Jimmy Connolly, an Irish-American who owned a gym in south Boston and knew how to get fights.
On the rise, he fought all over the United States. He took on Roger Leonard, the older brother of Sugar Ray, in just his third professional bout. "He beat the hell out of me," Mannion chuckles. "He was good."
He was supposed to be the fall guy in a New Jersey fight against Mike "Nino" Gonzales, whose previous fight had been against Roberto Duran. "The Jersey crowd gave me seven rounds. I beat him in 10."
He came up against a prospect from the tough shoe-making town of Brockton called Jimmy Corkum and duly beat him.
In Atlantic City, he gave perhaps the most complete performance of his professional career against Rocky Fratto, then the United States light middleweight champion.
In 1983, he was in serious trouble against a journeyman New Yorker named Danny Chapman in front of a noisy crowd at the Cape Cod Coliseum. The fight was being broadcast across the country and suddenly the entire arena went pitch black. It took Mannion a split second to realise he hadn't been knocked out. "The lights went out. There was thunder in the air and there was a power cut in the area. I got broken ribs and a collapsed lung in the ring that night.
"It was painful, I can tell you. Then the electricity came back on and I managed to win. And afterwards, people were saying that someone from Galway had pulled the plug on the lights to give me a rest. I mean. I was training regularly down there in the Coliseum and I didn't know there the plug was, never mind someone in the crowd."
There are times, in the sublime peacefulness of Rosmuc, when incidents from those flashbulb nights come back to him. But even when he began storming up the light-middleweight rankings, Mannion persevered with the ideal that he was a Rosmuc fighter.
"It's funny, I think more about the sparring around here than the competitions that I fought in. I am not saying this because I am from Roscmuc. I fought boxers all over the world. I fought five world champions. But the hardest punches I ever took were from a guy I sparred with, Martin Grealish. Out in the garden in the summer, we would go a round at a time for an hour. He hurt me more than anyone. Another thing I can say is that the smartest guy I ever saw in the ring was Michael Newell from here.
"And the guy that hit me with the best left jab that I couldn't get away from was from Roscmuc: my own brother, Colm. I would say, 'hit me with that jab again and I'll kill you.' He'd say 'don't hit me in the stomach' - because he had probably been out drinking the night before. But Lord have mercy, he died a year ago at the age of 48. And we were very close.
"Martin Nee was from here, an incredibly hard boxer. And then, one of the toughest boxers I ever met was from Rosmuc, Tom Conroy. He is out in Boston now. I sparred with him with eight-ounce gloves. Mike Flaherty used to say, Lord have mercy on him, 'Take it easy tonight.' And we did - for about half a minute. Then we opened. And no matter how many I landed, he would never go down."
Never go down. That was the spirit that Mannion took into Madison Square Garden on that autumn night against McCallum. He ignored the lights and the grandeur, the plush purple seating and the cameras, convincing himself that he was simply in the old ring at the disused knitting factory back home in Rosmuc.
The arena was green hued and emotional. His sister, Barbara, sang the Irish anthem and there was a huge surge of expectation.
"I told myself it was just three-four rounders in the amateur fight. I trained so hard for that fight. I got an injury in training. I was 23 days in the Catskills and got cut. I had no sparring. Now Jimmy should have postponed that fight. But he wouldn't hear of it. That is one regret I have. I could have given him a better fight. I don't let these kids into a county championship now without sparring.
"And of course, people would see me hanging in the bars back then too. But when I was training, I wouldn't drink. The story would be put out and it was what people loved to hear it. I never gave a damn. Look it, most of my fights went the distance. I went 15 with McCallum. You had to be in shape for that!"
From the opening bell, McCallum was able unlock his defence and landed punches that hurt, but Mannion was too proud and too brave to even contemplate quitting.
"In the 13th round of the fight veteran referee Tony Perez appeared inclined to stop the fight but was persuaded by how badly Mannion wanted to salvage the measure of pride that lasting the length of the title bout on his feet would bring," wrote George Kimball on that Monday morning. "When the results of the one-sided affair were announced, two of the voting judges gave Mannion one round while a third didn't give him any, but as Mannion, his face puffed and bloodied, made his way from the arena to the dressingroom he was greeted by a standing round of applause, the crowds' appreciation of his determination."
Leaving the auditorium, Mannion embraced a friend and said: "He was too much for me tonight but I did my best." They spent a late night in Glocca Morra, a Connemara bar in Manhattan that has since disappeared, for a party that was half Irish-Wake, half Roaring Twenties. "All of Galway was in there." Mike Flaherty, who had flown over to see Mannion's night of glory, sang a traditional song at one point and dawn was breaking over the skyscrapers by the time they began walking back to the hotel, the long night ended.
In all, Mannion won 42 of his 57 fights. He and McCallum have met just once since that night, at an event a few years ago in London. It was only then that Mannion told his old adversary he hadn't been able to spar for two weeks before the fight because of his cut.
"Did you know about my ribs?" McCallum asked. And when Mannion looked surprised, the Jamaican laughed and said "Man, I'm glad you didn't."
"And when he said that, I had a very clear picture of early in the first round and I threw a body punch and he kind of winced. But I didn't know to keep working it. I probably should have done."
In retrospect, he knows a few things ought to have been done differently. Jimmy Connolly may have managed him more with paternal fondness than expertise.
"Seán could easily become a name 'opponent' for guys that will figure he is easy to hit," he told reporters that night in New York.
"And I won't allow that to happen. I love the kid too much."
A $250,000 deal for a fight with Ray Leonard fell through and for the next few years, Mannion fought at a respectable level but just outside the storied light-middleweight rivalry that revolved around Leonard, Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran in a shining period for boxing.
When Mannion was badly out-boxed by Errol Christie in London in 1992, he understood it was time to quit. He got out with a clear conscience and, more importantly, a clear mind. Now, he has a trove of experience to call upon as a trainer. He trains Keith Cresham, who fights on the undercard for Bernard Dunne's fight tonight and later he will work Michael Sweeney's corner.
"Young Cresham reminds of the way I used to be myself. And he is looking real good now. He is in real shape and working hard. And he speaks our native language too! A Gaelic speaker."
Standing in the doorway, Seán Mannion's card partner is getting anxious. The session is due to start at 9pm sharp and it is no night for rallying.
Before he leaves though, I ask Mannion about his last ever fight. It was a low-key bout in the Boston suburb of Chelsea on St Patrick's Day of 1993 against a Texan named Terence Walker, who had a brief and unhappy stint in the professional game. Mannion won easily. A few days later, he was in a Dorchester bar belonging to Mickey Dwyer, who managed him in his last years.
"This was April 6th," Mannion remembers. "Mickey walked in holding my gym bag and he handed it to me. 'Any other fights, Mickey?' I asked.
'No Seán. You had a great career. Call it quits.'
"That was it. We shook hands and I was retired. Myself and Colm went up to another bar then, the Twelve Bends. My nephew was playing darts there and he came up to me and said 'sorry about your trainer'.
"It took me a few minutes to understand what he meant. It turned out that Mike Flaherty had died at home in Rosmuc not two hours after I retired. It gives me the shivers, sometimes, to think of the way we started here together and then, on the same day, it finished."
He turns back to look at the portrait of Mike Flaherty, a man who looks more like Yeats's idealised Fisherman than the typical boxing corner-men like Angelo Dundee, who counselled Mannion in his later years.
"That man taught me everything I know about boxing," Seán Mannion says passionately, taking a last look at the portrait of his old coach. Now it is his turn to pass on those skills.
It was still raining hard as we stood in the doorway facing the darkened countryside of Rosmuc, a wild landscape that seems like a million miles away from the lights and voltage of Manhattan - except for that everlasting night when Pat Mannion's son climbed it to the ring and gave it everything he had.
