A week ago this morning Al Valenti was on the phone to me at my London hotel. "Do you know anyone who plays the Irish pipes?" he asked. Of course I did. Why?
There would only be £100 in it, Irish Mickey Ward's Boston-based promoter told me, but the perks would include a ringside seat and television exposure in over 100 countries. All that would be required of Finbar Furey, or a suitable replacement, would be to march into the Kensington Olympia's Grand Hall ahead of Ward, leading him into the ring with an appropriate battle hymn.
"I don't think so," I told Al.
Why not? Maybe he could stretch it to £150.
"That's not the problem," I told him. "Have you ever seen a set of uilleann pipes? You can't exactly march while you're playing them."
In the end, Irish Mickey settled on more generic rock-and-roll entrance music. His adversary, WBU light welterweight champion Shea ("The Shamrock Express") Neary, came in to the strains of Shane McGowan and Ronnie Drew alternating choruses in their rendition of The Irish Rover."
With last Saturday's Prince Naseem Hamed-Vuyani Bungu featherweight title fight taking place six days in advance of St Patrick's Day it had been determined, both for domestic consumption and for the convenience of HBO, which was televising the show to the US, to provide an "all-Irish" match-up as the co-feature.
That Irish Mickey hailed from the French-Canadian mill-town of Lowell, Massachusetts, and that "The Shamrock Express" was a former infantryman in the King's Regiment from Liverpool seemed of small consequence to the promoters.
When Mickey Ward embarked on his professional career 15 years ago he was shortly hailed by Teddy Brenner, the legendary Madison Square Garden matchmaker who died early this year, as "the best fighter to come out of New England since Marvin Hagler," and Ward did little to diminish that high praise when he won his first 14 fights, 11 of them inside the distance.
Irish Mickey's birthplace, which was also the hometown of a one-time Lowell Sun sportswriter, Jack Kerouac, has traditionally spawned useful boxers, among them Ward's brother Dickie Eklund, who in 1978 became first man to knock down Sugar Ray Leonard, and who a year later travelled to London, where he narrowly lost a decision to Commonwealth champion Dave (Boy) Green.
The win earned Green a 1980 shot at Leonard, who had by then won the welterweight title, while Eklund's career disintegrated into a life of booze, drugs, and crime. For the past 15 years he has spent more time in the sneezer than on the street, and was only released two months ago from a Massachusetts halfway house after serving a sentence for armed robbery.
Since his release on parole, Eklund has become his brother's trainer, chief second, and principal sparring partner, but early on in Mickey's career, Dickie had nearly ended it.
The way I've always heard the story, Eklund got into one of his traditional beefs with the local constabulary outside a Lowell pub when Mickey attempted to pull his brother from the fray. An overzealous cop threw Ward over a squad car and used a nightstick to break his left hand.
Despite numerous surgeries, Ward refractured the hand nearly every time he fought, and in 1991, having gone 7-7 in his next 14 fights, he retired. He spent three years working as a prison guard and as a labourer before making a comeback six years ago at the age of 28.
He had lost only twice since - once when he was stopped on cuts in a challenge for Vince Phillips' IBF junior welterweight title, and a points decision to Zab Judah, the current holder of the same belt.
It was a crowd-pleasing scrap from the outset. According to CompuBox statistics, Ward and Neary were on a world-record pace, having exchanged over 1,200 punches in the eight rounds it lasted, and while Neary had the advantage in the early going, he was always taking a lot of punishment from Ward's pulverising left hook.
The cumulative effect took its toll by attrition. In the eighth round Ward unleashed a devastating combination - a left hook to the body followed by a crushing left upper-cut - that sent Neary tumbling down. "The Shamrock Express" struggled to his feet the first time, but when Ward leapt upon him he tagged him with a left to the chin. Neary spun furiously backward across the ring before landing flat on his back. Mickey Vann, the referee from Leeds, immediately ended the bout.
Irish Mickey, now 35-9, was paid a career-high $100,000 for the performance, and along with the dubious WBU belt, earned himself another pay day, most likely against former champion Arturo Gatti on HBO later this year. Neary is now 22-1, but having been thoroughly unmasked, is reportedly considering retirement.
As for the other featured bout on last weekend's London card, God knows there are enough arrogant and snotty little show-offs boxing on our own side of the Atlantic. Why HBO wanted to go and spend millions signing Naseem Hamed to a multi-year contract remains one of the great mysteries of our time.
It has, in any case, been widely proclaimed that the boxer formerly known as The Prince silenced his critics with his perfunctory knockout of Bungu. Suffice it to say that he has not silenced this one. This was a mismatch from the moment the match was made. Bungu had never before fought as a featherweight and had not fought at all in 13 months.
Hamed toyed with Bungu for two more rounds and then, appearing to have become bored with the exercise, stood him up with a right-handed jab and then put his lights out with a straight left. Although Bungu rolled over while Joe Cortez was counting to 10, there was never any danger he might regain his feet. Naseem was borne from it on a sea of his wildly cheering supporters.
Shea Neary. Prince Naseem. My, these Brits are easily deluded.
