Fond memories of the Fighting Irish

Sideline Cut: In Manhattan on Thursday night, something of the spirit of the fighting Irish was raised. The Irish Arts Centre is located close to the water on West 51st street in the heart of the old Hell's Kitchen, the once- teeming tenement neighbourhood that is, like the rest of the island, edging ever closer to the chic uniformity and pleasantness which is slowly erasing all trace of the famed quarters of mischief and skulduggery.

Physically, though, the long redbrick streets, ghostly and bearing a twilit, 19th century feel in the early evening, must look the same as they did when the great Irish American boxers like Gene Tunney (born on 52nd street) and Harry Braddock (born on 48th) were raised.

Both of those boxers featured prominently in what was an unabashed celebration of the days when Irish names and characters loomed large in the boxing world and when fighting commanded a grip on the public imagination it can never have again.

As ever, the Fighting Irishmen talk was vying with numerous other attractions in the city. Just three blocks up the street, a large crowd stood in the light evening rain watching the filming of an episode of the television series Law and Order. A plain, dimly lit building was being used for the scene and passers-by stopped, people whispered and home time traffic was halted as bystanders - including a group of delighted nuns from a neighbouring convent - gathered to watch an acting scene that appeared to be taking place inside the building. It was tempting to invite the holy ladies down to the fight talk, where they would surely have encountered more drama and excitement. But then, like practically everybody else in the city, they had probably banked on saying their rosary early on this evening so they could enjoy and possibly cast some divine intervention on the Metz baseball team, who were playing against the Cardinals in Shea Stadium for a win-or-bust Game 7 showdown and a place in the World Series.

Baseball is probably alone in sport in having the power to still energise and inculcate a general sense of anticipation and giddiness in the great American cities. As a friend, whose day job making suds got him quality tickets to all three of the games in Shea Stadium noted, "it's like having the All-Ireland final four times in one week".

So given the interest and hype of the evening, a very healthy crowd showed up at the Irish Arts Centre to step back in time. In what is a fascinating exhibition of Irish-American boxing memorabilia, one display case drew most attention from the post-work crowd sipping wine and munching cheese squares. The organisers managed to transport Dan Donnelly's Arm as a centrepiece of what is a two-month celebration of Celtic boxing. Anyone who has ever visited the Hideout Pub in Kilcullen will probably have seen the gory and famous limb of the famous 19th century bare-knuckle champion.

For the record, the Dublin man was celebrated for his ferocious strength and bravery in competing in the savage Jack Broughton rules, culminating in a famous fight against George Cooper, the English champion, held in Kilcullen in 1815. The Irishman won in an 11th round knock-out and was feted as a national hero. But through hard living and the precarious existence of the day, Donnelly was dead just five years later and, hero or not, his body was violated by grave-robbers and taken on a macabre tour in its afterlife.

It was located in the home of a surgeon named Hall who agreed to return the body as long as he could have Dan Donnelly's famous arm as a keepsake. The severed limb was dipped in red lead, was brought to a medical college in Edinburgh, did several years with a travelling circus and eventually ended up back in Kilcullen. It has to be acknowledged that it is a fairly unusual memento but varnished and sinewy and astonishingly long and graceful, the sight is not offensive. And it was the star attraction of some serious artefacts, including a fur coat belonging to John L Sullivan, the bare-knuckle Bostonian who was the toast of America at the beginning of the last century.

Placed beside the lavish winter coat was a vintage hardback edition of Sullivan's autobiography, unbeatably entitled I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House, a reference to the Irish man's trademark boast whenever he headed into a saloon for drink - which was frequently.

Among the panel was Jay Tunney, son of the great Gene, who spoke very frankly and movingly about what it was like for him and his two brothers to grow up in the shadow of such a formidable sporting figure and man. Gene Tunney's two fights with Jack Dempsey have passed into legend, drawing million-dollar gates in the 1920s. While Dempsey, brought up in the toughest circumstances in a mining bolt-hole in Colorado, was portrayed as garrulous and loveable, Tunney was often derided for his introspective nature and his love of reading and was sometimes booed by the crowds, a fact that hurt him, according to his son.

But he was a remarkable man, an army man as well as a fighter and he guided his sons towards education rather than the fight game. As Jay Tunney, angular and greying and beautifully spoken, put it, his "was a hard act to follow and we haven't really tried to follow it at all". He first became aware of his father's national fame as an 11-year-old when the family went to see the Roy Rogers Rodeo at Madison Square Garden, where a spotlight was shone on "Dad" as he sat with his family. Afterwards, they were ushered through to meet Rogers, a hero to the younger Tunney but the entertainer was, of course, completely transfixed by the presence of a heavyweight champion.

Tunney never really saw his father box in the flesh but he recounted how, when with a group of friends, he saw his father happen upon a boxing speed ball and, in his suit, how he slowly began rotating his fists, gradually getting faster and faster until his hands became a blur.

"His eyes were blazing and I had not seen anything like it. And suddenly it stopped; this palpable silence followed. It was like he was apologising for having gotten so carried away. And I learned that he hadn't hit a bag for 17 years, since he retired. It was the first time I ever saw his physical prowess and I was shaken by its force."

It was while the audience watched black and white footage of the Dempsey-Tunney fights - which made several wince - and a rare few minutes of the 1897 fight between Jim Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons caught on nitrate film and the epochal 1919 fight between Dempsey and Jess Willard that the great Budd Schulberg walked in, having being delayed in the baseball traffic.

"At last," quipped George Kimball, the renowned boxing writer and weekly columnist from this parish: "Someone who actually covered the Dempsey-Willard fight."

Schulberg, sharp and sprightly at 93, talked about his early days when his father ran Paramount Pictures in Hollywood and fostered in his son a love of boxing that would produce the classic screenplay for On The Waterfront, the film about the blue-collar boxing hopeful Terry Molloy which was probably Marlon Brando's finest screen hour.

By the time the conversation ended, it was raining like it would do in the west of Ireland and the city was in thrall to the Metz. They lost to a home run in the ninth inning. Some prayers go unanswered.