America at Large: Irish Micky Ward never won a recognised world title, and lost 13 of his 51 professional bouts, but his dramatic rise from the depths of despair and an old-school, blood-and-guts fighting style provide such an inspirational tale that by the time he hung up his gloves at the conclusion of his jaw-dropping trilogy against Arturo Gatti, two Hollywood companies were locked in a battle to produce a film based on his life story, writes George Kimball.
And, hot on the heels of the film deal, an authorised biography, Irish Thunder: The hard life and times of Micky Ward, was commissioned to Boston television sportscaster Bob Halloran.
The film, starring Mark Wahlberg as Irish Micky, is due to begin production this year. The original plan had been for Matt Damon to portray Micky's crack-addled half-brother and sometime trainer Dickie Ecklund, but Damon dropped out and was replaced by Brad Pitt.
We haven't seen the Wahlberg/Pitt script, but here's hoping they do their homework better than did Halloran, whose book landed in shops last week. The saga of Micky Ward is such a great story it would be almost impossible to screw it up, but Irish Thunderis marred by a litany of factual errors and misspellings.
The product of a dysfunctional family, Ward grew up in the rough-and-tumble mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, where Jack Kerouac once covered the Golden Gloves for the Lowell Sun.
Shortly after he turned pro in 1985, he was described by the legendary matchmaker Teddy Brenner as "the best fighter to come out of New England since Marvin Hagler", and during his first 14 fights he did nothing to dispel that notion.
The first phase of Ward's career was hastened to its conclusion by a well-chronicled episode that occurred between his 13th and 14th wins. Ward was drinking peacefully at a seedy pub called the Cosmopolitan Cafe and was not even a participant in the brawl to which police were summoned that night. But when the cops became overzealous in subduing his elder brother, Micky intervened on Dickie's behalf.
Having already split his head open with a nightstick and handcuffed him, one policeman, having recognised Ward, broke his left hand with a large flashlight. Micky, who had just a few weeks earlier knocked out Kelly Koble on the epic Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler card in Las Vegas, was unable to box for several months.
He won his next fight, but then lost to Edwin Curet on a split decision. There followed more wins before things began to come off the rails. Repeatedly reinjuring the hand, Ward lost six of nine fights, and following his fourth loss in a row in 1991, he "retired" to work at paving roads.
Three years elapsed before Irish Micky laced on the gloves again, and in a decade filled with fits and starts, he re-established himself as the most crowd-pleasing boxer of his era. From 1994, he won nine in a row, including back-to-back victories of then unbeaten Louis Veader. In 1997 he was matched against 16-0 Mexican Alfonso Sanchez on the Oscar De La Hoya-Pernell Whitaker card in Las Vegas, and had lost the first five rounds before he unloaded a savage left hook to the body that left Sanchez crawling around the ring through the 10-count.
Later that year Ward earned his only fight for a world title, a Boston challenge to IBF junior welterweight champion Vince Phillips. Ward was badly cut over the eye early in the fight, which was halted after two rounds at the direction of the ringside physician, but the stoppage produced a mini-riot at the Roxy.
In 2000 Ward went to London and knocked out the previously unbeaten Shea Neary. Having already hooked up with manager Sal LoNano, Team Ward then joined forces with then-nascent promoter Lou DiBella, setting the stage for the three Gatti fights that closed out Ward's career. Ward-Gatti I, at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, was a win for Micky, and was unanimously acclaimed 2002's Fight of the Year. He lost the two rematches in Atlantic City but the three fights with Gatti earned Micky over $4 million in purses - not bad for a kid whose career had dead-ended a dozen years earlier.
Ward and Gatti emerged from their epic trilogy close friends and golfing partners, and when trainer Buddy McGirt parted ways with Gatti last year, Micky stepped in and served as the trainer for his old rival's final fight - a loss to Alfonso Gomez in Atlantic City last summer.
It would be hard to miss with material like this, but sadly Halloran has managed to make Irish Thunderan infuriatingly bad book.
After one Ward fight, Halloran lists the judges as "Tom Pazmarek, Gwen Fledman, and Malvino Lathan." Now, Tom Kaczmarek, Glenn Feldman, and Malvina Lathan are among the sports's most prominent officials, who between them have judged close to 1,000 world title fights. Halloran not only got the names of all three wrong, but managed to trans-gender two of them.
He has Pernell Whitaker (misspelled "Whittaker) the winner by unanimous decision in his fight with De La Hoya, when precisely the opposite was the case.
He suggests Ward was "winning" the aborted Vince Phillips fight, although all three judges had Micky down 20-18 after two completed rounds.
Referring to Ward's fight against Antonia Diaz he alleges, "At the time, there were five championship belts, and the IBA's was the weakest and least prestigious of the group. Mickey's WBU belt was fourth on the list."
There were then and are now four generally recognised titles, those of the WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO. If the list were to include every fly-by-night sanctioning body the count would have been closer to a dozen - and neither the IBA nor the WBU would have been in the top eight.
Trainers Goody Petronelli, Emanuel Steward and Jimmy Connelly's names are all misspelled.
Irish Thunderhas a cover price of $24.95. Save your money and wait for the film. It might be better, and it couldn't be any worse.
