BOXING/Profile European Super-bantamweight champion:From Neilstown to Tinseltown and home to The Point and the title. Tom Humphriestracks the 21 years of sweat and sacrifice to get success
Seven thousand seats. He came in earlier in the day when it was quiet and empty and looked around. They'd told him every seat was sold and if they'd twice as many they'd have been sold too. Still. An awful lot of seats. He'd walked around in the quiet of the afternoon, just a few staff doing their jobs as he ambled and looked. Touched the ropes, eyed the stands, checked the dressingroom.
It's noisy now. Late at night. There's 7,000 seats filled and lots of drink sold. But the dressingroom is as it always is. Not filled with the electricity of anticipation. No percussive hip hop beat or inspirational stadium rock. Just Bernard Dunne playing Tiger Woods on the PlayStation, just a supervisor to make sure he doesn't put horseshoes in his gloves, just a cutman and the trainer, Harry Hawkins, putting down the time.
Some nights if Bernard is in the mood he likes to play cards during these waits. Tonight he's wrestling Tiger. His manager, Brian Peters, pops in and out like a Jack-in-the-box carrying the radioactive excitement of the crowd in with him. The arrivals neither disturb nor annoy Bernard Dunne.
"It's what I do," he says, "what I enjoy doing. I don't need to worry about it, so there isn't fear. I know all I can do is the thing I do best. If somebody beats me, fair enough. Once they put me in the ring I know what to do with myself. There's no fear of getting hurt and a slight fear of being beat."
A slight, undetectable fear. A big-picture fear rather than the acute, local dread a normal being would face.
Bernard Dunne wants to continue what he is doing. Twenty-one years since he was five, 21 years of sweat and sacrifice; he wants to get to the good part, and now, to get there, you make sure you don't get beaten.
He says there's nobody on earth he'd be afraid of fighting. That's just business.
"Nobody I would be afraid of fighting. It's a confidence sport. It may come across as cocky, but you have to bring that into the ring. It's about hurt in there. I have to be confident. Some people call it cocky."
He can hear the voices. The roar of the crowd. The heat outside reaches into the dressingroom as the supporting bouts fall. There's an old and famously beautiful piece of writing by Gay Talese about Floyd Patterson, called "The Loser".
It's about fear. When Patterson lost to Sonny Anderson he left his dressingroom in disguise, drove 30 hours from Chicago to New York in disguise and boarded a plane to Spain, still in disguise. He booked into a Madrid hotel under the name Aaron Watson and stayed hidden there for a week. The sense of humiliation haunts every fighter.
"I can imagine it alright," says Dunne. "I have been defeated as an amateur. There's an embarrassment. You go home to the family and friends. I'm from a traditional boxing family. Everyone is involved. My Ma's brother Eddie Hayden was a middleweight champion. Everyone in Neilstown always knew what I did. Yeah, there's that flip side when you don't win. I've never been beaten here in Ireland. Always on foreign soil when I lost as an amateur. If there's a little fear, that's it."
In the dressingroom he doesn't let the fear in. It's too late to entertain it now. The fear is married to the hunger, and in gyms in Ballyfermot and Belfast, in road miles and the bip bop bop of the bags, the fear and the hunger keep you going. Do enough and you can fend of the one and sate the other.
Now there are 7,000 people waiting, a plump and lusty crowd. Roaring his name.
"Time," says Harry Hawkins softly, and Bernard vanishes the fairways, leaves down the console and begins his warm-up no more flustered than a man stepping on the train on his way to work.
He's been a champion for nearly two weeks now. He's been to the dogs with Padraig Harrington. He's been at the Texaco Awards and up on the shoulders of Jack O'Shea and Kieran Donaghy shouting that the only fit role for Kerrymen is carrying a Dub. He's been to Lansdowne Road flashing his belt to the crowd.
Some Tinseltown days.
Now he's back to work. This morning he was asleep, his muscles recovering from the first shockwaves which renewed weights work have brought. Next thing . . .
"Boo!" Instantly a little finger in his eye, prising the lid up and open.
"Get up!"
"I'm awake. I am. Me eye!"
His two-year-old niece, Amber, is the human alarm clock. His daughter, Caoimhe, sleeps soundly in another room. People have this dumb idea that if you're a fighter and you come from Neilstown, that the hunger in you is fed by the need to get away. Wrong.
This is what he fights for. The bread that the fights put on the table bought a house five minutes from his Mam and Dad, about the same stretch from Pamela's parents. The real Tinseltown days, the three years he spent working under the hip hop sounds and old sweat smells of the Wild Card gym on Vine in Hollywood were for this reward. Home.
They used to have a big red-and-white sign in the Wild Card. Sweat + Sacrifice = Success. He's just crossing to the other side of that equation now. Just getting to where he wants to be.
The Wild Card. Bernard Dunne went to America with a confidence which is always on the charming side of arrogant. He flew to Los Angeles on his own one November. He was 21 and not sure where he was going or where he would stay. Not sure if there'd be anyone to meet him in LAX.
A fighter's working papers are his appearance. The guy they sent looked for a featherweight with a busted nose getting off a plane from Dublin.
"You Burr-Naard Dunne?"
"Yeah."
"Come with me."
They drove to Burbank. Another airport. Picked up Freddie Roach, trainer of fighters and proprietor of the Wild Card. Straight to the gym. Checked into a shithole motel just behind. Started work the next day. Got a flat in Santa Monica the next week. Pamela came over eight weeks later. Got another flat. One that a woman could live in.
Life. An hour on the bus to the gym each morning. The trick is trying to look out the window all the way. No eye contact. Stabbings. Cuffings. Spittings. Fights. Ninety-nine flavours of craziness on every bus ride. Freaks freaking. Loons drooling. Keep staring out the window.
The Wild Card is a different world. It's just bags, mirrors, fight posters and a ring, but ah, the fighters. James Toney. Israel Vasquez, Manny Pacquino. Johnny Tapia. His head spins.
And the characters, guys like the trainer Macka Foley, a gravel-voiced old marine with fight in his blood. Or Justin Fortune, his own trainer, an old Aussie heavyweight who was once fed as grist to Lennox Lewis.
And the celebs. He tilts his head back and thinks of the camera-kissed faces. Frank Stallone. John Travolta. Cuba Gooding Junior, Mario Lopez. Denzil Washington. Hilary Swank.
One day he beat up Sonny Corleone's kid. Lived to tell the story. Here's how it went down. This afternoon he's in the ring working with some Mexican and Freddie Roach is watching through the ropes. Scotty Cahn is beside him and Scotty doesn't know the score. Freddie is Irish out of Southie in Boston and that temperament sets the mood.
"Ben's a good fighter," says Scotty about Bernard Dunne - who has, by the way, had a skinfull of being called Burr-Naard.
"Yup," says Freddie.
"I'd like to spar him sometime," says Scotty.
"Right. Let's do it," says Freddie, clapping his hands. "Get your gloves on. Ben, get ready."
So for a round Ben Dunne gives Scotty Cahn the tour. Moving around playing tippy tappy, and Scotty sends over these big swings telegraphed in dayglo. Ding ding. They go back to their corners.
"Now," says Freddie to Ben Dunne, "kill him."
So for three minutes he tears into Scotty Cahn. Batters him.
Ding dong. You can stick a fork in Scotty Cahn. He's done.
Freddie told James Cahn the story next time he was in. Tickled the hell out of him.
Those are the good old days, more fun to look back on than to live through. Fodder for the grandchildren. The glamour is fleeting and vicarious. Bernard Dunne is in LA to work. No partying. No chasing. No drinking. No eating out. He's a hermit in Hollywood.
He has Setanta piped into the house. Every Dubs game. Every Ireland match. He gets home early in the afternoons. Thinks of Neilstown. Listens to the Dublin radio stations on the internet. Reads the Irish papers. The Tricolour flutters from the apartment window. He's doing the Sweat + Sacrifice end of things.
Sweat. He gets an MRI scan which suggests abnormalities and has two months of sweat before he's cleared to fight again. He's being promoted by Mat Tinley's America Presents company. One day, early on, they fold their hand and declare that they're bust. Gone. Finito. Thank you and goodbye.
He has a fight one night soon after in the Foxwoods Resort in Connecticut. Sugar Ray Leonard has brought over a kid called Christian Cabrera from the Dominican Republic for his pro debut. Hot shit, this kid.
At the weigh-in Dunne is surveying the posse across the room wondering which one Christian Cabrera might be. Finally, the announcer calls the featherweights, Dunne and Cabrera, to the scale. Dunne is white-boy skinny. Which one is Cabrera? Holy mother. He's huge. Muscles on muscles. This, my friends, this could be the end.
They step into the ring. Dunne lands the first punch cleanly, puts Cabrera on the floor. Knocks him out in the second. Cabrera has barely come around when Sugar Ray is in Dunne's corner telling him that he wants to sign him. Strange world: Sugar Ray had mesmerised Bernard's Dad, Brendan, at the Montreal Olympics. Now Bernard had a three-year contract with Sugar Ray. Lots of national TV exposure.
Meanwhile. Look up Christian Cabrera's pro fight record. It's a bad one-liner.
Sacrifice. America was a necessary sacrifice. Three years worth of it. Then he came home to the voices and the places he'd missed, to the life he'd dreamed of.
Da. He loves him to bits for what all he did, but it's not easy having your Da as your coach. All your life from the age of five. The Voice. What are you eating there? What's that you're drinking? You can't be going out if you're a fighter. Listen.
Every morning out the door at seven for a run, then back for a shower, a breakfast and the trek to school. Every evening straight to the CIE gym in Inchicore for two hours.
Everything was second to boxing. Even the school bent to the fighter's needs. In Junior Cert year he was in Belarus for the mocks. Indeed he was away for just about two months solid with stints in Canada and Italy before that. He was junior and senior national title holder. The fights never stopped. School let him sit the Junior Mocks when he was ready.
"It's hard to explain and it's nothing now, but at the time things meant a lot. Leaving Cert night, you've been through the works, doing honours Maths and Biology and stuff and you're not going out to celebrate because you're fighting in a week's time. Looking back now those things are nothing, but back then it meant the world to me. I never had an Easter from the age of 11 to the age of 17 or 18. The National Association have our Championship at Easter. You couldn't look at a bar of chocolate. I turned senior and those Nationals are just after Christmas every year, so that was gone too!"
The Leaving Cert went well. "At least not bad for a punchy f*****," as he says. He went to Trinity to study anatomy and thought to stay amateur right up to weigh-in time at the Nationals one year. He was 20 by the time he decided to chase the dream full time.
He was a featherweight for most of his pro career. Eighteen bouts. Lately he's been at Super-bantam. The weight is tougher to make. Nine stone he could make and have a life. Eight-stone seven takes away the luxury: 122lb when you're five-foot seven is a lot of sacrifice. He's boxing lighter now than when he was 18.
"Take away my cup of tea or Mars bar or package of crisps and I'm not a happy bunny," he says, laughing. "I've got a good nutritionist, a conditioning coach. I need them!"
Nine rounds in and Bernard Dunne and Esham Pickering get to brawling. In the Depot 7,000 asses leave 7,000 seats and their owners bay for some hurt. Blood and hurt. G'wan my son.
Through the din Dunne can find the wavelength. He can tune his ear to the right voices. Always. Harry Hawkins is shouting "Don't lean in. Don't lean in". Bernard likes to lean in. He likes banging the left hooks into the body. Boxer's business, not fighter's flash. Pickering's ploy is the hook. If Dunne leans in sometimes he stays in there too long and retribution flashes upwards and chinwards.
So he leans back. Looks like a man leaning back out a window to look up at his roof.
He can hear the Da too. Brendan Dunne was a champion back in the day. Hear him. The mantra. Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up, Keep your hands up. Constantly since he was five years old he's been hearing those four words of paternal wisdom. Keep your hands up.
Other things come in on the instant messaging system. When Brendan Dunne sees an opening his son sees it too. Hard to know which brain processes it first. "Double-left hand and a cross," roars Brendan. A split-second later Esham Pickering is suffering from that precise combination.
Bernard Dunne doesn't know how it happens. He knows that all boxing happens like a fast-forward video, he knows that instinct is just the residue of 21 years of grafting. He knows he never has time to ponder if double-left and a cross might be the stuff to throw. He doesn't get to press the pause button. He doesn't have a chance to stroke his chin and consider if he's not walking into the set-up of a left hook or the ambush of a right cross.
Now it's round nine and the Depot is shaking. Hot and heavy. It's a scrap now and the fighter in him is being summoned by goading. F*** it. Go in and swing. Bring the hurt. G'wan. They want a bit of a tear up? Give it to them.
He's done it in the past, he's gone milling instead of boxing. He's played it their way.
He thinks his way through it this time. Voices. He knows he's won the first six rounds. He knows what he's been tuning into all night, the other voices, the ones coming from Esham Pickering's corner. "You need this one Esham, you're behind. C'mon you've got to win this round." He knows he banked rounds one to six. He knows he sat back and kept his energy for himself in seven and eight. He knows this is how the pressure comes.
Twenty-one years in rings. He knows himself. He knows that, against Esham Pickering, if he wants to become European Super-bantam champ the tactic is to box and not to fight. The trick is to spend his aggression wisely.
"Don't take chances," says a voice. "You don't need to take those chances." The voice is coming from inside his head.
No risks. He's European champion, and if they gave him his way he'd be fighting for a world belt tomorrow. Anyone, anywhere.
They know there's work to be done on him yet though. He takes a good stance which helps him throw a fine punch, but the upper body needs more power. Needs to be able to absorb 12 rounds with a tough, scrappy bodyworker, and he needs the muscle to give the hurt as well as to take it. He listens. He tunes in.
The voices. These are the good times. The other side of the equation on the Wild Card wall, but success is simple. Success isn't Hollywood. It's Pamela. Caoimhe. Home. Family. Friends. Seven-a-side football on Monday nights. Going to see the Dubs. Security. A simple plan. A man with a firm stance and a rule for life.
Keep your hands up.
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