Rivalry, controversy, history and glory. Any boxing event fighting for a space on the weekend that pound-for-pound superstars Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Terence Crawford clash in Las Vegas is going to need some hefty narrative strands to pull upon.
Lewis Crocker and Paddy Donovan’s rematch for the vacant IBF welterweight title has plenty.
Crocker had his hand raised in their initial encounter at a raucous SSE Arena six months ago, but not to anyone’s particular satisfaction. Not least the dazed, groggy victor and his swollen features.
Donovan dominated the eight completed rounds but twice had points deducted for use of the head. After the second of those incidents, a fight that felt close to chaos span out of control. Crocker was forced to the canvas by Donovan’s latest stinging combination. When the action resumed, Andy Lee’s protege swarmed in to close the show and decked the home favourite once again, but did so with a punch that clearly landed after the bell.
That indiscretion was enough for referee Marcus McDonnell to disqualify Donovan, declaring Crocker the winner as he writhed in pain. He still had his unbeaten record after a fight where he had hugely under-performed, while Donovan nursed the bitter disappointment of a first loss despite the performance of his career to date.
A sense of unfinished business cloaked the days and weeks afterwards. Both men wanted the rematch, and it takes place this Saturday, outdoors at Windsor Park. Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis’ decision to step up to the super welterweight division means his old IBF strap at 147 pounds is on the line.
Somewhat remarkably for a place so steeped in boxing history that has produced countless fighting heroes, this is the first time two Irish boxers have clashed for a full world title. Donovan is the man once again travelling away from home, up from his native Limerick in the Republic of Ireland to take on Crocker, a Northern Irishman carrying the hopes of his home city. Well, most of them.
“The fans booing don’t really bother me because I know there’s going to be a lot of fans supporting me on the night,” Donovan claimed. “This is the biggest night in Irish boxing history, for me and Lewis Crocker, and it’s a night that we have to display our best boxing, and whoever can do that will become a world champion.
“Belfast is the home of Irish boxing. This is my sixth time fighting in Belfast as a professional fighter, and I had many training camps and fights in the amateurs down in Belfast, so I know the city pretty well, and I’ve got a great fan base there.
“I’m really loved in the city. I look forward to going back to Belfast and getting the job done, becoming a world champion. I’m sure there are a lot of people in Belfast who want to see me win.”
Belfast: The home of Irish boxing
Those Donovan enthusiasts weren’t always easy to hear during the first fight, something that was no great surprise to Crocker, who is keen to take his place in the lineage of great fighters from Belfast.
“Look at all the memorable boxers who have come from Belfast,” he said, nodding towards heroes such as Carl Frampton and Wayne McCullough. “Everyone, everyone in the city always backs their own; everyone likes to see each other doing well. Belfast is an amazing city; I’m very proud to be from Belfast. The boxing shows are always exceptional — the small hall shows to the big events. Everything’s class.
“This fight will arguably be the biggest fight in Irish boxing, so I can just imagine what it’s going to be like.”
Mark Robinson, Matchroom
What happened in the Troubles in Northern Ireland?
Crocker was born in January 1998, three months before the Good Friday Agreement peace accord. Donovan was born the following year, meaning both men grew up in the generation where a more settled existence, away from the brutal and violent reality of the Troubles, is the norm.
Paramilitary violence from 1968 up to the Good Friday Agreement claimed more than 3,500 lives. In their book The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland, Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry noted that “nearly 2% of the population of Northern Ireland have been killed or injured through political violence”.
Today, life in Northern Ireland has not arrived at some sort of serene default. They might no longer be so visible, embittered and lethal, but the old sectarian divides remain. There are still Loyalist areas of Belfast that Catholics will give a wide berth to and vice versa.
It’s different for boxers, though. It always has been. During the three-decade span of the Troubles, where death stalked young men and tore their families apart, plenty found salvation and peace inside the ropes.
“There was so much coldness, so much death, so much pain, so much division, but there was also enormous respect for boxers,” said Don McRae, the award-winning sports writer whose book In Sunshine or in Shadow documents the sport of boxing as an unlikely source of hope, light and unity during Northern Ireland’s darkest days.
“If you were a boxer, you were treated with some dignity and respect,” he continued. “It didn’t actually matter to many fight fans in Belfast where you came from; it’s what you did when you pulled on those gloves.
“Certainly, amongst the hardcore political leaders of the sectarian movements, who would advocate violence and did some despicable and inexcusable things, there was a huge respect and even awe for fighters. These violent sectarian men, I think they looked up to boxers.”
Was Barry McGuigan a world champion?
The star attraction in McRae’s book is Barry McGuigan, the inspirational former WBA featherweight champion. The Catholic born in the border town of Clones, who married a Protestant, represented Northern Ireland at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and Ireland at the 1980 Olympics, before uniting a fractured nation’s sporting public en route to his night of nights against Eusebio Pedroza. “Leave the fighting to McGuigan,” was a droll of oft-repeated reference to Barry’s brilliance against the backdrop of paramilitary strife.
The quiet hero is Gerry Storey, the esteemed veteran trainer from the Holy Family gym, where numerous Protestant fighters were welcomed to train alongside the local boys in the staunch Republican area of New Lodge. Storey survived attempts on his life and went on to coach feared men from both sides of the sectarian divide when he was asked to put on sessions at the notorious Maze prison.
Crocker carries echoes of that story in his own career. A Protestant from Sandy Row, who boxed at Turf Lodge frequently during his amateur days, moving fluidly between Loyalist and Republican worlds. The 28-year-old went to a mixed school but also had a run-in with the Ulster Boxing Council over his non-selection in the Northern Ireland Commonwealth Youth Games squad in 2015. Crocker believed this omission was made on religious grounds and the UBC settled the case for £8,500 without admitting liability.
“When I was growing up, I never encountered any sectarianism,” he said. “I went to an integrated school with Catholics and Protestants, boxed for Ireland and boxed at Holy Trinity in West Belfast. I’m from Sandy Row and have as many friends on one side as I do on the other.
“It’s always been mutual, and to have the support from everyone in Belfast is great. I’m very proud that the first all-Irish world title fight is in Belfast.”
Crocker’s pride extends to a warm namecheck for his elder sister Alanna Nihell, who back in 2001 boxed the great Katie Taylor in Ireland’s first sanctioned female bout. Admiration for Ireland’s undisputed boxing icon of the 21st century and the opportunities she has created is another element that unifies this weekend’s combatants.
“Katie has led and she’s opened the doors to the sport – not just for boxing fans, but for people in general,” Donovan said, while acknowledging the significance of Saturday night’s occasion can put him and Crocker in that slipstream.
“This girl is so amazing and so gifted, and the things she does… if that has opened the doors for the public to support me, to win this fight and bring a world title back to Limerick as the first fighter [to do so] since Andy Lee…yeah, there’s potentially so many big fights. It’s time to bring some big nights back to Ireland.”
It feels fitting for Saturday’s landmark showdown to be a night for Belfast, whose people endured and came through with unlikely help and guidance from the sport they love. It’s a night for a fight city and a sporting nation like no other.
“Outside of some places in Mexico, there are not many towns and cities that are as steeped in boxing as Belfast,” McRae added. “Boxing has this capacity to lift us out of prejudice and hate, which is weird because, yeah, fundamentally, it’s just a violent business where people are looking to knock each other out.”
When the leather starts to fly at Windsor Park on Saturday night, in those moments of unbridled intensity, rest assured that Crocker, Donovan and an expectant Belfast public would not change a thing about the weird, violent business that has given them so much.
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