Memory Man Page 13

  He got down on one knee—I’m not joking—and he apologised, looking into the camera. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy,’ he said. But RTE never used it! It would have been a fantastic piece for the news.

  After the apology I didn’t carry on the interview. I told him, ‘I’ve nothing more to say to you.’ I was still vexed, and my heart wasn’t in it. He had shown his true colours earlier. But we shook hands.

  ‘And I don’t think you’ll beat Stephen Collins.’

  Benn laughed and insisted he was going to knock out Collins.

  On the night of the fight I was at the ringside and I watched Benn coming down the walkway, waiting for his call to get into the ring. He was looking around, and when he noticed me he smiled and said, ‘Ah, you’re here.’

  So he hadn’t forgotten me in a hurry. I was delighted when Collins knocked him down in the fourth round. An immediate rematch was called. Benn gave the excuse that he had been hampered by an ankle injury; but Collins won the rematch the following November in the sixth round.

  My scuffle with Benn seems to have become part of sporting folklore in England, because it’s an incident that is always brought up by my media colleagues any time I’m over there covering an event. They seem to have got a kick out of how this older Irish broadcaster stood toe to toe with Benn. I’m glad they got a kick out of the story; and I’m glad I didn’t get a punch for my troubles, which would probably have ended with Collins taking on Benn in the car park to defend my honour!

  ——

  It amazes me how boxers, who are some of the toughest men, can also be the most courteous and friendly—apart from Nigel Benn, I hasten to add. I’ve been lucky enough to meet all the great boxers of the twentieth century. I did radio reports on the famous Muhammad Ali fight against Al Lewis in Croke Park back in July 1972. I know everybody remembers it fondly as this big fight. Yes, it was a big day, but it wasn’t as full with punters as you’d probably imagine, or as impressive as I thought it would be. I suppose it’s hard enough to fill Croke Park for an all-Ireland final, let alone Muhammad Ali and an unknown opponent. But Ali was great on that day.

  I first met Ali in Dublin during that fight, and I met him a few times afterwards. I got to see up close how much his Parkinson’s disease had destroyed him when I did a Q&A show with him in Dublin and he was hardly able to talk. It was only a short piece, and I answered most of the questions for him, because he was really only able to smile and nod. It was one of the saddest moments I ever experienced.

  My fondest memory of Ali involved the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. For several years I have been doing the commentary on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which are fantastic moments to be involved in. I love watching the parade of the teams, and you don’t know who is going to ignite the flame. If you wanted to find out beforehand you could, but I never wanted to: I wanted to find out at exactly the same time as the viewers and listeners, so I could respond in exactly the same way they do. When I saw Ali perform the opening ceremony in 1996 I thought, ‘Oh, my God!’ It was really emotional to see him back on the Olympic stage after he had thrown his Olympic medal into the river when he was refused service in a whites-only restaurant in his home city, Louisville. Here he was back in his native South opening the Olympic Games in Atlanta, the biggest event ever to happen in the Southern states. What must it have felt like for him?

  Ali was the greatest boxer ever, but he was only slightly better than Joe Frazier. At the time they met in 1971 in Madison Square Garden they were both unbeaten. It was a unique situation to have two heavyweight world champions meet when they were both unbeaten.

  So, you’re probably wondering, how could they both be champions? Simple. Ali was the champion when he refused to serve in the US army. His licence was then removed and he became persona non grata. Eventually he was reinstated, not having lost in the ring. In the meantime Frazier became the world champion.

  Frazier won the first and Ali won the next two, but there was almost nothing between them—but Ali was past his peak at this stage, it must be stressed.

  Frazier was a nice man. I met him in Dublin when he came over with his rock-and-roll band, aptly named Joe Frazier and the Knockouts. He was the singer—a good one too. I have to doff my hat to him for deciding he was going to be a rock singer after retiring from boxing. He was playing in the National Stadium, which was also appropriate.

  He was a pleasant man that day when we met backstage before his concert, but it was clear that he never really forgave Ali for the stuff he said about him. Ali had thrown some awful wounding remarks at him before the fights. It wasn’t just the insults but the way he said them. The biggest insult to a black American is to call him an Uncle Tom; and Ali called Frazier an Uncle Tom. The emotional wounds from the insult were still raw after all those years, so much so that Frazier was reluctant even to talk to me about Ali. I understand that right up to his death he never forgave him.

  ——

  I met the boxing promoter Don King one evening at Kennedy Airport in New York up in the Aer Lingus lounge while waiting for a flight to Ireland. It was comical looking at him standing there talking non-stop on five or six different mobile phones. ‘Get him! Get his ass!’ he was shouting into the phone, and all that sort of nonsense. He was quite noisy. Anyway, we had a brief conversation about who was the best fighter ever, and the name that jumped out was Muhammad Ali, followed closely by Joe Frazier.

  Of course his own client, Mike Tyson, was a great fighter too. Tyson did a show with us in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin in 2004. He was a colourful character, despite the fact that he is rough and ready. I had heard stories about how he could be rude and cause trouble when being interviewed, but I wasn’t going to be afraid to ask him a question. Besides, he was being paid to be there.

  At the show that night there was a young fellow from Co. Mayo called Henry Coyle, who was the Irish welterweight champion, and he had asked me before the event if there was any chance of meeting Tyson. I told him, ‘I’ve no idea what mood Tyson is in, but I’ll do what I can.’

  When I was out on stage with Tyson I said, ‘Mike, before we begin the show proper there’s a young man in the audience who has asked me to introduce him to you.’

  He grunted and asked unenthusiastically, ‘Who is this guy?’

  ‘He’s a boxer, Mike—a real boxer like you. He’s not a pro, he’s an amateur, thinking of going pro.’

  ‘Can I see him from here?’ Tyson asked, sounding more interested now.

  I pointed out Henry to him. Tyson began addressing Henry, looking straight at him. ‘When you’re going pro make sure your manager is proficient. Don’t lose all your money, like I did. Don’t listen to this one, listen to that one.’ And he gave him a whole lecture and then bent down from the stage to shake his hand.

  He talked about how much money he had earned—I can’t remember the exact figure, but let’s say $200 million. He said he had got something like that astonishing figure in purses, and what had he left? Nothing. He told of getting a purse for one fight of $20 million, but by the time he paid his manager, PR, sparring partners and miscellaneous hangers-on he said he still owed them a tenner!

  Henry tells me he will never forget the moment. Last year (2011) he was boxing in Castlebar for a version of the world title, and he told me that night that he still tells people he met Tyson, and they don’t believe him. ‘But you’re a witness that I met him, Jimmy, and he was so nice to me. He gave me great advice.’ Which, in fairness to Tyson, he certainly did. And now Henry’s meeting with Tyson is on the record in my book for any disbelievers.

  ——

  I also had the opportunity to meet the great Sugar Ray Leonard when I was invited to present Q&A evening with the legend at the Burlington Hotel. He was a very bright fellow in every sense. There was so much to talk to him about: he had met and fought all the greats.

  There were five guys around at the time who were champions, and each one could be called an all-time champion: Sugar Ray, Thomas Hearns, Mar
vellous Marvin Hagler, Roberto Durán, and Wilfred Benítez; and each of them fought each of the others. Leonard had fought and beaten them all. At that time he was encouraging a young Irishman by letting him use his gyms in America. That young Irishman did him proud and went on to become a world champion. His name is Bernard Dunne.

  At the 2009 world boxing championship in Milan I was doing commentary and interviews when I went from the ringside back to the press room, and standing in front of me was the former undisputed world middleweight champion, Marvellous Marvin Hagler, who spends most of his time now in Italy. In 2002 the magazine Ringside placed him among the top twenty boxing greats of the past eighty years, which is an amazing achievement when one even begins to think about the litany of fantastic boxers to be squeezed into the pantheon of all-time greats.

  ‘Jimmy, how are you?’ the American boxing giant said to me. He was standing beside a woman whom he introduced as his Italian wife, Kay.

  I was surprised that this legendary boxer remembered me.

  ‘I guess I should call you Marvellous!’ I joked.

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘I’m surprised that you know who I am.’

  ‘How could I ever forget the Irishman Jimmy Magee! I met you at many of my big fights, and you were always very kind, Jimmy.’

  I thanked him. I was even more taken aback when he insisted on getting his photograph taken with me for his private collection.

  It amazes me how some of the toughest men can also be the most courteous and friendly—apart from Nigel Benn, I hasten to add!

  Chapter 14

  | DREAMS FULFILLED AND UNFULFILLED

  A few days after Steve Collins won the first fight between himself and Nigel Benn I was packing my bags again and heading to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics, which would turn out to be the most successful—and the most controversial—in the history of Irish athletics.

  What’s my take on the Michelle Smith controversy? I believe she didn’t take any illegal substances, but I find people laugh at me when I say that. All I will say is that she was caught after she was out of competition and they found the sample to have been tampered with. At the Olympic Games she did all the drug tests and they were all negative.

  I know everybody says her remarkable achievements had to be a result of performance-enhancing drugs, but I think this point I’ll make will persuade you to have a rethink about it all.

  I had a book of results at home, and I took it out one day and I took one of the events in which she won a gold medal and I asked one of my children: ‘Have a look there at all those winners and tell me what you can see.’ She said that all she could see was that those who had won the event before Michelle had all won it in a faster time than she had.

  I asked my daughter if she didn’t think then that they had been taking something. She replied, ‘No, but everyone believes it in Michelle’s case, because she had improved so much.’

  Yes, she had improved under the guidance of her husband and coach, Erik de Bruin, but the fact remains that she won in a time that wouldn’t have got her first over the finishing line in previous Olympics.

  I knew Michelle, and she is very annoyed at how she was treated, but can you blame her? She is still the champion; she has never been deprived of her medals.

  That night was one of Ireland’s greatest sporting moments. As Michelle was coming out of the athletes’ mixed zone, as they call it, I said to her, ‘You’re going to be the most famous Irish sportswoman of all time.’

  When she was at the press conference she was very mannerly, while the Americans were very unmannerly in the way they asked the questions. In the middle of it all up pipes Seán Bán Breathnach and asks Michelle a question in Irish. She answered in Irish, and that caught the Americans by the knees; they were now wondering what they were saying to each other. I thought that was a beautiful moment.

  It was all sour grapes on the part of the spoiled American brats, who felt it was their God-given right to win on home soil. We must also remember that President Bill Clinton apologised for the American swimmers’ insulting innuendos at the time.

  I keep repeating myself, but she took all the appropriate tests at the Olympics, and not one of the results showed any trace of anything illegal.

  Michelle later studied for the bar and finished in the top handful in her exams and is now a practising barrister. Your honour, I rest my case.

  ——

  In 1995 a contact from the Ulster Council of the gaa approached me and asked me, ‘Would you consider doing Gaelic games?’

  ‘I’d love to, but I probably won’t get them in RTE now,’ I replied. In fairness I should add that RTE had a man in place already for finals. I said it had always been an unfulfilled dream to do the commentary on an all-Ireland final in Croke Park—something I had dreamt about ever since I was a young boy listening to the wireless.

  A short while later I was doing ‘Know Your Sport’ in Monaghan when a UTV executive came over and said to me, ‘We know how eager you are to do Gaelic games, and we’d love you to do the Ulster championship for UTV.’ It so happened that the contract for Gaelic games had only recently changed from bbc to UTV and they hadn’t got anyone signed up yet as the main commentator. I was told they were going to propose me, and I said that that ‘in principle’ I would like to do it.

  A short while later I got a phone call from someone in UTV asking me, ‘Jimmy, do you ever be up in Belfast?’

  ‘Funny enough, I’m in Belfast next week.’

  I gave them a call when I got there, and we went for lunch and we thrashed out a deal, and then a couple of days later I signed a contract. One of the things I always wanted to do was an all-Ireland final, and UTV were offering a deal that would see me do six all-Ireland finals in three years.

  The powers that be in RTE were not deliriously happy with the news that I had signed a contract with UTV, but, thankfully, they never severed my connection either. I was told before I signed that it would ‘rule me out of various things.’ You make your bed and lie in it, but I always felt part of RTE. I wouldn’t let anyone run them down.

  But I had being doing ‘Know Your Sport’ for eleven years, and I was taken off that because of my deal with UTV. The head of sport at the time in RTE said to me, ‘We’ll have to take you off “Know Your Sport”.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s the opposition,’ he replied.

  I couldn’t fully agree with it, but I had to go along with it. I was told I was ‘their man’ and they didn’t want me appearing on a rival station. ‘There’s only a very small pot of advertisements and all that and we’re competing in the same field with UTV.’

  In fairness to him, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You can stay on and do all the questions and background stuff for the same money.’ Of course I said yes. But I lost appearances, which in itself is money really.

  I have no big grief about that. So when the three-year contract with UTV was over, RTE took me back without any residuals at all. Perhaps naïvely, I hadn’t thought that there would be a problem, because I had previously done some Gaelic matches for Channel 4, which would send my feeds to Sky, and RTE didn’t mind that—but that was obviously because Channel 4 is a British station and, unlike UTV, is not a direct competition for local advertising in Ireland.

  I also did some boxing and soccer for the BBC in the 1960s. Again, in fairness to RTE, I must say that they didn’t mind me doing it, as it was only the occasional bit of work.

  ——

  I think my favourite freelance gig of all time was working with Europa in the Netherlands, which was the forefather of the present Eurosport, done by a combination of national television stations. They asked me to do a piece on sport, and I must have done it well, because it was extended and extended and I ended up going regularly over to Hilversum for about four years to work for them. I actually got the contract through a fellow in RTE, as they used a lot of RTE people. They needed someone who could do it in English and I was recommend
ed.

  I would go out on a Tuesday, be met at Amsterdam airport by my own driver, who would drive me to Hilversum. If it was around lunchtime we would stop somewhere en route and chat over a bite to eat. We would then arrive at the studio and my bags would be sent over to the nice little hotel I always stayed in.

  One particular Tuesday when I arrived there I went and did some editing for a football programme that was going out that night and then had to go to London to do a boxing match. Then I flew back to Amsterdam the morning after the fight and that evening went to Madrid to do a football match, and was then back the next morning to do some editing on the other European matches, and then I flew back to Dublin to work all weekend. That was a great buzz, even though it was very tiring.

  Sadly, Europa went out of business—though for a very good reason, in my humble opinion, because as a station they tried to be all things to all. A typical evening’s schedule at Europa was something like this: 7 p.m., a programme about religion; 8 p.m., a programme about the great art galleries of the world; 9 p.m., a music programme; 10 p.m., sport; and so on. So you just got the viewers for the specialist programmes and then they would click off. A television station needs loyal viewers to help make it an attractive proposition to potential advertisers.

  In the early 2000s I had intended to start my own radio station—a real sports station, doing nothing but what it says on the tin. Why? I wanted to have a lot of stuff that would have an interest for young people, because I feel that young people get interested in sports only by having positive vibes, positive commentary on sports, instead of the negativity and propaganda that you get these days.

  When I delved into the possibilities and the financial side of it all I realised sadly that it just wasn’t possible. Potential investors all said the same thing: ‘Jimmy, it’s a brilliant idea, but we can’t actually see it making money.’ It was a dream, really—perhaps ‘fantasy’ is a more apt description.