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Barry McGuigan's New Book
Amazon.com: Cyclone: My Story (9780753539941): Barry McGuigan: Books
I read Barry McGuigan's new autobiography last night and then I went back and watched the Eusabio Pedroza fight. Not a bad Thursday!
There isn't a ton of new or revealing information, but it's a quick read. McGuigan can be very funny when he recalls being hit by a big punch "It felt like a house fell on me" and "It generated a specific memory of me being five years old and playing with a toy." He got up when his thinking returned to the present day.
He displays an endless frustration with the amateur sport and seems to think the fights aren't long enough to really show who is better and therefore the judging, even if honest, is unreliable.
McGuigan claims that the limited available sparring for featherweights in Ireland and the UK was a limiting factor for him and that he improved quickly and dramatically when his manager began importing fighters from Mexico, Panama and the USA to spar with the Cyclone.
His greatest win, the night he took ATG Eusabio Pedroza's title involved extraordinary training, learning from the LaPorte fight in particular and relying on some very specific tactical advice Teddy Atlas gave him. I remember watching that fight as it happened and it remains one of the electric nights the sport has known. Berry McGuigan's heart-wrenching tribute, while being interviewed in the ring, to Young Ali, a fighter who died from McGuigan punches remains with me to this day.
McGuigan's quick departure from the championship scene might be the most illuminating part of the book. He explains how many things can get into a fighter's mind and erode the single minded focus a top fighter needs to have. In his case dealing with the loss to Stevie Cruz, the final illness of his father, his daughter's ongoing health issues, the realization that there might be other things besides what he'd focused on for a decade and a half, a new tendency to getting cut and disputes with his manager. That section really brought into specific relief just how disciplined, talented and mentally hard the greats who stay around the top for a decade or more must be. It makes one take another look at men like Eusabio Pedroza and Alexis Arguello and Joe Louis and Emile Griffith and Bernard Hopkins and Ricardo Lopez and Archie Moore and wonder if a non-fighter can ever really understand how those men are wired.
I found it very telling that McGuigan made no excuses at all for his loss to Stevie Cruz. He described the action and his in ring thinking with the same detachment with which he described his wins. He didn't blame the heat or his cornermen or any other factors. The Clones Cyclone blamed Stevie Cruz.
After winning a few comeback fights McGuigan realized he would never again have what he called "intuition." What he meant was an almost otherworldly, immediate understanding of what the other guy was trying to do in the ring. The loss of that, though he was only 28, meant it was time for him to go. So to his credit? He went.
I complain about McGuigan being in the HOF because I just don't think he did enough. He was a world class guy for a year or so. But in that year he was fearsome. Endlessly energetic, endlessly courageous, good power, he bobbed, weaved and slipped like a well taught fighter should and he took a good punch. His limitation was he was just a little bit mechanical in what he did. Not quite as fluid in his movements as an exceptional athlete would be. But in that year? He'd have given most of the top feathers in history quite a fight. Does he beat Arguello or Saddler or Pep or Sanchez or Kid Chocolate? Almost certainly not. Does he give Little Red Lopez and Bobby Chacon and Morales and MAB and JMM serious battles? You betcha.
Barry McGuigan was and is a credit to the sport.
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