Richie MacLiam joined Sam on the Breakfast Show this week to promote “Back To Business”, a boxing showcase taking place this weekend in Dudelange which is set to feature five of Ireland’s top upcoming fighters.
In recent years the sport of boxing in Ireland has suffered due to an association with organised crime, this culminated in a shooting at event five years ago and since then the sport in the country, at a professional level, has essentially shut down. Insurance, policing and difficulty attracting sponsors has made it incredibly difficult to get any boxing events of any size, organised in the Republic. Throw covid restrictions that have pretty much shut down everything everywhere on top and it’s a recipe for inactivity and stagnation, not just for the fighters but for the sport in general.
So what’s to be done and what has a small town in Luxembourg got to do with all of this?
First a new approach to organising and promoting boxing was needed. Stephen Sharpe and Leonard Gunning who own Boxing Ireland Promotions, manage the boxers and are co-promoting the event on Saturday. They began their journey in boxing 10 years ago with the aim of promoting professional boxing in a professional and sustainable manner. The pro scene in smaller countries is often centralised around one big name and as soon as that person retires, the scene essentially dies. So they are trying to create a scene that will last, and as a result they have started from the ground up and are always promoting boxers at all levels and not one based around one star. Boxing’s image needed rehabilitation and the pair wanted to showcase clean, hardworking fighters, but where to have them fight?
Luxembourg, as one of the few places in the world that has been consistent regarding covid restrictions seemed like a place where elite sportspeople could come for a prearranged event and actually compete without worrying if the fights would actually go ahead or not and excitement among the sizeable ex-pat community here has been tangible.
The group of fighters arriving this week are; Jamie Morrissey, a 196cm former kickboxing champion from Limerick who is making his professional boxing debut, Dominic Donegan from Cavan, Kevin Cronin from Kerry, Owen O Neill from Belfast, and 22-year-old Katelynn Phelan from Kildare who following her recent world title success in Germany is touted by many within Irish boxing to eventually fill the shoes of Olympian Katie Taylor.
Fight fans can’t go to the event in person because of, well, you know, but you can watch it on Facebook for just €7.99.
Here Sam’s chat with Richie below: