Irish Thunder

by Bob Halloran

  “Obey my commands at all times, and above all, come out fighting.” Micky obeyed. Wearing white trunks with kelly-green trim, Micky found early success with his left hand. Fernandez moved clockwise around the ring, running as Micky had done more than once in his career, but Micky wasn’t chasing. He stayed in the center of the ring, occasionally landing a shot against his moving target. Fernandez moved well, mostly out of a southpaw position, and when he stopped long enough to exchange punches, he gave as good as he got.

  Finally, with just over a minute to go in the third round, Fernandez threw two right-hand uppercuts, and then paused, waiting to unleash a third. During that pause, Micky struck.

  “Oh! Fernandez goes down! Out of nowhere here in round number three,” play-by-play announcer Al Albert said with great surprise on the Fox Sports telecast.

  The left hook had the appearance of every other left hook Micky had landed to the midsection of Fernandez, but it landed where the others did not and it had a dramatically different effect. This one left Fernandez crumpled up on the canvas writhing in a kind of pain he’d never felt before. Micky watched Fernandez fall and walked away calmly, only glancing back once to survey the damage he’d inflicted.

  “You don’t get up from those,” he would say later.

  “. . . six, seven, eight, nine, ten!” Callas yelled clearly as Fernandez struggled to get up.

  “A left hook, a body shot to the liver,” analyst and former boxer Sean O’Grady said. “You hit a man in the liver and he drops. The pain lasts, and it is excruciating pain. It lasts about ten or fifteen seconds, and then you’re fine.”

  The pain lasted longer than that for Fernandez. He spent the next several minutes on the stool in his corner being treated by the ring doctor. When Fernandez finally did rise, he walked over to congratulate Micky.

  “That shot was too good,” he said. “I couldn’t get up. It hurt too much. I felt like I was gonna die.”

  That made Micky laugh. He hugged Fernandez, ruffled his hair and wished him luck his next time out. That was Mark “The Cobra” Fernandez’s fifty-second career fight. He would have six more, losing five of them, and he would never be hurt as badly as he had been the night he faced Micky Ward.

  Zab Judah was watching from the locker room at Foxwoods, and he vowed to himself right then and there that he would not leave himself open to a Micky Ward body shot. Judah had already seen the tapes of Ward landing that vicious left hand against Sanchez and Veader, two previously undefeated fighters like himself. Judah knew that Micky was being placed in front of him as a stepping-stone. His handlers expected him to beat Micky, and they expected that victory to elevate him quickly in the junior welterweight division. Micky knew it, too. He also knew that stepping-stones work in both directions.

  “I love these kinds of fights,” he said. “There’s no pressure on me; it’s all on him. They put me in there because they expect me to lose, but it ain’t gonna happen.”

  Micky, concerned about Judah’s significant advantage in hand and foot speed entered the ring in Miami, Florida, several pounds lighter than normal. He was a trim 137 pounds, not nearly as bulked up or buffed as he had been in a few of his previous fights. He worked himself into quite a sweat in the locker room before coming out, and he continued bouncing on his toes and throwing punches in his corner while waiting for the fight to begin. He was hoping to get off to a quick start against a very quick fighter.

  Judah was a natural southpaw from Brooklyn, New York, who had shown amazing hand speed on his way to winning eleven of his first fifteen fights by knockout. His superiority over each of his opponents was evident in the fact that he had never lost a single round on any judge’s scorecard. He had fought forty-five professional rounds and won them all.

  Judah came out in red trunks. Micky was in white with green trim. Both fighters began by snapping off jabs. Judah avoided Micky’s. Micky took Judah’s on the chin. Judah was by far the quickest opponent Micky had ever faced. Micky whiffed on several punches because when he let go of his punches Judah would be standing in one place, but by the time the punches were completed, Judah would be somewhere else. He was that quick.

  Through five rounds, Judah had landed 103 punches to just 29 by Micky. Judah’s corner was growing more confident and telling Judah to be more aggressive.

  “Throw more punches, Micky!” Rubert Brown, Micky’s latest trainer hired by Sal, ordered him between rounds. Brown had helped Livingstone Bramble for many years, leading him to lightweight and light welterweight titles. “You’ve got to wear him down, or he won’t be tired when you need him to be. Now, get out there and get busy!”

  Micky picked up the pace. In the eighth round, he finally landed a good, hard shot square on Judah’s ribs, but Judah appeared to shake it off. But he didn’t shake off the next one. Midway through the round, Micky doubled up with a left hand to the body, and it nearly doubled Judah over. Judah took the shots and stayed bent over at the waist for a few moments. He was in an awkward position, down so low that it was hard for Micky to find a place to hit him. Judah stayed that way, as if he were taking a deep bow, for a few seconds and that bought him enough time to partially recover and then bounce away. Judah was still hurt, and he needed more time. He was also afraid of taking another shot like that any time soon. So he ran. He circled the ring with tremendous grace and speed. Micky did his best to cut off the ring, but Judah was too agile. Judah merely stayed on his bicycle and tossed out a few harmless jabs to give the impression that he was still fighting, but he was running. Finally, Micky stopped his pursuit and said to Judah, “Are you gonna fight or run?”

  Judah answered by running until the end of the round.

  “Something very important has happened here,” ESPN announcer Al Bernstein said during the broadcast. “Ward is landing punches that he couldn’t land earlier in the fight, because Judah has slowed down a little bit in his reflexes and is maybe a little tired.”

  At the start of the final round, Micky and Judah met in the center of the ring, and Judah said, “Great fight. Let’s finish it.”

  This was the last round of yet another big fight in Micky’s career. It was the final three minutes, and Micky needed a knockout. He was opposed by a skilled and lightning-quick fighter but not an especially dangerous one. The conditions were perfect for Micky to fight aggressively, with reckless abandon, and with desperation. But he didn’t. He fought the final round much the same way he had fought the previous eleven, even though he had lost ten of those eleven rounds. Judah played it smart and rode out the twelfth round. When the bell rang, Micky threw his right hand down in disgust. He was upset with himself for not doing more to win the fight. He was angry that he had lost to a showboater who never hit him hard enough to leave a mark. And he should have been upset that he was put up against a guy he really had little or no chance of beating.

  “That was a bad match with Judah,” Borges explains. “That was a chance to grab a little money. But it turned out to be a bit of a turning point in Micky’s career, because he may have realized that he couldn’t outbox these speed guys at the top of his division. So, he turned himself into a brawler. That was his best chance to win. He was a boxer earlier in his career, but gave it up to fight inside almost exclusively after the Judah fight. It was the only way he could beat a guy with great hand and foot speed. This was a lopsided fight because he couldn’t land his body shot. Zab never stood still long enough. Micky’s uniqueness is his ability to punch to the body with such damaging effect. It’s such a great risk to punch to the body, because you leave yourself open. That’s why most fighters don’t do it anymore. Micky made a living doing it, but he couldn’t do it if he couldn’t take shots, because you’re paying a price for it. In this day and age you don’t find many guys willing to pay that price, or who can take those shots that Micky did.”

  Micky lost ten of twelve rounds on two of the judges’ scorecards and the third judge said he lost eleven out of twelve. The final punch stats told the story, Judah l
anded 270 mostly soft blows while Micky managed to hit his quickly moving target only 90 times in thirty-six minutes.

  The twenty-year-old Zab Judah won the USBA title, climbed the rankings, and won eleven more consecutive fights, picking up the IBF light welterweight title along the way. He stepped over Micky and into the big time. Micky went in the opposite direction. The loss to Judah was a terrible defeat for his career. Everything he had proved with his victories over Veader and Sanchez, all the respect he had earned in his defeat to Vince Phillips, and all the opportunities he had received up to this point in his comeback were wiped away, almost without a trace. Micky had to prove himself all over again. He had to earn respect and further opportunities the hard way, by starting over. It wouldn’t be easy. So, Micky went back to Lowell where things were never easy. He went back to Lowell where he could start his boxing career all over again—with Dickie.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Back in Lowell, Micky’s boxing career was in limbo as expected. The loss to Judah had convinced most promoters and matchmakers that Micky was no longer worth their time. Micky had lost two of his last three fights. He was nearly thirty-three years old, and he couldn’t beat the top contenders, so he wouldn’t be given a chance to. It wasn’t long ago that he was being mentioned in the same breath as Kostya Tszyu and Julio Cesar Chavez. Big-money fights and title fights had been within his grasp.

  Micky was scheduled to fight a New York kid named Darius Ford at the Roxy in December 1998, but he bruised his right hand during a sparring session a week before the fight and had to pull out.

  Despite the injury and the lack of direction in his career, he was smiling these days. In mid-October 1998, he received a belated birthday present from the state of Massachusetts. After four years and seven months in jail, Dickie walked out of prison, clean and sober, fit, and ready to work.

  “I decided while in prison that I was going to make something of my life and once I got out I was going to help others avoid the same mistakes I made,” Dickie told John Vellante of the Boston Globe. “I remember saying to myself when I heard the sentence, ‘Hey, I deserve some time, but not that much.’Anyway, the judge did me a favor. Those words, ‘ten to fifteen,’ helped turn my life around. I was shuffled from jail to jail and started chairing Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. In Shirley, I met Mary O’Connell, a substance abuse counselor, who was a big influence in my life. She and my mother, Alice, were always there for me.”

  Upon his release, Dickie kept his word about helping others. He began working with kids in the streets and in boxing gyms in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

  He helped, not by lecturing or threatening the kids, but by simply telling them his story.

  “I tell them, in the ring I had thousands of people cheering me on. In jail, I had nobody other than my family. I tell them that the things I do now to stay clean and sober aren’t half as bad as the the things I did to get my drugs and alcohol. Drugs and booze became the most important things in my life. Nothing else mattered. My whole life was drinking and drugging, drugging and drinking. I’d beg, borrow, and steal. Life was the pits. . . . I remember some Lowell cops telling me I was going to die. They were always after me, always chasing me down. Now they see me and ask me if I can help someone else. I’ll always be recovering, will be until the day I die, but I can’t worry about or change the past. I think about and live only for today.”

  So Dickie was back training Micky, just as the two brothers had planned. It was inevitable.

  “It’s great having Dickie back in my corner,” Micky said. “He’s there more than ever before. I had a good trainer while he was away, but Dickie’s a good influence. I’m proud of the way he’s turned his life around. Everything is positive. He’s busting my cookies big time, and that’s something I need in my corner. He’ll make a big difference.”

  “It tore me apart that I couldn’t physically be there with him,” Dickie added. “He needed me. I had a lot of bad days in jail thinking about him and how I could have helped him. But it’s nice to be back in his corner. We are a bind and we have faith in each other.”

  Joe Lake also knew the brothers’ reunion was a foregone conclusion. “Dickie’s love for his brother is immense,” Lake says. “They both love each other dearly. They can call each other assholes all day long, but nobody else better say it. I think a lot of times Dickie got in the ring and kicked Micky in the nuts when he needed it. As a disciplinarian he was very good. I don’t know if Micky always had the best strategy to win under Dickie Eklund, but he was in great condition.”

  And Mickey O’Keefe also knew that Dickie’s return to Micky’s corner was unavoidable. That, according to his friend Danny Gilday, was one of the reasons O’Keefe was prepared to walk away when he did.

  When Dickie first got out of prison in October, Micky stayed out of the ring for several months to have his hand checked out by a doctor. Eleven years and 190 rounds of professional boxing after the cops smashed a heavy flashlight onto his hands, Micky was going to have surgery.

  “My hand was so bad, I couldn’t punch anyway,” Micky said. “So, there was no downside to it. No risk. No worry. Yeah, it was the same hand that got hurt at the Cosmo. It started the injury. It wasn’t that severe when it first happened. But I kept using it when I shouldn’t have. The injury wasn’t healed, and I’d start training with it. I never gave it a chance to heal properly or fully.”

  So, Micky went to see an orthopedic therapist in Lowell who referred him to Dr. Steven Margeles at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts.

  “What can I do for you, George?” Dr. Margeles asked, calling Micky by his given name, because that’s how Micky had signed himself in at the doctor’s office.

  “My hand’s killing me, Doc. I can’t even punch with it anymore.”

  “And you punch with it a lot?”

  “Yeah, Doc. I’m a boxer.”

  By that time, Margeles was inspecting Micky’s hand and had noticed the swelling and the tenderness around the second and third metacarpal bones. X-rays were hard to interpret, so Margeles ordered a series of tomograms, which are slice X-rays. It was evident that Micky had arthritis, not the kind caused by disease, but the boxer’s version, known as post-traumatic arthritis. Instead of a chronic, dull pain, Micky had a sharp and intense one whenever he hit with his right hand. Fusion surgery, or arthrodesis, was recommended.

  “Here’s what will happen, George,” Margeles explained. “First, we’re going to scrape some bone out of your hip . . .”

  “My hip?”

  “Yes. We need to take bone out of your hip and put it into your hand.”

  “I’m having hip surgery? Doc, it’s my hand that hurts,” Micky protested.

  “Right. Let me explain from the beginning. What I need to do is take off the cartilage around the traumatized area in your hand. I’m going to scrape past the hard subchondral bone down to the inner bone, which is spongy and has a high healing potential. You’ll be left with two raw ends of bone, and a space in between. We have to put something in that space, and that’s going to come from your hip.”

  “It still seems weird that my hip bone’s gonna be connected to my hand bone,” Micky said with a nervous laugh.

  “Well, the gold standard for fusing bones together is the ileac crest. That’s in the pelvis. It’s not the ball of the hip bone. It’s where your belt sits. It’s fairly easy to get there. I’ll make a small incision and then I’ll go in there with a trocar, kind of like an apple corer. I turn that, and then scoop out the scrapings with a curet. That’s more like a melon-ball scooper.”

  “You fixing me up, Doc, or are you making a fruit salad?”

  “Believe me, we’re fixing you up. Surgery is the only answer for this kind of problem. We’ll scrape out this hard reddish spongy stuff first. Then we’ll scrape away at the hand, creating the space I mentioned, and then we’ll pack in the bone from your hip. We’ll pack it in good and tight, fuse it together with a couple of screws, p
ut a Band-Aid on your hip, and I think you’ll be as good as new in no time.”

  Margeles couldn’t guarantee the outcome of the surgery, but he told Micky that he probably wouldn’t be able to fight again successfully if he didn’t take this chance. Micky spent a few days and restless nights worrying. The worst-case scenario was that his career would be over. But even without surgery, he was pretty close to the end anyway. He couldn’t beat the top guys with a handicap. So, on the day of the surgery, Micky relaxed. This was the right thing to do.

  Margeles began by tying a tourniquet around Micky’s upper arm. He felt only a little pain while the apple corer and melon baller scraped inside his hip. He saw the scrapings and thought it looked a lot like red sand. He was awake and alert during the process, but he chose to look away as Margeles used a bone tamp to pack in the “red sand.” Still, he could hear the crunching sound as Margeles stuffed the space between the bones. Three screws were used, including a compression screw that pulled the two sides together.

  “The screw goes from the normal intact bone, across the space and into the other bone,” Margeles explains. “So you pack some bone in, put the screw in, and then pack some more bone in. Eventually it all fuses into one strong bone. It’s as strong as any other bone would be. And the hip bone’s not compromised at all, because it all grows back.”

  The surgery went well, and Micky put it to the test, first in the gym, and then when he returned to the ring on St. Patrick’s Day 1999. It was an anniversary of sorts. The fight was exactly five years after Dickie had been sent to jail. Now Micky had a new hand and his older brother back on his side. He hoped it would be the right combination.

  He fought a perennial loser from Coventry, Rhode Island, named Jose Luis Mendez. Three weeks before facing Micky, Mendez was held up for target practice for four rounds by Anthony Chase of Providence. Chase won a lopsided unanimous decision that dropped Mendez’s record to 3-11-1. He had no business climbing into the ring with Micky Ward, but he had the courage to do it. So Micky hit him until he fell in the third round.