Irish Thunder

by Bob Halloran

  Gavin went back to work when Micky returned to the corner. The hole in Micky’s lip had not been damaged any further, and the bleeding was under control. Gavin’s abilities were the primary reason Micky was able to continue fighting. Whether that was a good thing or inadvisable had yet to be determined.

  Micky had lost that round. Then he lost the fifth and sixth rounds as well. He was no longer hurt, but he was most definitely losing and continuing to take punishment. Green leaned on Micky so hard that he was actually able to push him backwards while he was throwing punches. Micky leaned back, but was most effective when he stepped back and to the side, freeing up some space for him to land some solid punches. In the final minute of the sixth, Micky caught Green with a left hook to the chin. The sheer force of the blow knocked Green off balance, but he did not appear to be hurt, and Micky did not increase his activity at that time.

  “Come on, Mick! Head, body!” Dickie yelled from his corner. Then he began answering questions from Bob Papa and Teddy Atlas during a live in-round interview for the ESPN broadcast.

  “Do you think Micky got a break in that fourth round when Green really didn’t come out and press the action after Micky got hurt?” Papa asked.

  “Micky was banging him to the body, wearing him down, too,” Dickie explained. “So, you know what I mean, he’s dead tired himself. I told Micky to keep working. Stay to the body. You know what I mean? He’s giving him too many breaks. He’s switching lefty and he’s getting caught, and I don’t want him to.”

  “Why does he do that?” Atlas interjected. “Every time he switches he seems to get hit with a clean right hand.”

  “Because Green’s a smart fighter. If I was fighting Micky and he turned lefty, I’d be banging the right hand. You do that for a split second, and then you get back into your righty stance. Mick, head body, right there! Head, body! Ah, shit!”

  And the interview ended there. “All right, thank you very much, Dick. Best of the luck the rest of the way.”

  Micky was already contending with the hole in his lip and had been swallowing a disgusting amount of blood since the third round. He also had developed considerable swelling under his left eye that Gavin was trying to keep from opening up.

  “Mick, you’re letting him work all over you,” Dickie criticized. “He’s tiring you. You should be tiring him. Micky, go for the gusto! You gotta work, Micky. You gotta work!”

  “You’ve got to go for the body,” Gavin interjected while treating Micky’s cuts. “Two punches, not one. Two!”

  Bloody, battered, and bruised, the two fighters persisted. They were exhausted, but they could rest tomorrow. Each round was replete with punishing power shots. Micky was getting the worst of it. Green had fought within inches of Micky most of the night, and another hard left hook to the jaw in the ninth round reminded him to keep a safer distance. Late in the ninth, Micky and Green connected at the same time. Left hooks together. Green took more than he gave. Micky sensed it and stepped up his intensity. As he went in for the kill, Green landed a counter left hand. Bam! Just like that, the momentum shifted back in Green’s favor.

  “Throw a hundred punches, whatever you have to do!” Dickie exhorted his brother. “Spit. Can you swallow a little bit? You’re still fighting real good, Mick. Keep your hands up. Let’s go, Mick. You need the knockout. Go get it!”

  Micky came out for the tenth and final round looking to land a knockout blow. He knew that was the only way he could win this fight. He was too far behind on points. So, he threw haymakers at Green’s head with both hands, and he threw body shots in combinations, but Green kept coming at him. Then halfway through the round, Micky landed one of those patented left hooks to the ribs that caused Green to jump up in the air. It was a full-body flinch. When Green came back down, Micky hit him again in the same spot. This time Green nearly doubled over, but he willed himself upright. He backpedaled to safety, but his hands were low as Micky swooped in. Micky hit him with a left hand to the head. That wobbled Green. Micky hit him again. Green stared straight down at the canvas. He didn’t move until another head-body combination sent him across the ring. Green looked as if he wanted to keep backing up forever, but the far ropes stopped his retreat. Micky was on him in a flash, but he didn’t throw any punches for a moment. Instead, while the crowd was on its feet, roaring as if they were in the Roman Coliseum, Micky patiently waited for the right opening. Only one minute remained in the fight. The next sixty seconds would determine where Micky’s career would go.

  Micky banged Green with a left uppercut that shot his head back like a gunshot victim. Green moved to the center of the ring and bobbed his head up and down like a drunk who is unsure if he just dropped his car keys.

  “Green is in trouble right now. He should tie Ward up. He should tie Ward up right now,” Atlas yelled into his microphone.

  With thirty seconds to go, Green was moving on instinct. He was fighting courageously, but he was wobbling and unable to defend himself. Just as Micky was about to inflict further damage, the referee came in to separate the fighters. As Norm Vellieu approached, Micky landed one more left hook. This one sent Green sprawling against the far ropes. He managed to stay on his feet, but Vellieu waved off the fight.

  “That’s a bit controversial, because as the ref was stepping in, he kind of blocked Green’s view and Ward caught him a good clean shot,” Atlas said.

  Bob Papa added, “That’s bad refereeing right there, I think, Teddy.”

  “I didn’t like that. I didn’t like the way that ended, I’ll be honest with you. Because as he was stepping in, Micky might have stopped him anyway, but he made it controversial. As he stepped in and put his arm in, he distracted Green. Green let up a little bit and then Ward threw a punch. I’m not saying Ward wouldn’t have got to him, but it shouldn’t have been that way.”

  But Green could not argue with the stoppage. He had no fight left in him. He was exhausted and beaten, and so was Micky.

  “That truly was fighting,” Atlas would tell Ron Borges of the Boston Globe. “That was not entertainment. That was not business. That was fighting. This is a barbaric thing at the core of it. . . . Like the mobsters say, that was a real guy up there. When it came down to what a fighter is about, Micky Ward was it. . . . You don’t see it too often no more.”

  Green held his head high and his chest out; he’d fought with as much courage and pride as Micky had. Green went back to his dressing room, packed his things, left the bloody hand wraps on the floor, and headed out to the parking lot. He shuffled slowly and accepted help from a man on either side of him. It was evident that his ribs were causing him intense pain.

  Before he got in his car to drive over to the hospital, Borges stopped him and asked, “Reggie, are you all right?”

  “Did you see the fight?” Green asked.

  “Yeah, I saw the fight. What happened?”

  “The other guy happened. I’ve never been hit harder, and I have never hit anyone harder than Micky,” Green said. “I honestly don’t know what kept him up. No one left me busted up like Micky.”

  “I had the will,” Ward would say. “He dazed me once, but with my heart I wasn’t going down. I knew the body shots were getting to him. Even the ones on the elbows were takin’ a price. I think he just said, ‘Enough.’ I knew I had to push it that last round. I knew I was down, behind in points. I was in good shape for it. I felt a little rusty. He’s sharp, he’s very elusive. It’s hard to hit him with one clean shot. He moves around a lot on his punches, so it’s hard to catch him square. But I just wanted to keep pressuring him, and I knew if I kept the heart and God’s will, I knew I would come out on top. It took me ten rounds, but hey, it’s a win.”

  Micky was the winner, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at his face. He was left with a huge swelling under his left eye and a two-inch gouge on his cheek that bled intermittently for the last five rounds. When Dickie lifted Micky into the air upon the culmination of the fight, his satin shirt was smeared with his bro
ther’s blood.

  In the locker room after the fight, Micky slumped on a metal folding chair. He was clearly exhausted. He asked for some water, and Dickie handed him a plastic bottle. As soon as the bottle came in contact with his lips, he cringed and cried out in pain. He dropped the water bottle and put his hand to his sore mouth.

  Just fifteen minutes earlier, he was still getting punched in the mouth, but he gave no indication that it hurt. Now that he was no longer in that other mental place where fighters have to go, he was just like anybody else. He felt pain.

  “People ask me all the time,” Borges said. “‘How come boxers don’t feel the punches?’ They do feel the punches. They make choices that the rest of us don’t make. But as soon as Micky was in a civilized setting, he couldn’t make that choice anymore. Soon after that, his girlfriend comes in and hugs him and goes to kiss him, and she gets the same reaction as the bottle. He was willing to get punched in that lip by Reggie Green for as long as it took to win the fight, but he could not be kissed on that lip. That says all you need to know about what it takes to be a fighter.”

  Teddy Atlas knows what it takes. Recognized as one of the best trainers, Atlas was a fighter himself until a spinal injury forced him to retire.

  “Micky was in there with Green, who was more athletic, just as experienced as Micky, and had better skills than Micky,” Atlas expounded. “Green had more speed and had more options in the ring. He was winning the fight handily. He was doing more than winning the fight. Micky was taking a beating. He was there. He was not caving in at all. People cave in to degrees. The key with Micky was that he didn’t cave in to degrees. Some people get credit for being stout because they’re still there, but they become game quitters. They’re not really looking to win, they’re just accumulating punishment. They get credit by uneducated people in the sport by thinking they’re at the same level of stoutness as somebody else, and they’re not, because what has to be included in that effort is trying to win, not just surviving, not just enduring. That’s what allowed Micky to stand out and to win the fights. He did not submit to that point where he was just enduring and not trying to win. That’s why he gets credit for being stout at a higher level than somebody who just exists and just lasts. He did not make those solid contracts to just survive. The fight with Green was an example of that.

  “Micky had ability that people don’t understand. We register ability by things that are flashy, that are digestible to us and what we think are more tangible or easier to feel comfortable with, things that are loud. If somebody has fast hands, we notice. If they knock somebody out, we notice. But we don’t notice the other things that are just as important and that are talents that have to be developed. And one of those talents is being dependable. Micky had that talent. . . . You don’t see it the way you see those other things, but they serve you, and they can make you special. He had that talent of being dependable, of being steady, of being able to be within himself and see things under pressure. And sure enough, he changed that left hook angle to throw it inside the elbow, and he hurt Green. So after all that punishment, such a long night, and such a one-sided night, all of a sudden right there, he turned the fight around. And to do that, that meant that he had never capitulated—ever—during the course of that night. A lot of people might have still endured, but they would have capitulated. . . . But he never did. That’s what allowed him to have that opportunity. He turned it around and stopped Green. He pulled that fight right out of the fire, a fight that looked to be gone.”

  It was the turning point of Micky’s career. The kid from Lowell, who was being promoted by a guy who couldn’t promote fights in Massachusetts, managed by a guy who had never managed before, and trained by his brother, the former crack addict, put on a remarkably entertaining performance with a dramatic climax, and he did it in front of a national television audience. Sal LoNano immediately knew what it meant for Micky’s future. That’s why when Micky was applying the finishing touches on Green, Sal ended up on the floor. Sal had jumped up in excitement and came crashing down on his ringside chair, breaking it. He ended up sprawled out on the ground and needed assistance from the New Hampshire boxing commissioner just so he could see the end of the fight.

  Sal was ready to celebrate, but he knew that Micky wouldn’t be. So, he played traffic cop in front of the locker room preventing Micky’s friends and family from barging in. Micky’s seven sisters took turns cursing him out, but Sal held his ground.

  “Micky thanked me for it,” Sal says. “You have a warrior who just went through a war, and he doesn’t want to see friends and have family hugging him. He needs to be alone, to cool down. Let the cutman and the doctor look at him. Give him some water. What was inside that door was a kid who really respected me, and he thanked me for what I did. Give him ten minutes. That’s all I wanted to do.”

  When it was time to go, the post-fight celebration spilled over to the Coliseum, a little Italian restaurant. Sal took over the kitchen and prepared food for about sixty people. Reggie Green came over from the hospital, still sore and very hungry. It was a wonderful night that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. But Micky never showed up. Sal didn’t see him again until the next morning for breakfast at the Holiday Inn.

  “Hey, where’d you go last night?” Sal asked. “Everybody was asking about you.”

  “I had to go get stitches,” Micky said.

  “How many?”

  “Sixty,” Micky said flatly. “What’s good here? I’m starving.”

  Sixty stitches. Micky had fought seven rounds with a hole in his mouth that required five dozen stitches. That’s why Al Valenti called Gavin “the miracle worker.”

  “He plugged him up,” Valenti said. “And give credit to Dickie. He kept working on his calves and his head. He got him back in the fight. In the fourth round, Micky’s legs came back.”

  The two guys in the corner had a hand in it, but it was Micky’s left hand and his lion-sized heart that did the rest. It was his miracle comeback. He took the punishment. He refused to quit. It was Micky who had survived to fight another day.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “In the long run,” Al Valenti summarizes, “Micky’s epitaph will be that he was a fighter. He was a fighter in life, and he was a fighter in the ring. He should have been a loser, but he turned out to be a winner. When you consider what he was born into, and how he came out of that, it was like the odds of winning some of those fights that he won after starting out so far behind.”

  Micky did start out in the back of the line. No money, no education, no discipline at home, no positive role models, and not much of a chance. But when you’re on the bottom, there’s really only one way to go. And that’s where Micky was going. Up.

  His inspiring victory put a lot of possibilities on the table, including a chance to fight the WBC champion, Kostya Tszyu, in December. Micky could have been a co-headliner with the Fernando Vargas-Winky Wright IBF light welterweight title fight on HBO, but the injuries he sustained in the Green fight wouldn’t be healed in time. So Micky had to pass.

  Sal and Al had thought they’d have a chance to make the Julio Cesar Chavez fight finally happen, but the day after Micky beat Green, Chavez took a beating at the hands of lightly regarded journeyman Willy Wise. And so, three years after Chavez would have represented Micky’s big break, Micky had actually moved beyond perhaps the greatest light welterweight of all time.

  There was also plenty of talk about Micky taking on Arturo Gatti, the former super featherweight champion who was ready to move up to the light welterweight division.

  In 1997, Gatti was badly hurt in the fourth round by former world champion Gabriel Ruelas, but he knocked Ruelas out in the fifth. And in 1998, Gatti and Ivan Robinson traded leather for ten rounds before Robinson was awarded a split decision. Both of those exciting battles were recognized as “Fights of the Year.”

  Now, it was 1999 and Gatti had only fought once, knocking out Reyes Munoz in the first round. He was inactive, b
ut not forgotten, and a battle with Micky Ward promised to be a classic matchup.

  “I love that fight,” HBO’s Lou DiBella said.

  But it didn’t happen. Not then. Sal pushed the discussions as far as securing a date, March 11, a location, the FleetCenter in Boston, and an undercard that would include WBU champion Shea Neary against Ray Oliveira. But as that deal fell apart, primarily because Gatti demanded too much money, another intriguing possibility began to materialize.

  “After Reggie Green we should have gotten a lot of offers,” Valenti concluded. “Micky’s won two fights on TV. He’s exciting. He can draw a crowd. But we’re not getting anything we really want. Time passes, and we’re into the New Year, and I’m at the Golden Gloves in Lowell with Sal. My cell phone rings and it’s the big-time promoter Cedric Kushner and he asks me, ‘Who’s got Micky Ward?’ I said, ‘I’m sitting right next to his manager, Sal LoNano.’ So he says, ‘Well, what do you think about going to England and fighting Shea Neary?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I says. ‘Let me get back to you.’”

  There wasn’t a lot to think about. Valenti said, “Offering Shea Neary to Micky Ward was like offering a steak to a tiger. This guy was undefeated with twenty-two wins, but he’d only fought in Europe. Anybody who fights in Europe is not giving themselves the opportunity to show what they’ve got. So, we called back and Cedric talks to Sal and we make the fight.”

  Kushner’s first phone call to Al occurred in late January 2000, and the fight was scheduled for March 11. Everything fell into place that quickly, in part because Kushner had been working with Neary and his management team for more than a year, trying to find him a strong American fighter to raise his profile and his bank account. Micky was not Kushner’s first choice, but he was the first one to say yes, and he was ready to go on relatively short notice. Six weeks would be more than enough time to prepare. Furthermore, the fight had a natural, easily promotable hook built right in.