“I’ve had a few unlicensed bouts but most of my experience comes from being a doorman and being brought up on the estate.”
Sean O’Hagan, Josh Warrington’s father and trainer, on his boxing pedigree
I RECALL meeting some lads from Leeds for the first time in a nightclub during freshers’ week during my student days in Hull.
There was a bit of craic until, after was a bit of horsing around, they were dragged out of the club and thrown unceremoniously out onto the street.
Having been used to the more moderate crowd control strategies at the Carrickdale, I approached the bouncers to plead the lads’ case.
‘Here, them boys never…’
Thirty seconds later I was out on my ear in the street too, with my new Happy Mondays top ripped and ruined. I gathered myself up to head for home but my new mates from Leeds (and don’t forget these were the university types) weren’t going anywhere. Oh no, they hung around to have it out with the bouncers when they left the club at the end of the night.
What’s the moral of my story? From my experience, lads from Leeds tend to be hard as nails so bouncers in northern towns and cities in England have to be harder.
Sean O’Hagan, Josh Warrington’s father and coach, ticks both boxes. Brought up on the tough Halton Moor estate in Leeds, it was his experience doing the door at the city’s nightclubs that led him into boxing. Without any formal amateur experience or ever boxing as a pro, he has guided his son to 27 wins on-the-trot and the IBF featherweight title he defends against Carl Frampton on Saturday night.
“I don’t have a massive background in boxing,” O’Hagan admits.
“I’ve had a few unlicensed bouts in the past but most of my experience comes from being a doorman and being brought up on the estate.
“Doing the door were alright, it were a good carry-on and I earned a few quid. I only did it because I needed the money, not because I were ’out special.
“Back then it was all dead straight.
“If you had a straightener with somebody that was it done with, there was none of this turning up later on with loads of bats and another 10 blokes.
For years his son Josh Warrington was dismissed as a big-hearted but one-dimensional swarmer who lacked any world class qualities. But over nine years Warrington rose through the ranks, biding his time on small hall shows and winning minor titles until his moment came against Lee Selby in the summer.
When the first bell rang on that May night at Elland Road he was the underdog, when the last one sounded he was IBF featherweight champion. He defends the belt against Frampton on Saturday night in Manchester and his camp are extremely confident of another against-the-odds win.
“We’re very relaxed and very, very confident,” said O’Hagan.
“We’re always relaxed. It’s business and we’ve done it that many times now. We’re professionals and we can’t be any other way now because we do things and we do them right.
“We’re constantly told ‘oh you won’t get past this fighter or that fighter’ and I’ve just looked back at our opposition and we’ve beat some good fighters and not just beaten them, we haven’t even given them a look in.
“We know we’ve got it right again and we’re just sat now waiting for fight night. We could fight tomorrow if we needed to.
“I had to send him for a roast dinner yesterday. Yorkshire puddings, a bit of sage and onion and a bit of scrag end of lamb… You can’t go wrong with a bit of that, can you?”
That’s not the diet you’d expect a featherweight champion to be on days before his first defence but they do things their own way at Dicky’s Gym in Batley.
O’Hagan’s son is the champion now but did he win in May, or did a weight-drained Selby lose? The official verdict was a split decision but (despite what one judge thought) the ‘Welsh Mayweather’ was well and truly beaten on the night.
O’Hagan explains: “I asked Chris Sanigar (Selby’s coach) before the fight, I said: ‘I don’t think he can even do this weight’. Selby and all his team jumped up: ‘Rubbish! We’ve been doing this weight for years! We know what we’re doing and we don’t have any problems’.”
O’Hagan says the Warrington camp studied Selby and came up with the plan to find gaps in his defence by attacking him “down his blindside”. It worked a treat.
“Selby was nice and slick and he’ll walk you on to a big shot and he brings the uppercuts through because he has really long arms, he has a really long reach advantage,” he said.
“We had to play it a little bit cagey with him. It looked to a lot of people that we were just jumping forward and pressuring him, we actually weren’t, we were going down his blindside because he can’t move to his right.
“All he can do is dip away but couldn’t get out of the way, he couldn’t avoid those shots.
“When he got beat it was: ‘We were weight-drained’. There’s always going to be something but when you go into the ring, you go prepared, ready to go.”
Selby has moved up from featherweight since but, regardless of his issues, Warrington was superb on the night. Boxing behind a ramrod jab he picked his moments to attack and box off the back foot and produced the performance of his life. Will he need more to beat Frampton?
“I don’t think so,” answers O’Hagan.
“I like Carl, I’ve always thought he were a good lad. Any time he’s boxed I’ve always backed him because I do genuinely like the guy - I admire anybody who climbs in the ring.
“Carl is a nice guy and he has been saying that Josh is getting big for his boots by saying he’s going to knock him out but that’s not being big for your boots, it’s being confident.
“Then he says we’re not at his level… It’s good to be confident before you box but we’ve never said anything derogatory about Carl and we never would.”
The Warrington camp cannot be faulted for ambition. After beating Selby they could easily have taken a winnable mandatory defence but, in Frampton, they have chosen to fight a two-weight world champion who is desperate to become the champ again.
“Carl comes for a fight, he’s a natural counterpuncher,” said O’Hagan.
“He’s good at what he does and I’ve seen him out-box guys he shouldn’t have. He had a fantastic performance against Santa Cruz when he won the title, it was brilliant but Santa Cruz made a few adjustments second time around and Carl didn’t really have an answer.
“We’ve prepared for Carl Frampton and on the night you’re going to see a different Josh Warrington. Whatever the fight calls for we’ll produce it.
“Josh is very adaptable, when we needed to fight Selby we out-fought him and we needed to out-box him we out-boxed him. We can do a lot of things that people haven’t seen yet.”
O’Hagan’s grandfather was Edward O’Hagan, originally from the Falls Road, who left Belfast to work in Yorkshire and never returned. Links with the Belfast O’Hagan’s have been lost but Sean still visits the city and says his son has a growing fanbase in Ireland.
“Me and me wife visit there regularly,” he says.
“Me grandad was from the Falls Road so Josh is from good Irish stock.
“We’ve got a lot of history there and we’ve still got a few friends and some family even though I’ve lost touch with them. They’re there somewhere.
“It’s got a real nice relaxed atmosphere and everybody is so laid back. We’ve been up the Falls and we’ve been over on Sandy Row as well. I don’t do the division thing, I’ve got friends in both quarters.”
If his lad beats Frampton on Saturday night he might get a frosty reception in those pubs next time he pops in. He knows Frampton will throw everything at Warrington on Saturday night as he strives to get back into the world champions’ club.
You know what he would say: “Yer name’s not down, yer not coming in.”
