Sport

Joshua, Pulev and the Fury fiasco - Cathal McMonagle on mixing with the heavyweight elite

Having gone toe to toe with both during their amateur days, Cathal McMonagle will be an interested observer when Anthony Joshua and Kubrat Pulev collide at Wembley Arena on Saturday night. The Letterkenny man chats to Neil Loughran about those fights, as well as the Tyson Fury fiasco that threatened his spot on the Irish team…

Cathal McMonagle lost out to Anthony Joshua in the last 16 of the European Championships back in 2011. A year later Joshua claimed Olympic gold in 2012, setting him on the road to superstardom. Picture by INPHO
Cathal McMonagle lost out to Anthony Joshua in the last 16 of the European Championships back in 2011. A year later Joshua claimed Olympic gold in 2012, setting him on the road to superstardom. Picture by INPHO Cathal McMonagle lost out to Anthony Joshua in the last 16 of the European Championships back in 2011. A year later Joshua claimed Olympic gold in 2012, setting him on the road to superstardom. Picture by INPHO

ANTHONY Joshua has a lot to answer for. Not only did he spend a week trying to take Cathal McMonagle’s head from his shoulders, the current world heavyweight champion also played a part in the beginning of the end for the Donegal man.

Facing down 6’6” of “brick shithouse” may be no laughing matter to you or I but, nine years on, McMonagle still chuckles as he tells the tale.

The first time he ever laid eyes on Joshua, the first time he’d ever even heard of him, was when the Irish team travelled to Team GB’s Sheffield headquarters in May 2011. By that stage, McMonagle was an experienced campaigner.

A five-time Irish champion, a veteran of World and European Championships, the 2002 Commonwealths in Manchester, countless multi-nations, international training camps here, there and everywhere – the 32-year-old knew the game inside and out.

Joshua, on the other hand, had only laced up gloves for the first time in 2007, trading basketball for boxing after a cousin advised the troubled teenager to go down to Finchley ABC in north London.

Within four years he looked the part, even if he hadn’t yet developed the skills to back up his impressive physique. Scott Belshaw was probably the biggest of the domestic bangers, but the Holy Trinity man was well used to coming up against giants on the international stage.

The 22-year-old Joshua held no fear.

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know a pile about him.

“Nobody had said that much, so the first I really saw him was that first spar… there was this big, big lad, built like a tank. I’m about six-foot-one-and-a-half so he was a good bit taller too; I’d have been small enough for super-heavy anyway.

“This was a couple of weeks before the Europeans, I was sparring Joshua all week and he was just trying to kill me in the sparring sessions. That’s the thing with sparring, I always wore these big puffy gloves that were designed to protect your hands and protect your opponent, but then you’d be in against boys wearing ones that were like bag gloves.

“Joshua had on this nice wee pair of tight gloves, and from the first second he just went at me like a train. He was still fairly raw so I was trying to suss him out, he was trying to knock me out.

“In that first spar I just had to cover up and try to figure out the best way to handle this fella...”

As the week progressed, McMonagle slowly but surely began to hold his own. Joshua too would be travelling out to Turkey for the European Championships in a few weeks’ time, and nobody knew what the draw might throw up.

But McMonagle was determined to make a mark on this young prospect before leaving Sheffield.

“Because he was always trying to knock me out, I remember thinking ‘I’m going to get this big lad one shot before these championships - get him a good slap’.

“But here, I telegraphed it and sure I stumbled as well, then he caught me with a big uppercut and the strap on my headguard sliced my chin. I ended up having to go to hospital with the physio that night to get stitched up, so that went well!”

Standing at ringside, then Irish coach Billy Walsh was unimpressed, turning to psychologist Gerry Hussey and describing Joshua as “a big novice”.

Walsh and Hussey would speak about him again down the line, while fate conspired to bring Joshua and McMonagle together again too.

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 Anthony Joshua and Kubrat Pulev were initially scheduled to meet in 2017, but will finally lock horns on Saturday night. Picture by PA
 Anthony Joshua and Kubrat Pulev were initially scheduled to meet in 2017, but will finally lock horns on Saturday night. Picture by PA  Anthony Joshua and Kubrat Pulev were initially scheduled to meet in 2017, but will finally lock horns on Saturday night. Picture by PA

UNLIKE with Joshua, McMonagle knew exactly who Kubrat Pulev was when both progressed to the semi-final stage of the Gee Bee multi-nations tournament in 2007.

The tough Bulgarian had served notice of his considerable talent early on, defeating Cuba’s reigning world champion Odlanier Solis at just 19 before taking home bronze from the 2005 World Championships in Mianyang.

A couple of years later, though, McMonagle was a man on a mission.

Having negotiated with work that he could spend one day a week at the Irish High Performance unit in Dublin, as well as a day at the weekend, his sights were set firmly on the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Pulev would be a huge test but, after watching his quarter-final win from ringside in Helsinki, McMonagle was quietly confident.

“I knew he had a very good international record but I didn’t think he was anything special – there was everything to fight for. That was how I saw it,” says the Letterkenny man, who works as an electronic engineer.

“I’d boxed well in my quarter-final, I was confident going in. Pulev was awkward, he was probably 6’4” or so and had a big enough reach advantage but I just put in a high work-rate, in and out as quick as I could.

“I wasn’t exactly Mike Tyson on the inside so I couldn’t afford to be hanging about against those big boys. But I just stuck to it, in and out fast, and outworked him really. Each round was really close…”

McMonagle’s hand was raised after a 17-14 win – though the energy expended took its toll the following day.

“I fought Robert Helenius in the final, he was from Finland, another big lump, about 6’6”, and it was a cricket score in the end.

“I had to fight Pulev at a very high pace, and then the final was the following afternoon. I was doing the warm-up before that fight, all bobbing and weaving, and my legs were dead. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“The corner was saying ‘roll roll roll’ but I couldn’t roll any more. I felt like rolling out of the ropes.”

After a superb start to 2007, and after winning a silver medal at the EU championships in Dublin - losing out to Olympic and double world champion, Roberto Cammarelle of Italy - McMonagle suffered an elbow injury during a training camp in Ukraine that would cause bother for the rest of his boxing career.

Then a cold that just would not shift wreaked havoc with preparations for the World Championships in Chicago, though the draw didn’t help either.

“It wasn’t a good championships for Ireland anyway but everybody else pulled Trinidad and Tobago and these other countries where I got the Russian number one straight off the bat…”

McMonagle bowed out against eventual bronze medallist Islam Timurziev, while there was trouble brewing at home too where another challenge – this time from outside the ropes - threatened to derail his Olympic ambitions.

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TYSON Fury’s name first started to surface around 2007. Having lost to Liverpudlian David Price in the previous year’s ABA final and found himself down the pecking order for English selection, the 20-year-old was determined to force his way into the frame for Ireland.

Talking up his Irish heritage, Fury weighed in for the national senior boxing championships in January 2008 and, with Olympic qualifiers in Pescara and Athens on the horizon, was gunning for McMonagle’s super-heavy spot.

However, after failing to produce proof of residency for the year previous, Fury wasn’t allowed to enter.

“How can a boxer who has competed for England in five or six different internationals and tournaments this year — and is the current number two in their official ratings — claim that he has been resident here in Ireland for the last 12 months?” asked Holy Trinity coach Michael Hawkins at the time.

“Cathal McMonagle, just like every other amateur boxer in this country, has worked hard and dedicated himself and virtually his whole life to realising his ambition of winning an Irish championship.”

“It was all fairly ridiculous in the end,” laughs McMonagle.

“Mickey did some good detective work and they didn’t let him in.”

McMonagle would have fancied his chances even if Fury had been granted permission, although he has been astonished by Fury’s subsequent rise to the very top of the sport.

“He wasn’t actually that great an amateur… if someone told me in 2008 this boy’s going to be the world champion, and by a fair distance, I’d have laughed. I would never have seen him hitting the heights that he has.

“He went to America and Steve Cunningham put him on his ass, others dropped him along the way, but I’d say he’s the best heavyweight around now.

“He has the size and the speed, but as well Fury’s a natural boxer. He’s been at it all his life, you can see that, as opposed to a Joshua or a Joe Joyce who came to it late.”

McMonagle ended up being handed a walkover in those 2008 Irish Championships but it didn’t go to plan at the qualifiers, early defeats in Pescara and Athens leaving the Beijing Olympics out of reach.

At 29 then, he’d had enough.

“That was me,” he says.

“I’d never even really thought of going pro or anything. In Chicago in 2007, one of Bob Arum’s guys was looking me and Darren Sutherland to turn over with Top Rank but I wasn’t in great form at the time, my elbow was still giving me bother and if you’re turning pro, you need all the tools available to you.

“Naw, the gloves were hung up. I was done.”

But when the next Olympic cycle kicked into gear, and an elbow operation helped to ease some of the pain, McMonagle decided on one last go. A good showing was needed at the 2011 European Championships as London 2012 loomed ever larger on the horizon.

By then, though, he wasn’t the only one dreaming big.

Back in 2008, Tyson Fury tried to force his way into the Ireland frame - a move which would have left him on a collision course with Cathal McMonagle. Picture by PA
Back in 2008, Tyson Fury tried to force his way into the Ireland frame - a move which would have left him on a collision course with Cathal McMonagle. Picture by PA Back in 2008, Tyson Fury tried to force his way into the Ireland frame - a move which would have left him on a collision course with Cathal McMonagle. Picture by PA

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A MONTH on from sparks flying behind closed doors, Anthony Joshua and Cathal McMonagle would meet in the last 16 in Ankara. It was, the Donegal man reckons, written in the stars.

“Sometimes you wonder are these things pre-ordained. But once I knew it was him, my whole thing was ‘just get a good start’…”

And he did. Or he thought he did.

“I believed I’d done well, but then when I came back to the corner, I was three or four down, and sure that was game over.

“I plugged away, trying to get back at him but you’re already fighting against a guy who’s very big and strong.

“That’s kind of the reason – well, one of the reasons - I fell out of favour with the Irish team. Joshua was stopped by a Romanian [Mihai Nistor] in the next fight after Joshua beat me; Joshua was winning well until he was caught with a big looping left hook and that was it.

“But all of a sudden it became as though I couldn’t even beat this big novice... but this was the same ‘big novice’ who was World silver medallist three months later, the same ‘big novice’ who was crowned Olympic champion a year later.

“He’s done brilliant."

Gerry Hussey wasted no time in reminding Billy Walsh of their Sheffield conversation when Joshua stood on top of the podium at the Excel Exhibition Centre.

“Hussey rang me after London,” recalled Walsh in an interview with The Guardian earlier this year, “and he just says ‘here, remember that novice you were on about…’”

McMonagle, meanwhile, had lost a box-off to go to the 2011 World Championships against emerging Clonmel super-heavy Con Sheehan, in a contest he thought he had done enough to win.

Realising that his best days were behind him, McMonagle brought the curtain down again – for good this time. The first couple of years away for the sport were tough but, eventually, life moves on.

Some of these memories might come flooding back when he sits down in front of the television on Saturday night to watch two of his old foes go to war. And, although he still has reservations, McMonagle can only see one winner.

“Pulev’s been on the scene too long, he’s been very inactive in the last number of years.

“He is a good boxer, you never know what can happen at heavyweight, but I don’t think he hits hard enough. I don’t think Joshua would fear his power, although he probably didn’t fear Andy Ruiz’s power either.

“There are still question marks over Joshua after that… in the rematch he looked half afraid to go near Ruiz, so there’s still questions he has to answer because he hasn’t fought since.

“But I’d still give him the edge."