AFTER a pitch-perfect stoppage win over Louis Greene last August, highly-rated Belfast welterweight Lewis Crocker puts his WBO European title on the line against German Deniz Ilbay in Bolton on Friday night.
A successful defence of the belt will put Crocker (12-0) in line for a British title eliminator by the end of July and trainer Dee Walsh has no doubt that ‘Croc’ is ready for that step up in class.
“He’s special; a special talent,” says Walsh, a former pro himself who got to 12-0 before switching to training.
“He’s been looking good in sparring, he’s been a lot more disciplined with his diet and he has stepped up his training. He has always been a good trainer but he has got the training and the nutrition right for this fight.”
Meticulous coach Walsh took over 24-year-old Crocker’s corner before the Belfast fighter locked horns with experienced John Thain last February. The partnership has flourished since.
“We go over stuff for maybe two months before a fight – the same stuff over and over again,” Walsh explained.
“We go over a gameplan non-stop because I’m big into muscle-memory and (the constant repetition) means he does things in a fight without having to think about it. There is stuff that he has to know consciously and then there’s stuff he has to be able to do sub-consciously so we go over the gameplans constantly.”
The gameplans Walsh and Crocker practice are akin to individual the ‘plays’ in an American Football coach’s playbook. While they will formulate specific plans for dealing with Ilbay, aspects of the work they did for the Thain and Greene fights could come in handy on Friday night.
“The gameplans that I give him mean that he can always revert back to them if he needs them,” Walsh explains.
“For example, in the fight against Louis Greene I noticed during one of the rounds that he was comfortable up close, so I told Lewis that if he was comfortable on the inside with him that he should stay inside and he dropped him with a bodyshot. All of that came from the Thain fight because we wanted to push Thain back – they’re all pieces of a puzzle.
“If Lewis is being too negative on Friday night I can say to him: ‘You need to be more aggressive here’ and tell him to use other things that we’ve worked on and so it’s easier for him to adapt, especially at the top level when not everything is going to go your way.
“Although he was very negative, John Thain was a good test, Lewis Greene was a brilliant test and this one (Ilbay) is going to be an even better test and it’ll all set Lewis up for the future.”
Ilbay (22-2) has been a pro for 10 years now and is unbeaten on home soil – his two losses came on the road. World title challenger Egidijus Kavaliauskas was the first man to beat him and, two years ago, Ilbay lost to Jonathan Jose Eniz in Norway.
Despite those defeats, the German champion remains a potent force who will see a win over up-and-coming Crocker as his passport to the breakthrough he has threatened to make.
“He must be itching to go and stamp his mark,” says Walsh.
“He should be higher-ranked than he is and he’ll definitely be coming to win. He has said that he’s going to stop Lewis, but I can’t see that happening.
“Lewis is more and more focussed and now that he has three fights set up (British title eliminator and then the British title fight if all goes according to plan) I think it’ll set him for world title level. He’s never had that before, he’s never had fights lined up one after the other. All being well, he could be British champion by the end of the year.”
On the undercard on Friday night, Gary Cully squares off with Viktor Kotochigov for the vacant WBO European lightweight title, Isaac Lowe returns, Jordan Reynolds makes his professional debut against Robbie Chapman, Sahir Iqbal is back in action, Carl Fail enters the paid ranks for the first time against undefeated Jordan Dujon, and Mace Ruegg meets Johnson Tellez.
Meanwhile, on March 19, Paul Hyland Jnr takes on Maxi Hughes for the vacant British lightweight title, Lee McGregor challenges Karim Guerfi for his European bantamweight title and Walsh-trained Padraig McCrory faces Germaine Brown in a clash of unbeaten super-middleweights.
NEWRY’S former British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion Danny McAlinden passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer aged 73, 50 years to the day after he out-pointed Rahman Ali over six rounds in the chief support for Muhammad Ali’s legendary ‘Fight of the Century’ rumble with Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden, New York.
Wins for McAlinden and Frazier that night in ‘the Garden’ meant that both Ali brothers lost and the county Down native – who was involved in some furious slugfests throughout his 12-year as a pro - went on to headline the bill at Villa Park, Birmingham the following year when he knocked out Jack Bodell to win the British and Commonwealth titles.
Over two savage rounds, McAlinden, by then living in England, blasted Bodell into defeat and retirement. It was a typical full-blooded performance from McAlinden and was his 25th contest in slightly over three years as a professional, mostly fighting on the fast and furious London circuit of the early 1970s. He was 21-2-2 at that stage and retired with a record of 31-12-2. He boxed on home soil just twice and the first of those bouts was in Derry in July 1977 when he beat Sean McKenna on a Charlie Nash undercard to win the Northern Ireland Area heavyweight title. All tolled, 36 of his 45 fights finished inside the distance.
“Big Dan was a gentleman,” said Belfast boxing doyen John Breen, who trained McAlinden in the latter days of his career. Breen’s father-in-law Mike Callaghan was McAlinden’s manager at that stage and he and the Newry-born heavyweight were married to Callaghan’s daughters.
“He was a gutsy big fella and I watched his fight with Jack Bodell today – they were two of the best rounds I’ve ever seen between heavyweights,” Breen added.
“He was always very good to me, we always got on well together – I treated him the same way I treated everybody else and he was a lovely big fella. I’m glad his suffering is over.”