AFTER two fights in empty TV studios, James McGivern finally got to hear the roar of a crowd for the first time since turning pro when he walked out at the Feile fight night earlier this month. A man born to the big stage, these are the moments he lives for, with the promise of plenty more to come.
Team McGivern was there at Falls Park force as he eased to a unanimous points win over Ed Harrison yet, for all the joy, a tweet sent out the previous day acknowledged the absence of the person who would have been most proud.
“See you out there mummy,” said the 23-year-old, “for the love of God don’t be shouting too much.”
Nicola McGivern passed away back in February, a shocking loss to her loving and loved family that was felt right across the Belfast boxing community.
The Feile fight night was the first time James had laced up gloves since and, as the summer nears its end, younger brother Jack is preparing to make his ring return when he debuts at the Irish Elites next month.
When he does, mum Nicola will be in his corner, just as she always was.
“She was Mrs Boxing,” says the 20-year-old who, just as James did, boxes out of the St George’s club where dad Jim is a coach.
“All her Facebook was flooded with boxing stuff, talking to all the boys down in Dublin… she loved it. She was probably a bit tentative at the start. No mum wants their kids going somewhere they might get hurt, but once she came and watched us and saw we were good, she backed us 100 per cent.
“She loved the club, loved me and James boxing – she would go to the end of the world to support us, and she was the one at seven in the morning screaming your name to get out and go for a run.
“When you were coming back your breakfast would be made for you… she was so supportive of me and James. We lost my granny the week before that too. The whole family was just… I don’t even know how to explain it.
“You didn’t know what was happening.”
The brothers have leant heavily on each other in good times and in bad, the past six months having been the worst imaginable.
Whenever James was asked in recent years, he was the first to big up the younger sibling coming through the ranks, and Jack continues to learn from one of most talented boxers to burst on the Ulster and Irish scene in the past decade.
James McGivern won everything on his way to elite level before picking up Ulster and Irish titles at two different weights before landing Commonwealth Games bronze in 2018.
Indeed, had it not been for a shake-up in the weight categories midway through the Olympic cycle, he would almost certainly have been in Tokyo.
“I honestly believe if there had still been a 60 kilo weight class in Tokyo, James would have a gold medal around his neck now,” says Jack.
“I’m learning off him so much. I’m like a sponge, when he’s doing stuff I’m watching him, and it’s great to have him because he’s done it before. If I’m on the bags I’m watching him like a hawk out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s mad how much knowledge he has for someone so young. He did so much in amateur boxing. Going into these Irish Elites, I’m going into the unknown in a way, but in other ways I’m not because I have him teaching me stuff, telling me what to expect.
“I’ve been down there with him at the National Stadium, seeing what’s it’s like in the days before, on the night. I soak up everything off him.”
That mutual respect is admirable among siblings so close in age. Typically though, there is little quarter given when they step into the ring.
And the pressure of following in James’s footsteps? It’s there, he doesn’t deny it. But Jack is determined to carve out his own path in the fight game.
“I could sit here and say, na, I don’t feel any pressure, but of course there is.
“I look up to him, but at the same time we have that brotherly competitiveness. Any time anybody asks if we spar each other, I tell them I win, he tells them he wins.
“But that’ll drive me on. I’ll use it to my advantage – I want to outdo him, I’m working harder because I want to win so I can be like him. Some of the things he does, some of the things he hits me with in sparring, I can’t wait until he brings it into the fights on TV. People are going to be amazed.”
Confirmation that the Irish Elites are provisionally scheduled to commence on September 17 proved good timing for McGivern, as he had been helping James prepare for the Feile show.
One eye was already on securing a spot at next summer’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham too, although there will be no shortage of competition at light-welter – McGivern having lost out to Monkstown’s Daryl Clarke in the 2020 Ulster Elite final.
That showdown took place at a packed Ulster Hall just weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, and McGivern admits the occasion got the better of him.
“To be honest, that night the nerves did get to me. Walking out into the Ulster Hall… I had a lot of family there, the place just erupted. Even the ring parade at the start, I was standing there thinking ‘what is going on here?’, then the fight, the last round where I cut him and everything started going mental.
“But it did break my heart. Everyone in the papers had me to win, looking at social media people were saying I was going to be the breakout boxer, then there was the connection with James too, so it hurt for a good while after.
“James’s name was on the trophy from the previous year, then I would’ve been on it the following year. But it wasn’t to be, and sometimes you learn more from defeat than you do from victory.
“We’ve been waiting a long time to get back to boxing, and it’s great now that we finally have something to look forward to. Hopefully it’ll give the whole Irish amateur scene a bit of a lift.”
