In and out of the ring Carl Frampton has enriched our lives... but outburst at Barry Mcguigan was a low blow
NO-ONE knows the details of what went wrong between former two-weight world champion boxer Carl Frampton and his ex-manager Barry Mcguigan, but few have been left in any doubt this week of the “Jackal’s” feelings about him now.
Talking to the Anything Goes podcast, Frampton landed blow after blow when it came to his split with the Mcguigan family.
“There’s no relationship with them now,” he said. “I f***ing despise them, just the way it is, shame.”
And in words that at once reflected how close their bond had been and how irrevocably it has broken down, he added: “It is sad, look I like to think of myself as a nice guy and I trust everybody, like, I loved these guys.
“I had Shane and Jake Mcguigan as groomsmen at my wedding, I was a groomsman at Shane’s wedding, pretty much like brothers. But I have a deep hatred for them now, all of them.”
Of course, last year’s court case — when Frampton sued Mcguigan for £6m over purse fees, broadcasting rights, ticket sales and merchandising — laid bare the acrimonious nature of their split. His lawyers claimed he’d been signed up to a “slave contract”.
Mcguigan had a counter claim of £4m, arguing the boxer had left his organisation, Cyclone Promotions, prematurely in 2017. Both men denied any wrongdoing and finally agreed a confidential legal settlement last November.
Let’s be honest, in a world of bland statements from image-conscious stars and Pr-driven puff pieces, Frampton’s raw honesty is certainly striking. Maybe it was just the mental focus of the boxer coming through. Maybe he just wanted to get it all off his chest.
And yet there was also something jarring about his frankness. Some will have felt uneasy, even dismayed, with his choice of language.
The timing of the release of his remarks was unfortunate too. Just
days earlier, Barry Mcguigan had broken down on RTE’S Late Late Show as he talked about the devastating loss of his beloved 33-year-old daughter Danika to cancer.
In a heartrending interview, he recalled the moment “Nika” was told how very seriously ill she was and how the family had sat by her bedside as she breathed her last. His grief prompted a huge outpouring of sympathy from viewers, many of whom will have remembered his daughter’s childhood battle with leukaemia and his own sterling work for the CLIC Sargent cancer charity.
No matter how estranged Carl Frampton and Barry Mcguigan are now, they still share something in common — they are not simply private individuals, they are also hugely popular celebrities.
And they’re also role models. Whether they like it or not — and one suspects they like it — they have also come to represent something bigger and better about the culture and people of Northern Ireland.
The very fact that they went into partnership in the first instance brought a warm glow to a lot of people.
The young pretender, the brash, hugely gifted pugilist with a sequence of title winning possibilities ahead of him and an engaging personality to go with it, teaming up with a legend of the sport who
had himself blazed that trail in the darkest days of the Troubles, dragging the bitterest political enemies against their will around the same ring, backing the Cyclone the whole way.
What wasn’t to like about that? There was also the appealing cross-community narrative to their partnership, with the young lad from loyalist Tigers Bay being mentored by the former champ from Clones. That both men married across the religious divide only added to the magic. Here were confident, inspiring people showing you could step out from the narrow, stifling, predetermined sectarian silos.
We all lived the dream of the peacetime sporting heroes who we like to think come to represent the best of us, the best parts of us, our better inclinations.
It can’t be said too often how much Barry Mcguigan and Carl Frampton have enriched our lives here in Northern Ireland.
That’s what makes it so sad when it all falls apart, as it has done in this case.
Frampton’s words took us unawares because we’re not used to hearing him speak like that. The boxer we know best is the tireless charity worker, the enthusiastic supporter of integrated education, the unaffected working-class lad whose head hasn’t been turned by the trappings of success, the young dad with the easy charm and good-natured quip, the husband who happily plays the foil to his brilliantly funny wife Christine’s Twitter jokes.
Among the harsh words, Frampton acknowledged how close he’d once been to the Mcguigans. He “loved” these guys. He, Jake and Shane had key roles at each other’s weddings. We can see the emotional turmoil of it all too — he thinks of himself as a “nice guy”, which is true. It’s “sad”. That’s true too.
We all know there is no bitterness to match that of former good friends who have fallen out. The severing of a deep bond that you once thought would last forever is always traumatic. Injured feelings can last for a very long time, indeed sometimes a lifetime. Sometimes it’s the toughest blow you’ll ever receive.
Many of us have experienced the pain and anger of such situations, sounding off to whoever will listen about how we won’t ever forgive or forget what happened, swearing blind never to break breath to that person ever again.
Friends will listen to our rants, offering a sympathetic hearing for a few weeks. Then, they’ll diplomatically suggest it’s time we moved on for our own good because it’s clear the situation is doing our head in.
Fortunately, the rest of us don’t have to live in the public spotlight with all our disappointments and achievements highlighted, with complete strangers having views on our behaviour and opinions.
It’s just as well because most of us in every day life wouldn’t pass the test of “do as you would be done by” and might find it hard to be bigger than our resentments and our hurts.
But if you become an icon that’s exactly what you have to be.
Sadly, there would appear to be little prospect of Frampton and Mcguigan being reconciled, but let’s hope that publicly at least the heat can go out of the falling-out.
We’ve already got enough longheld grudges and recriminations in Northern Ireland without some of our most famous fellow citizens adding to that sorry discourse.