THE NIGHT OUR CELTIC WARRIOR BEAT EUBANK I was ready to kill, under pressure and hoping that after all the showing off and bravado I’d pull it off
Documentary looks at how Collins shook boxing world
IT was one of the most memorable moments in Irish sport and one of the biggest in boxing history.
Now a new documentary tells the inside story of how underdog Steve Collins beat world champion Chris Eubank in 1995.
One Night In Millstreet features interviews with “Celtic Warrior” Collins, Eubank, as well as Barry Mcguigan, sports writer Paul Howard and mind guru Tony Quinn.
Dubliner Collins, 59, told the Irish Mirror that watching the doc was like seeing the fight through new eyes.
He said: “I saw for the first time what everyone else experienced and my first reaction was I wish I’d been there.
“Everybody is having a great day, the pubs were jammers, walking up singing, ‘Here we go’.
“But there I was ready to kill, focused, woundup, dying of starvation, under pressure, stuck in a room trying to sleep, hoping that, you know, that I win after all the talk I gave, the showing off and the big bravado, that I’d pull it off.”
He tells the documentary how getting the fight was “like a Rocky story”.
Collins was regarded as a rank outsider and rejected a “normal” boxing trainer in favour of Quinn.
Experts didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at what sounded lifethreatening insanity. But it worked.
Quinn recalled: “I knew nothing about boxing” but he reportedly trained Collins not to feel pain.
He said: “In boxing, the mind plays a big part. A lot of people in situations where they’re very excited may feel no pain. Many boxers don’t feel pain until after.”
Eubank’s manager Barry Hearn told film-makers he didn’t believe this claim – but crucially Eubank himself did.
He said: “What a load of rubbish, but the only person who didn’t think he was talking rubbish was Eubank. He thought it was black magic.”
Howard was the Sunday Tribune’s boxing writer and was collaborating with Collins on a biography.
He added: “He had won two world title fights and he was still living in a rented house in Swords.
“So Steve arrives at the weigh-in, gets out of a green Jaguar dressed like Darby O’gill. I think he had a
I wanted to take him out of comfort zone.. in my mind was his ‘style’
STEVE COLLINS ONE
NIGHT IN MILLSTREET
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shillelagh and this Irish wolfhound.
“I didn’t recognise him at first when he walked into the hotel. I knew something was going on.”
Collins added: “I wanted to take him out of his comfort zone.
“The first thing in my mind was his ‘style’.
“He was a good dresser, known for it, and he was voted the best dressed man in Britain – twice. So this is all part of him and I wanted to be ‘Irish’ around him so I got the countryman idea, I would dress that way, the tweeds, jacket, cap the whole lot.
“I contacted a well-known wolfhound breeding family and they met me on the day of the weigh-in and gave me this beautiful dog while,
also, I’d bought this old green Jaguar and it felt just right.
Eubank added: “No one had ever got underneath my skin. I was always kind of objective but Steve did a very good job.
“You have to remember I’m champion of the world and Steve is 45 minutes late, he comes dressed as an Irish countryman.
“He then proceeds to speak only in Irish — excellent tactics.” Then the tension really ramped up as Collins insisted: “I deserve this.”
Then an aloof Eubank countered: “What is deserve? Talk to me about deserve, there are starving children in Africa. Do they deserve that?”
The mood turned as Collins snarled: “If you want to bring Africa into it, you are an African, of African descent.
“Why do you deny your African heritage and try to impersonate an
Englishman when you are not?”
Howard shakes his head: “I’d no idea what hell was about to be unleashed.
“Chris got really, really angry.
“Usually he’s so mentally tough or was in those days that he wouldn’t be cowed by something like that or he would be the aggressor in those, you know, kind of intellectual back and forths but he was really, really shaken. “I remember the Lord Mayor went up to him afterwards and said, ‘Would you like a tour around the city?’ and
Chris said, ‘F**k this city,’ at the top of his voice. He really, really, had lost it.”
When the bell sounded fans were treated to a brutally absorbing contest which Collins won on points.
He also beat Eubank in the rematch in Cork six months later.
One Night In Mill Street opens in Irish cinemas tomorrow.