GALLAGHER BITES BACK
More so than ever before, Liam Smith and Joe Gallagher are under pressure to deliver. Ben Dirs catches up with the fighter and trainer in Manchester
The 2015 Trainer of the Year, alongside ‘Beefy’, responds to his critics
IN Joe Gallagher’s gym hangs a giant heater, making the air so thick you feel like you’re sucking up leak and potato soup through a straw. And that’s just watching from ringside. The heater is to replicate steamy nights under ferocious lights. Nights that are common to Gallagher fighters, so that he doesn’t have to worry about what must be thumping great electric bills.
Liam Smith is Gallagher’s blueeyed boy today, but next week it will be another boxer getting a personal lathering. Rinse, repeat. Gallagher’s Bolton base is less a gym than a factory, churning out champions at a rate other trainers can only dream of. But the results have been less pleasing of late.
From his office, the factory boss looks down on his fighting machines. But two of them are missing. Anthony Crolla is out for repair, having been dismantled by the brilliant Jorge Linares. Ditto Marcus Morrison, having malfunctioned against Jason Welborn.
Two boxers at different stages of their careers but the pain feels the same. Former world champ, prospect, all Gallagher’s children.
“You have those weekends,” says Gallagher, wincing at the memory. “It’s all part of the game. But it can be hard to take. I was in the arena after Crolla’s presser, the whole place was empty, and I thought to myself: ‘If I was at university or college and I’d put in that much time and effort, it would result in something. You’d get a certificate or some kind of qualification. But we came out with nothing, except experience. That’s why boxing is so brutal, it doesn’t always seem like you have anything to show for all the hard work you put in.”
But sometimes it does. A winning streak of more than 50 fights culminated in a golden 2015, when Smith (WBO superwelterweight), Crolla (WBA lightweight), and Scott Quigg (upgraded to WBA superbantamweight) made it three world champions in Gallagher’s gym. Along the way there were Lonsdale Belts for Smith’s brothers Paul, Stephen and Callum (who also won a European title), Scotty Cardle and Hosea Burton. Gallagher was voted both Boxing News and The Ring Magazine Trainer of the Year and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. But that’s the thing about boxing: the deeper you wade, the bigger the sharks, and suddenly you’re struggling to stem the claret.
Last February, Quigg lost his world title to, and had his jaw shattered by,
Frampton, before Liam Smith lost his world title to Saul Alvarez. There were also two world title defeats for Stephen Smith at super-featherweight, as well as a heart-breaking, last-gasp defeat for Burton against Frank Buglioni. Quigg upped sticks and joined Freddie Roach in America. And in true British fashion, the keyboard warriors on the internet revelled in Gallagher’s reverses.
“I feel like we’re an easy target,” says Gallagher, who started training amateurs in 1993 before turning pro with Steve Foster Jr nine years later. “I don’t think I’ve ever been given the credit I deserve for the things we did in the past. None of these kids in the gym were Olympic medallists.
Anthony Crolla was never groomed for those kinds of nights against Linares. He only became that fighter by beating Matchroom fighters – he was brought in to lose to Gavin Rees and John Murray. And after Crolla lost to Linares, we had to just put our hands up and say: ‘There’s no shame in losing to that.’ Linares is a great, great fighter.
“My fighters want to step out of their comfort zones and test themselves against the best. Was Quigg the favourite against Frampton? No. Was Liam Smith the favourite against Alvarez? No. But neither of them disgraced themselves. Crolla could have beaten Ismael Barroso and become a money whore, had a couple of easy fights at a packed-out Manchester Arena. Liam Smith could have done what Kell Brook did, had a couple of world title defences against people like Jo Jo Dan. But how many times do you get to fight for The Ring Magazine belt? They want to be able to look back and know how good they were. My fighters are in it for the game and not the fame.
“But people are quick to put the boot in when things are going badly. My missus tells me not to go on Twitter. But a friend told me I was trending after Crolla and Morrison lost. It was for all the wrong reasons. I started scrolling through a few of the posts and they weren’t great. It doesn’t hurt me, I can laugh about it and I don’t usually engage. But it does hurt my children.”
Alongside a tweet calling Gallagher a “nonce” were many others slaughtering him for not pulling Morrison out of his fight against Welborn. Gallagher talked himself out of retaliating on either front, although he was sorely tempted.
“Marcus had never gone past six rounds and he’ll be a better fighter now he has. After the fifth he was complaining and I wasn’t having any of it. I told him: ‘Marcus, people have paid their hard-earned money to watch you fight and you’re telling me it’s getting a bit tight, he won’t lie down when I hit him.’
“At the end of the eighth I told him I was giving him one more round and he suddenly started doing what I wanted him to do. But with 20 seconds to go he stopped on the ropes and let Welborn go at him. I was fuming. But he went out for the 10th and started doing what I wanted him to do again. The power Marcus carries, he still had the potential to stop Welborn late on. I’m glad he didn’t, because if he’d won he would have carried on thinking he was Superman. The next day, he sent me a text: ‘Joe, I’m down at the moment, but I’m so glad you didn’t stop it, that would have been even worse.’
“As for the person who called me a nonce, I thought about posting his picture and telling people to watch their kids around school. But then I thought: ‘That’s playground behaviour. Time to move on… to Liam Smith, Paul Butler, Scott Cardle, Callum Smith, Stephen Smith, Paul Smith, Callum Johnson…’”
On April 8, Liam Smith will aim to make it rain titles again, when he fights Liam Williams for the WBO Interim super-welterweight title. Johnson landed the Commonwealth lightheavyweight title last September but the gym is currently without a world champion. But with Alvarez set to vacate the full WBO
title and his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, informing Smith that ‘Canelo’ will not box at 154lbs again, Smith-williams is a virtual world title fight. Not that Smith seems overly burdened by the prospect. The 28-year-old’s last outing was a ‘secret’ four-rounder in front of 400 punters in a Barcelona gymnasium. The match was made because WBO rules state a boxer cannot challenge for one of its titles off the back of a loss. But that loss, against Mexican great Alvarez in front of 50,000 punters in a football stadium in Texas, is a more accurate indicator of Smith’s standing in world boxing.
“People are calling it a 50-50 fight,” says the Liverpudlian, whose knockout defeat by Alvarez is his only loss in 26 paid bouts.
“But I was British champion three years ago. Williams has had a few good domestic wins but I’ll show you what I learned from Alvarez when we get under those lights on April 8. I’m spurred on to prove it’s not a 50-50 fight. And if they think I’m arrogant, that’s fine with me. They’re clueless. I respect Williams as a fighter but what’s he to me? He’s from Wales and he’s not my mate. How do they want me to be? Nice and friendly? He’s saying he’s going to beat me and I’m saying he’s not.
“Yeah, there’s a bit of needle. We used to get on but now he just makes me cringe. Since the fight was announced he’s been tweeting everyone in boxing, looking for replies and slaps on the back. But I don’t feel the need to wind him up. I saw him before the Gary Corcoran fight, when they were slapping each other’s hats off at the press conference. I don’t want to sound like a k**bhead, but if someone wants to start any of that shite we’ll go outside and I’ll batter them. Williams knows that, which is why you haven’t seen him try to put it on me. A lot of people are saying he’s scared of me, and they might be right. That’s why ne needs Gary Lockett [Williams’ trainer] to tell him how good he is, which he’s doing quite a lot. Gary is saying Williams is a better boxer, the bigger puncher and whatever else. But I’ve just got too much variety for him. He’s a fit kid and it will be very competitive early on, nip and tuck. But after that, experience will come into it and he’ll come apart, start making mistakes and leaving gaps. The whole occasion will get to him. It’s already getting to him, they’re doing everything they can to cover themselves.
“Don’t be surprised if they leave it all in the gym. I’ll stop Williams in round nine or 10.”
Smith sparred only 16 rounds before his match with Alvarez, because of a cut, and the memory of what might have been still stings. But Gallagher scoffs at the suggestion Alvarez did permanent damage, maintaining that Smith has still not reached his prime and probably won’t until the end of this year. “My lads never really lose, they learn,” says Gallagher. “The experience of being in with Alvarez, the build-up to that fight, that all made Liam a better fighter. You learn an awful lot being in with someone better than you. It’s like playing football with someone better than you, you get to steal their tricks. If Liam was on Sky [Smith fights on Boxnation] he’d be on pay-per-view. He’s unbelievably talented. I call him ‘El Beefo’. Williams is a good fighter and has his tail up after some good wins. But once Smith starts going through the gears he’s untouchable.”
The gym empties, leaving Gallagher looking suddenly alone among boxing detritus. And I suddenly wonder how he will cope, when the last of this flock has flown the nest and, as he has threatened to do, Gallagher locks up his factory for the very last time and hands the keys to somebody else.
“I keep saying to everyone, ‘when this set of lads is over, I’m done’. In Manchester at the end of last year, I had four or five fighters on and afterwards I thought: ‘I’m never doing this again, it’s just taking too much out of me.’ When Hosea Burton lost, I went back to the changing room and he was crying his eyes out, saying sorry, and I was already warming Callum Smith up. I went out, came back after Callum’s fight and was told Hosea had been taken to hospital. Then someone stuck their head around the door and said, ‘four minutes, Joe’, and I had Quigg up next. My head was all over the place. But I love the job and don’t know what I’d do without it. I want all the lads to have won a title and paid for a house outright. And I want them to have good memories and not be bitter with the sport. That’s a trainer’s success story.”
The giant heater grinds to a halt and the gym becomes mercifully cooler. But it’s also a reminder of how much more wintry life would feel without those steamy nights under ferocious lights. Let’s see what happens when another fine kid comes knocking: “So, set ‘em up Joe. Make it one more for the road…”
MY LADS NEVER REALLY LOSE, THEY LEARN