Spielberg: Future will be virtual
STEVEN Spielberg has warned that a future dominated by virtual reality is coming “whether we like it or not”.
The director was discussing his new movie Ready Player One – which is set in a future where humans have taken refuge in the virtual world – at Comic-Con San Diego.
He said virtual reality opens up the possibility of being able to do “anything you can possibly imagine.” IT was meant as a knock-out punch, not a killer blow. As his opponent flagged in the sweaty sixth round, Barry McGuigan picked his spot and unleashed a hammer of a right hand.
Brave Nigerian fighter Young Ali was too slow to react and the punch sailed through his guard, catching him full in the face. Ali crumpled and collapsed to the canvas. He never got back up.
Even now, 35 years on from that ill-fated fight at London’s Grosvenor House hotel in Mayfair on June 14, 1982, the memory still follows former world champion Barry like a shadow. His right fist instinctively tracks the trajectory of that final shot as he describes it, smashing into the palm of his left hand.
“I hit him right on the nose,” says Barry, who was known as The Clones Cyclone.
“His eyes just rolled back. It was a haunting moment. I knew he wasn’t going to get up from that.”
Those heartbreaking words came while he was speaking to writer Elliot Worsell, who sought out men affected by ring tragedies for his book Dog Rounds: Death and Life in the Boxing Ring.
Barry continues: “It wasn’t a normal knockdown. The way he reacted wasn’t good. He was down on his face. But then he didn’t get up at all. He never regained consciousness.”
Panic ensued. A folded table cloth became a makeshift stretcher, used to carry Ali from the ring. Precious seconds slipped away as they waited for an ambulance to take the unconscious fighter to hospital, where surgeons removed the cap of his skull to relieve the swelling on his brain.
A month later, Ali was flown home to Nigeria on a life support machine.
By that time Barry, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist fighting to escape a life of poverty in the Northern Irish border town of Clones,realised how similar he and his opponent were.
Like him, Ali – real name Asymin Mustapha – was 21 and boxing to support his pregnant wife. But while Barry and wife Sandra could look forward to the arrival of son Blain, Ali would never meet his unborn child.
It is enough to make even a world champ cry. Barry wipes away a tear as he says: “I thought, ‘Do I really want to be involved in this?’ I never wanted to hurt somebody like that. I didn’t think I was cut out for the sport. But I wasn’t qualified for anything else.”
Some 500 boxers have died in the ring since the Marquess of Queensbury Rules were introduced in 1884 – and few fighters who take a life
ROCKY KELLY v STEVE WATT, LONDON, 1986
HAMILTON “Rocky” Kelly warned: “Steve, I’m willing to die for this.”
Tragically, when the fight was stopped after 10 rounds, it was Watt who lost his life. He went to hospital with a blood clot on his brain and died three days later.
Kelly, 54, who visited him, said: “It was dreadful. You don’t see the damage you do.” The death led to mandatory MRI scans for fighters. MANCINI knocked Korean Kim down after 14 rounds, putting him in a coma with a clot on his brain.
He died four days later, leaving a pregnant wife, and soon after matches were cut to 12 rounds.
Mancini, 56, learned Kim’s grieving mum had killed herself just before his comeback fight. He said: “That Kim fight made me fall out of love with that sport.”
MIKE TOWELL v DALE EVANS, GLASGOW, 2016
DUNDEE boxer Mike Towell died in hospital last September, a day after being knocked down twice during a bout in Glasgow.
The dad-of-one was stretchered from the ring in the fifth round at St Andrews Sporting Club.
Having suffered severe bleeding and swelling to the brain, the 25-year-old was taken off
life support. FAMILY Barry with his wife Sandra ever recover to fulfil their potential. Some quit, confronted with their own mortality or consumed by guilt. Others are shackled by their memories and fail to