Meet the only fighter who’s ever stopped Mayweather.. and he’s Irish
Agonising fall from grace of Robert Gorman after his brush with greatness in a Vegas gym
CHANCES are you’ve never heard of Robert Gorman. I know I hadn’t before the MayweatherMcGregor circus came to town. But this man’s story is fascinating and reminds us all that for every boxer-fighter who hits the jackpot, there are thousands who scrape a living in this, the toughest of sporting landscapes. And for many of them, when their hopes and dreams are scattered to the winds, the devastation can lead them to the very darkest of places. Conor McGregor will try to become the first man to enter a ring with Floyd Mayweather and emerge victorious in Vegas in the early hours of Sunday morning. Or so the story goes. But there’s another man out there who can claim to have beaten McGregor to it. Another Irishman in fact. Gorman is his name and the tale he tells is proof, if any were needed, of the thin line between fame, fortune and failure in a sport that chews up and spits out more than most. This story starts in 2007 when amateur boxer Gorman, who ran a carpentry business in Balbriggan, 20 miles north of Dublin, watched Ricky Hatton fight in Las Vegas and decided if he was to become anything more than a journeyman he’d have to learn his trade in the States. So he sold up and headed for The Strip with a mate, who doubled as his fitness and conditioning coach. He was 23, full of those hopes and dreams. Having booked into the Hard Rock Hotel for a week, he doorstepped Northern Irish boxer Wayne McCullough, who was living in Vegas. McCullough opened a couple of doors including the one to the Top Rank Gym where the best young hopefuls were trained. Before long Gorman was making a living sparring with hard as nails professionals – for about £47 a round. It was hard. He was chiselling out a living while learning his trade. Then came the call that looked like changing his life. Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather was looking for sparring partners ahead of a fight with Juan Manuel Marquez and Gorman’s style was deemed to be similar, so he was one of a number of boxers picked to be cannon fodder for the superstar. It didn’t quite work out that way. Gorman’s been a reclusive character for years, the reasons for which will become apparent later. But in a rare, recent interview he spoke about the experience. Gorman said: “He had Mexicans and Latinos in there, all the hard as nails lads. Even if they didn’t have great records, they’d stay in there with him. But he could bounce off them as well, because they weren’t all that good either. He’d play with them, use them as a punchbag. “Anyway, Floyd hears that there’s this tough Irish white boy in the gym and so he decided to leave me ’til last. I just wanted to get my sparring done, get the feather in my cap, and that was it.
“It wasn’t even my own headguard I was wearing! I wasn’t even allowed to wear my own gloves. It was so un-f ****** -comfortable. It was all his f ****** rules, his equipment. He’s an a ****** e, actually.
“I wasn’t allowed to go up and talk to him or even talk about gloves. It was just, ‘Here are these gloves, you’re wearing them and that’s that’.
“So I step in with him and we start sparring. Out of the blue, he just starts talking to me: ‘You white trash piece of s***, you ain’t got s*** on me! You’re not gonna last!’
“I wasn’t used to this – I’d never had a person talking to me in the ring before. So I just started talking back: ‘Yeah, world champion, my hole. Is that all you got? Come on you little bitch!’
“I get back to my corner and I’m told we did a six-minute f ****** round! We were only getting a 30-second break and end up doing four six-minute rounds. They were the hardest four rounds of my life.”
They were no picnic for Mayweather either and in the seconds that followed a legend, that became a curse, was born.
Gorman said: “It was after the fight, not during it. I was taking off my gear and he kneeled down and it was like he was going to die. He had his hand in and around his ribs.
“Hand on heart, I don’t think it can have been a punch or anything like that unless it was a trapped nerve.
“I’m not saying I did it because I didn’t do it during the fight. He got down on his knee and was nearly crying like a little girl. I hit him with a lot of body shots. If I had half a chance to do it again I would. I have no respect for him.”
Mayweather had to pull out of his fight with Marquez and in Ireland, Gorman was big news. He returned home a hero and the 2009 World Amateur Championships were to be his stepping stone to the big time.
But he chose to fight at 60k, much lighter than his normal 67k, and paid the price. He was weakened and was stopped in his first fight.
It was the last time he fought. Gorman felt he’d let his fans, family and country down. He spiralled into depression, piled on weight and was on the brink of suicide.
He even faked breaking his wrists to deter ‘well-wishers’ from urging him to pull on the gloves again.
Gorman is now 33. His mind has healed and his body, he claims, has never been fitter. And he has a goal.
He said: “I’d love nothing more than to enter the Senior Championships in 2019 and be the oldest person ever to win them.
“The age limit was 33 now it’s 37. I’ll blow them all out of the water. I’m going to do what I’m destined to do. Then maybe I’ll go pro because I have all the time in the world.”
If I had half a chance to do it again I would. I have no respect for him