Pain lingers, decades after career’s end
The light middleweight: Shawn O’Sullivan
BELLEVILLE, ONT.— Early afternoon patrons at Vic’s Place look up from their drafts when a middle-aged man strolls in. His famous face, rounder and ruddier than when he boxed for Canada, creases into a smile when he spots regulars lining the bar.
Cheerful choruses of “Hey Shawn!” ring out. Hands are shaken, backs are patted, faux fighting fists are raised in tribute. At Vic’s Place, Shawn O’Sullivan is still the champ. “Everybody here knows him. Even the young guys recognize him,” says bar owner Vicki Colton, as she pulls a pint of Coors Light for the former two-time world champion. “Everybody treats him well here.” A framed O’Sullivan photograph hangs behind the bar, a gift from one of Colton’s customers.
It’s a portrait of the light middleweight taken during halcyon days. O’Sullivan is young, lean, triumphant — a Toronto boy on a meteoric rise. Olympic silver followed two world titles. Then a pro career with Sugar Ray Leonard in his corner. About $1.5 million in prize money. Along the way, O’Sullivan wed and had five children. Today, little remains of that gilded life. O’Sullivan’s money and marriage dissolved. So have some of his memories. He recalls long-ago fights in detail but cannot recite the birthdates of his three youngest children — his struggling brain is boxing’s grim legacy.
“I had never expected this in my head,” the 54-yearold says, tapping his temple with his left forefinger. “But I’ll get by.” After nursing two pints over the afternoon, O’Sullivan leaves Vic’s Place to walk about five minutes to his downtown apartment. It’s a rent-geared-to-income housing unit owned by a local not-for-profit organization. He pays the rent from disability benefits.
Freshly shaven, in clean clothes, O’Sullivan apologizes for the “mess” when he unlocks his ground-floor apartment. It is a small place. A couch doubles as his bed. A few photos are tacked to white walls. He has a tiny kitchen but doesn’t do much cooking. O’Sullivan calls it the home of “a single guy.” Plastic food trays lie on furniture, the floor. Empty vodka cooler bottles stand on a coffee table. Beneath it, a drained wine bottle. The floor is caked with grime. Some of that is from his dog, Laila.
“She’s never been housebroken,” he says, ruefully, cuddling the two-year-old boxer as she licks his face.
O’Sullivan lived in the family home on a rural property near Belleville, and left when his wife served him with divorce papers — he can’t recall the year but says it was a long time ago. He remains in Belleville rather than return to his hometown to “try to bump into my babies.”
“That doesn’t really happen so much but when it does, I’m good and happy,” he says. “I like to see my babies smile and laugh.”
When not with his children, O’Sullivan finds happiness with Laila.
Laila is named after the retired boxing daughter of the late Muhammad Ali.
O’Sullivan and Laila are a common sight strolling around Belleville’s residential streets. While walking her across a bridge spanning the roiling Moira River, O’Sullivan mentions its historical importance as a 19th-century logging channel in the building of Upper Canada.
He likes to talk. He’s intelligent, his interests wideranging.
O’Sullivan discusses the existence of God, the Zika virus and the potential for a damaged brain to rewire itself through neuroplasticity. He makes a clear effort to enunciate “neuroplasticity.”
During his days in the ring, O’Sullivan’s fluid elo- quence set him apart from his peers. Now his speech is thick. Occasionally, he stammers. He is not drunk but to some, the slurring may make him appear that way. “How does my voice sound to you?” O’Sullivan wants to know. He asks this often.
When he hears the answer, he shakes his head and for a short while, says nothing.
Boxing’s core purpose is to punch an opponent in the face, the ribs, the abdomen with gloved fists as a method to win a bout. Leading to a bout is training in the gym, which includes sparring — more blows to the body and head.
O’Sullivan hasn’t boxed competitively in about 20 years. But he’s still sore.
Pain thuds through muscles and joints. Neck, shoulders, ribs, back, hands and hips all hurt. O’Sullivan says the chronic pain can be so intense that it wakes him at night if he shifts in bed and rolls onto a sensitive spot.
O’Sullivan says he asked his local physician for a medical marijuana prescription in order to sleep without interruption, to blunt the hurt. He says the doctor refused.
So he buys weed off the street “when I can afford it.”
Peter Wylie was O’Sullivan’s coach at the Cabbagetown Boxing Club. A larger-thanlife image of O’Sullivan hangs atop the stairwell of the second-floor gym on Lancaster Ave. The local boy remains an icon in the gym he made famous.
O’Sullivan visited Toronto last year, Wylie says, and the pair spent part of a day together. Wylie says he offered the fighter work as a trainer but O’Sullivan never followed up.
O’Sullivan barely recalls the offer or the visit.
Wylie says in his heyday, Sport Canada — the country’s government-supported amateur sports organization — “many times used (O’Sullivan) to promote amateur sport in Canada.”
Sport Canada should have hired the boxer, but “after he finished his amateur career and turned professional, he was completely forgotten,” Wylie says.
When asked what responsibility, if any, Canadian amateur boxing owes O’Sullivan today, Wylie responds: “They might say: ‘Who?’ ” It’s a question no one would have asked 32 years ago.
No regrets The 1984 Olympic boxing competition was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Arena. On the day of the light middleweight gold medal match, American boxer Frank Tate knew his bout against the dogged Canadian who had previously beaten him would be a “classic Olympic fight.”
“Everyone in the stadium was waiting for that one fight because everyone knew of Shawn O’Sullivan and everyone knew of Frank Tate,” Tate says from Houston, where he runs his own demolition company and trains boxers in a local gym. “It was a big draw at the Olympics.” In a unanimous decision from the judges, Tate was awarded the gold. The booing crowd disagreed: Tate had taken two standing-eight counts in the second round. O’Sullivan got a standing ovation.
Thirty-two years later, Tate, now 51 and a grandfather of five, remains adamant he won. O’Sullivan says succinctly: “I gave it my all against a worthy opponent.”
Tate says becoming an Olympic champion “opened a lot of doors for me.” A long pro career and two world titles followed.
In contrast, O’Sullivan didn’t need Olympic gold to further his career.
The world amateur champ was already considered a legitimate pro prospect. He had lined up a high-profile American boxing team — Sugar Ray Leonard and adviser Mike Trainer — before the Games.
Not all exceptional amateurs transition smoothly into the pro game. O’Sullivan needed three attempts to recognize that in himself.
O’Sullivan first left the sport in1988 after a humbling defeat by Donovan Boucher, a former Cabbagetown sparring partner. Accompanied by longtime coach and manager Wylie, he announced his retirement that night.
But O’Sullivan soon missed the ring. The training. The camaraderie. The excitement.
“You want to be part of a team, part of something that was positive and great,” says O’Sullivan, who at one point worked as a school caretaker in Toronto.
“Receiving a payment package of like $10 an hour just wasn’t going to do it for me,” he says of the 9-to-5 world.
O’Sullivan made two comebacks — in1991 and again in 1996 — with little fanfare. His career ended for good in 1997 when a Toronto neurosurgeon refused to clear him to keep fighting after a tough win against Edmonton’s Robbie Stowell. O’Sullivan doesn’t recall the issue the doctor flagged (media reports cited severe vision issues) but says he has never been diagnosed with brain damage. He concedes he’s likely had many concussions during his career (“I could take a punch”) but estimated about half of his fights were “clean.”
“I had a good ability to get away from hits,” he says.
O’Sullivan and his family moved to the Belleville area when he left the sport at 35. He was popular with the public, giving boxing-themed fitness classes in Belleville and Toronto, and starred in a fitness video. He also worked with aspiring fighters.
Eventually, that work dwindled. O’Sullivan says he applied for Canada pension disability support. The 52-year-old is foggy on details, such as when and why he applied. He says he has been careful with his
spending, that he has savings.
In retirement, O’Sullivan lived quietly until he made headline news again in 2007, but not for boxing feats. That year, his apartment was burglarized and a treasured set of rings was stolen. One ring commemorated his two world titles. None have been recovered.
Two years later, O’Sullivan was charged with assault and mischief after tussling with a local man who called 911.
He claimed he was shocked with a Taserlike device and beaten by Belleville police during the incident. Charges were withdrawn in 2010. O’Sullivan had to sign a peace bond and consult a doctor “for alcohol use, take such treatment as recommended if any,” according to the court document.
O’Sullivan, when shown a copy of the document, says his doctor did not deem him an alcoholic and that no substance abuse treatment was necessary. He says he does not require social or medical supports and is capable of living on his own.
Though many recognize O’Sullivan on the streets and in pubs (sometimes people offer to buy him a Coors Light, sometimes he lets them), he says his social circle is small. The youngest of six, O’Sullivan is closest to his twin sister, Maureen, and brother Brian, who both live in the GTA. He speaks of them fondly and often.
O’Sullivan still has boxing buddies. Most are far-flung and can’t visit. But one man in particular makes him smile: his gregarious Olympic teammate and bronze medallist Dale Walters of Burnaby, B.C.
In 2010, Walters was instrumental in flying O’Sullivan to Vancouver at the last minute to run a leg of the Olympic torch relay before the Winter Games.
Walters was angry the torch had passed through Belleville without an invitation to his friend to participate, spurring the frenetic arrangements.
Walters makes it a point to keep in touch by phone. In May, he called O’Sullivan on his birthday to have three female friends join him in singing “Happy Birthday” into Walters’ phone.
“I love Dale Walters,” O’Sullivan says, laughing.
Formal recognition from the sports world still trickles in. Last year, O’Sullivan was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.
But invitations to induction dinners and torch runs are few.
Most days, O’Sullivan rises early, walks his dog, maybe heads over to Vic’s Place for a pint or two, then settles into his apartment for the night. He would like a fuller life, he said, perhaps a return to Toronto one day; maybe even to his old Leaside neighbourhood. Possibly catch up with Wylie and get some work at the Cabbagetown gym.
Until then, O’Sullivan said he’s happy in Belleville and at peace with his boyhood decision to become a boxer.
As for the years of physical punishment that now flood his body with pain, and gnaw at his memory: O’Sullivan said going into the ring was always his informed decision.
“I said, ‘Yes, I’ll go in there,’ and no, I don’t hold anyone (else) responsible. No. Never.”