McATEE: VOTE ON KREMLEV KEY TO BOXING’S FUTURE
GREATEST’S 1972 VISIT A NATIONAL TREASURE
Keher is still asked about his puckaround with Ali. That’s the way all over the world. People who had brief encounters with Ali treasure the memory.
“There was one story that I particularly loved. He was driving from Chicago over to LA with his accountant in the early 1980s. They were in a Stutz Bearcat, which is kind of like a Bentley,’’ said Hannigan.
“The car kept breaking down... there’s an indie movie in this. It would be like Tiger Woods now driving across America and stopping at diners, going into garages to get the car looked at.
“You’d have the mechanic ringing up the local paper to get a reporter down ‘cos Muhammad Ali just walked in the door.
“He’d go off to schools and to meet different people. He’d get willingly waylaid in places, and I love that about him. There’s a movie in that, driving from Chicago to LA and stopping off in tiny towns in Colorado.
Museum
“You can imagine that they still talk about the day that Muhammad Ali came to town.”
Hannigan is taking part in the Dublin Festival of History next month, speaking in the GAA Museum on October 6 about Ali’s Croke Park experience.
The Corkman is looking at updating ‘The Big Fight’ as new material emerges all the time.
“I’m hoping to do something in the next 12 months, with a publisher here or in Ireland. Something likeYouTube wasn’t around when the book was written. There’s more in the story, you hear more about Butty Sugrue all the time,’’ he said.
“I didn’t know he was once on the same bill as David Bowie. He was one of the most extraordinary characters ever in Irish sport.”
Sugrue was a former circus strongman from Kerry who came up with the mad idea to bring Ali to Croker.
It wasn’t the last mad idea that Ali embraced in an extraordinary life.
AMATEUR boxing’s world body will decide tomorrow whether to hold a new presidential election in a vote opponents of Russian incumbent Umar Kremlev see as critical for the sport’s Olympic future.
USA Boxing executive director Mike McAtee insists the International Boxing Association (IBA), already frozen out by Olympic organisers, faced an existential decision at the extraordinary congress in Armenia.
Kremlev, who this month opened a boxing facility in Moscow with Russian president Vladimir Putin, was elected unopposed in Istanbul in May after Dutch rival Boris van der Vorst was declared ineligible two days before the vote.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled last June that van der Vorst was wrongly prevented from standing.
End
The agenda for tomorrow includes a yes/no vote by national federations on the question ‘Do you want to vote for another presidential election or not?’.
If yes, it will be Kremlev against van der Vorst.
“It will be the end of IBA if we do not have an election, considering CAS ruled that we were all wrongfully removed and Boris was wrongfully removed,” McAtee said.
“It is my belief that if there is not an election, IBA will be permanently suspended or just removed by the IOC.”
McAtee, who is an ally of van der Vorst and was also declared ineligible in May when he stood for the IBA board, said boxing could not hope to be at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics without a change at the helm.
“The IOC, if you look at their letters, are very clear that if candidate Kremlev wins, IBA will be removed,” he said.
“Without being in the Olympics it will cut funding for every national federation and impact boxing all the way down to eight year old boxers in every country in the world. That’s how important it is to our sport.”
Stripped
Boxing is not on the initial programme for 2028 and the Olympic Committee is managing the Paris 2024 competition.
IBA, formerly known as AIBA, was stripped of involvement in last year’s Tokyo Olympics due to governance, finance, refereeing and ethical issues.
IOC sports director
Kit McConnell said this month that slow-moving reforms and IBA’s financial dependence on Russian energy firm Gazprom were of grave concern.
Amid allegations of dirty tricks, USA
Boxing filed a whistleblower complaint on Sept. 8 regarding a perceived attempt by an IBA employee to influence tomorrow’s vote in Kremlev’s favour.
IBA said Kremlev had been cleared of all charges by the Boxing Independent Integrity Unit but McAtee insists a legal challenge could not be ruled out if Kremlev remained in office.