Quigg fights like me... but Frampton has the grace of a true champion
Barry McGuigan on why his protege can come out on top in this week’s exciting world title unification clash
IT IS still beautiful listening to Barry McGuigan talk. The old champion speaks in rhapsodies and, recently, he has been at his most eloquent talking about his protege, Carl Frampton, who fights Scott Quigg in an eagerly awaited super-bantamweight world title unification fight in Manchester next Saturday. As he sits at a London cafe on the south bank of the River Thames, glancing over at Frampton, McGuigan’s words dance and smile.
‘Nature’s a funny thing,’ McGuigan says. ‘It can hand you 95 per cent of the good things and it’s up to you to fill up the other five per cent. People talk about how talent is overrated and it’s about 10,000 hours of training and, yes, I understand that. But then there’s another element. That element, I believe, is intelligence.
‘Innate skill and ability is one thing but having the intelligence to take risks, knowing that if the risk goes wrong, it can hurt you, well, that takes a level of intelligence that only some have. I know that when trouble comes, I can bank on Carl and that when all is said and done, he will come out on top.
‘This is a tough fight. Look, I have a lot of respect for Quigg. He is a nice kid. He fights the way I used to fight. I understand his obsessiveness because I was obsessed. But this thing about him training harder than everybody else, it doesn’t really matter.
‘Scott trains at home. His commitment is very solipsistic. He is in the bubble. Carl’s commitment is to his family but he still trains like a Trojan. If you want to talk about commitment, Carl has got more commitment than Scott Quigg because he spends all his time away from the people that he loves.’
The fates of McGuigan, who won the world featherweight title in 1985 when he beat Eusebio Pedroza at Loftus Road, and Frampton, are interlinked. McGuigan was a Catholic who married a Protestant when the Troubles were still defacing Northern Ireland in the mid-80s. Frampton is a Protestant from Tiger’s Bay in North Belfast who married a Catholic.
‘What I did was treachery to some,’ says McGuigan. ‘I took big risks and lived on the border in IRA territory and I was lucky I got away with it. Things have moved on now to an extent but if you scratch the surface there is bigotry beneath and there are inculcated minds, but not murder. That’s the difference.’
Frampton recognises that. He acknowledges that McGuigan ran greater risks than him and that his own popularity is linked to his mentor’s. He also accepts that boxing helped to make the sectarianism an irrelevance in his own existence.
‘When I was a kid,’ he says, ‘I was small like I am now.w. I was very quiet. I came fromom a working- c la s s ar eae a where there were a lott of big characters around. Not that I was bullied or anything. This isn’t some sob story. But I was easily intimidated. Other boys were louder than me in the e street and I would have ve maybe put my head down own a bit.
‘I went down to the Midland, my local boxing club, more out of curiosity. I sparred pretty early, one of the first nights. I would have shied away from a fight in the street as a kid but in the ring, I was good at it from a pretty early age and that was it. My favourite place to box as an amateur when I was a kid was Crusaders Social Club on the Shore Road.
‘Low ceiling, smoke-filled room, bunged to the rafters, a lot of people packed in. No real health and safety regulations there. Just get as many in as possible.po It was always ver very hot. y ‘I boxed there loads of ti times and my uncles and family friends would come and watch. You would come out as a kid and you had won a fight and everybody would be full of the beer, h handing you a fiver or ata tenner and you would com come away with maybe 50 quid and think you were a millionaire. ‘Coming from a working-class, 100 per cent Loyalist area, I never really gave a fiddler’s about that. I have always stayed neutral, just like Barry did. I think boxing has helped me in a way. A lot of people around my age coming from Tiger’s Bay would have been easily influenced when they were younger and would have got caught up in violence and trouble with the other community.
‘But through boxing, I was mixing with Catholics from when I was seven years old and I was in and out of clubs in Republican areas and it didn’t really bother me. Other people don’t get that opportunity. The schools in Northern Ireland, most aren’t integrated, so kids aren’t mixing with other kids until they are 16 years old and they leave school and the damage is done already.
‘I am not trying to do anything different. I am not going out of my way to do it. I didn’t marry a Catholic because of this. Things just happened. I have my beliefs and all that but I am not a guy to go out and shove it down everyone’s throat. People like that. I’m just a normal guy.’
Now Frampton is trained by McGuigan’s son, Shane, an innova- tor who is building a formidable reputation for himself in a hard trade at his gym in Battersea. The two families share a close bond and Frampton’s popularity crosses the religious divide, just as McGuigan’s did. He will take an army of fans with him to Manchester for the contest with Quigg, who holds the WBA super-bantamweight title.
There is one other quality that Barry McGuigan mentions when he is talking about Frampton. He looks over at him as he relaxes at the cafe after an afternoon sparring. ‘Carl has got grace,’ he says. ‘You can’t teach somebody grace if they haven’t got it.’ He’s right about that. Frampton does have grace. He exudes it as soon as he sits down to talk. He is a man at ease with himself.
Frampton talks comfortably about subjects that many fighters might feel embarrassed talking about: religion, fear of failure and he also talks about his wife Christine (right) and the sacrifices she has made.
‘My wife studied criminology and criminal justice at the University of Ulster,’ says Frampton. ‘She is a very clever girl but we have two kids now and she has put her career on hold because she has allowed me to come over here and have training camps in London and she’s at home in Northern Ireland looking after the kids.
‘I kind of feel bad in a way; I feel selfish because she put a lot of time and effort into her studies to get where she wanted to be and she did well in her degree and she has been sitting at home while I have been over here for four months of training camp and sometimes she feels like she is wasting away.
‘I have told her that she has shown a lot of commitment to me and allowed me to go and do all this so I have said it — and it might sound like a joke — but I am happy to be a stay-at-home guy and let her go and do what she wants after I have finished my career.
‘Her first idea of a job was to work as a prison officer with young offenders so that’s what interests her. People smile when you say that because she is a pretty girl and she doesn’t look as if she’d want to get involved with something like that but that’s what she wants to do.
‘I know about the sacrifice she is making and I know it’s not easy. We moved house a year ago out into the countryside about 40 minutes from Belfast. She is now away from her
friends and family and she sometimes doesn’t get adult conversation for five or six days. She is speaking to a five-year-old and a one-year-old, which would put anyone’s head away.
‘I have a lot of admiration and respect and appreciation for everything she has done. Without her, who knows what I would be doing now. I think I’m very lucky. She keeps me grounded. If she says she doesn’t want me to go away and train, I would have to train at home because your kids and your wife and your family are your priority.
‘But she understands about this game. She knows it is a short career and that I have a couple of good years left in me. She understands why I am doing it. It is a dream that I have had for a long time. And she understands we have the potential to have a safe and secure life once I have finished.’
Frampton, 28, who is known as ‘The Jackal’ and has an unblemished recordreco of 21 fights and 21 wins,w has made two defencesdefe of his IBF world title since he won it by beating Kiko Martinez in Belfast 18 months ago. He thinks for a second when he is asked if there is anything he is afraid of. Only failure, he says.
‘I don’t want to fail,’ he says. ‘I would be embarrassed almost. I have a lot of pressure on me. I have got a lot of support from back home. I feel like I have got the backing of a whole nation, Northern Ireland and Ireland. A lot of people back home are expecting me to win this fight. They expect me to win fights. People think it’s automatic that will continue.
‘This is a hard game. I would love to retire undefeated. I would love to go through my career, retire at 33 or something like that, as an undefeated fighter. That would be the dream. It’s not going to be easy.’
Needle, inevitably, has crept into the build-up. Frampton says Quigg won his title in the boardroom; that it was handed to him when Cuban Guillermo Rigondeaux was stripped of the belt.
‘If I were in his shoes,’ says Frampton, ‘I would be a little bit embarrassed about that, to be calling myself a world champion, knowing that they have just taken the title off someone else and given it to him. I don’t believe that he should be calling himself a world champion but anyway, he is in a proper world title fight now.’
STILL, this is a contest between two fine, dedicated, talented fighters and there is no hatred between the men who will fight the fight of their lives in Manchester. ‘I still think to a certain degree, we have respect for each other as fighters,’ says Frampton. ‘We are not particularly friendly but I have never been particularly friendly with anyone I have fought. I believe I can knock Quigg out. To do that, I am going to have to hurt him at some point. I hope that after that, he’s going to be fine.
‘I would never wish any harm on an opponent; any long-term damage or anything like that. If you have that in your head, going into a fight, that you want to damage people, there is probably something wrong with you. I just want to win the fight, look good doing it and knock him out but I don’t want him to be hurt at the end of it. I just feel almost nothing towards Quigg. I don’t hate him. I don’t love him. It’s somewhere in the middle.’
I just want to win the fight, look good doing it and knock him out