TO HELL WITH FAME
Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan is more focused on securing his family’s future than on the celebrity a World Title belt will bring
WHEN Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan was growing up in Mahon, he remembers his father Denis waking him to watch the big fight nights from Vegas.
Evander Holyfield under the bright lights, or Roy Jones Junior, or Oscar De La Hoya, with Hollywood royalty like Jack Nicholson and Bruce Willis in the front row. It was a different world to a blearyeyed, young Spike.
In the early hours of next Sunday morning, though, it’s his turn.
‘It is crazy to think about it. Completely surreal. To think there will be young fellas getting up to watch me... This is like a dream. I am waiting for someone to wake me up,’ he says with a smile.
We are sitting in a coffee shop in Corduff, below Paschal Collins’ gym where O’Sullivan has sculpted himself into the best condition of his life. At 34 years of age, he believes that he has never felt better. Or sharper. He gave up drinking six months ago and has felt the benefits.
It hasn’t been easy. He liked nothing more than a few cans of an evening to unwind.
‘It has very beneficial. I’m very clear-minded and my diet has improved as a result. When I drank, I always had an inkling for burger and chips. It was a disaster. I used to be 13 and a half stone in training camps. I had more than 20lbs to lose before fights. My training camp was like weight-watchers.
‘Now, ten days out from the biggest fight of my career, I am almost my fighting weight.’
O’Sullivan faces former world champion David Lemieux for the WBA Silver title in the T-Mobile Arena. It’s the main support bout to the most hotly-anticipated fight of the year – the Canelo-Golovkin rematch. If he wins, he’ll get a shot at whomever leaves T-Mobile Arena as the undisputed middleweight champion.
It is an extraordinary second act for a fighter who felt that he’d have to hang up his gloves after losing to Chris Eubank Jr a few years ago. He stopped on his stool in the sixth round of that bout, because of a perforated eardrum. It was only by visiting an ear specialist that he was able to fight again.
It hasn’t been the only setback that he’s faced, inside or outside the ring. He has mental health problems, the legacy of a long battle in the family law courts following a bad relationship break-up. He singles out Patricia Magner, a chiropodist in Mahon, who spotted his troubles and forced him to talk about it. ‘She saved my life,’ he says simply.
His career hasn’t followed a straight path either. He has fought for pittance. ‘Some fights cost me money, the training camp was more than what I got paid,’ he says. No wonder he’s pinching himself at the prospect of a substantial six-figure purse.
‘I’ll make more money from this fight than all other fights, combined. They are expecting this show to have one of the most pay-perview buys in history. This is the biggest stage in the world, biggest fight card of the year. ‘This is mega-territory. Absolutely amazing. The magnitude of the event. I don’t even think about that. I could be fighting down in my own amateur club in Loughmahon in Cork for all I care. I just want to secure my family’s future. I don’t give a damn about the fame.’
He already knows what he is going to buy with the purse. For years, as he clambered up the slippery slope of middleweight rankings, O’Sullivan used to run up Matthew Hill in Cork. It was his version of Rocky’s Philadelphia steps. Rain, shine, sleet or snow, O’Sullivan was there.
‘I always thought to myself, one day, I want to buy a house here, I was running up the hill, just to keep my dream alive. And when I win this fight, I can go and buy five houses there, one for each of my four children. When I get into the ring, that’s what I am fighting for. So Lemieux is in big trouble. It is nothing personal, but I am fighting for my family.’
O’Sullivan put his own dream on hold to get this fight. When Canelo Alvarez was serving his suspension for a positive drugs test, he was mooted as a possible replacement to fight Golovkin on May 5. Except the Golovkin team kept low-balling the offer.
For three sleepless nights, he tossed and turned in his Citywest Hotel room. He was throwing up in the car park from anxiety and exhaustion.
‘I sacrificed my own dream. I wanted to fight for the world title, but Paschal said I had to put my business head on here.
‘Paschal said as coach that this would be his biggest ever fight. But as your manager, I am advising you that the Golden Boy offer is better for you and your family. And I have
already won financially, from not accepting Golovkin’s offer. I will be making much more next week and after I beat Lemieux, I will get a shot at either Golovkin or Alvarez, anyway.’
Like so many boxers, O’Sullivan says that he only climbs into the ring to safeguard his family’s future so, in that respect, the risks and dangers of the sport comes into his mind. He’s a friend of Nick Blackwell, who ended up in an induced coma after a bout against Eubank Jnr.
‘It never goes through my head. You can’t let it, it is the same as car accidents. I don’t think I am going to crash the car every time that I get behind the wheel. And you have to trust that your corner will do the best for you.
‘I will be forever grateful to Paschal. He made the right decision in the Eubank fight. I was never going to win that night and, in hindsight, you saw what happened Nick Blackwell. That could have been me. There is more to life than boxing and ego and glory. What is most important to me is that I can hug my kids and bring them to school in the morning.’
O’Sullivan claims that his destiny is to become world champion, but he’s already planning for a life, away from the ring.
When he was in Los Angeles in May, he met a film producer who is toying with the idea of doing a project about John L Sullivan, the famous 19th century bareknuckle world champion who had Cork roots.
He saw Spike’s moustache ‘my calling card’, and thought he looked like Sullivan. ‘Maybe, if we go far enough back, I might discover I was related to him,’ O’Sullivan says. ‘The number of Sullivans that left Cork around 1840s and 1850s is mad. Someone went through it with me one day.’
He recently spent the day with another O’Sullivan, five-time snooker world champion Ronnie. The pair hit it off to such an extent that they decided they must be related some way back.
‘It was mad, Everything he said, I agreed with. We both said we must do our family tree to see if we are related.
The only difference between us is that he has already been world champion. And I am yet to be. But it is my destiny.’
The two of them got up early one morning and went for a run around Cork – ‘The two of us going down Patrick Street. Taxi drivers were looking at us, wondering what was going on here.’ Things like running down Patrick Street with Ronnie O’Sullivan just seem to happen to Spike O’Sullivan. He quit boxing at 19 to become a sheet-metal worker but was convinced by Paschal Collins to take a pro bout at 23. ‘I thought it would be the only one I ever had. And then Paschal rang me up to say do you want to go to Boston for a fight. I never thought I would go to America in my life.’
From there, he has reached the biggest stage. The eyes of the boxing world will be on T-Mobile Arena for Canelo-GGG rematch. But Spike O’Sullivan is determined to steal the show. It will be in keeping with the journey that has brought him here.