 The Worldwide Boxing Magazine Site |
Got your free t-shirt yet? |
| articles from the magazine ... |
|
March 2000
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
|
 |
GLAD IT’S ALL OVER
Since hanging up the gloves, former IBF cruiser champ Glenn McCrory has fashioned an impressive career for himself as Sky’s lead colour commentator - a role that, he tells ANTHONY EVANS, suits him better than that of a fighter. |
|
GLAD IT'S ALL OVER
- Get Big Pic Even though faint, the cavities
around Glenn McCrory’s eyes and temples are still visible. They were caused by the prolonged periods of
dehydration he endured during his boxing career and they serve as a reminder of the differences between normal men and professional
fighters. As the lead colour commentator for Sky’s boxing team since the network’s inception over 10 years ago, it is McCrory’s job to help
explain these differences. He gives viewers an insight into the toughest game of all and partners expert sportscaster Ian Darke in one of the
most professional and tight-knit units in British television. As those familiar with the McCrory story will know, he had a mixed-to-luckless pro career beset by weight-making and money worries.
Yet the proud Geordie from Anfield Plain believes those hardships make him a uniquely qualified commentator.
Recently Glenn McCrory - actor, commentator and former world champion - sat down to speak of the highs
and lows of his career and how they prepared him for the microphone and headset. “I’ve been a world champion, a journeyman and everything in between,” he began.
“And it gives me so much experience to talk about the game. Champions who were looked after their whole careers can’t tell you what
a Peter Buckley is thinking. [Midlands stalwart Buckley was 25-101-6 at time of writing, but is one of only three men to have gone the distance
with Naseem Hamed]. They don’t know what it is to just survive and get your money.
Well, I’ve done that. I’ve been one of them so I can explain to the viewer what a Peter Buckley is trying to do. “It’s the same when I interview fighters. I think that it certainly
helps [to be an ex-pro]. I remember what I was like when the media talked to me. You’re so suspicious as a fighter
- you think they are gonna stitch you up. But most of the fighters are from the same
background as me and when they see me, an ex-fighter, they open up a bit and so I get a better rapport with them.
The more relaxed they are the better the stuff we get.” Although the 35-year-old father of two held the IBF cruiserweight title he remained a somewhat low-key figure outside the north-east.
He readily admits his profile is higher today than ever before: “Most of
the people who come up to me for autographs or a chat don’t seem to know much about my career.
They are always nice and polite and say things like: ‘I saw all your fights’, but I know they didn’t really.
I was never a real TV star. Even the fight where I won the title was only shown as edited highlights, so even older fans don’t really know that
much about my career.” McCrory feels that he could have achieved more than one world title and one successful defence.
The former junior ABA champion made a good start to his paid career as a heavyweight, winning 13 in a row, but
immediately felt under pressure to succeed. “It just seemed like such a weight of expectation on a young kid,” he recalled.
“I was a teenager in there with men and it was getting harder and harder. “Eventually I came a cropper against a guy named John Westgarth who was 10 years older than me. It was just a silly fight. I was a kid and
was just thrown in there. After that loss it seemed to me as though the people who were supposed to be looking after us pitched me in with
anybody. I was just getting bashed in.” In his next five fights McCrory suffered four more defeats, two of them stoppages.
Disillusioned and already written off at age 20 McCrory left his London base in disgust and headed back to the north-east.
His attitude towards the game had understandably soured and, training alone and without a manager, he began to take fights ill-prepared and at short
notice. He explained: “For a couple of fights I didn’t have any training at
all. The Hughroy Currie fight [October 1986], I took at five days’ notice and the closest I got to training in a gym was when the wife
[Amanda, now his ex] put the pads on. And I got beat, stopped in a couple of rounds, and it was the lowest part of my career. “But listen, where I come from there were no jobs, I’ve got no qualifications or nothing.
I had to do it. I couldn’t give in. I knew I wasn’t gonna make much money and that I had no connections.
But I also knew if could get a world title it could all come right. Once you get a
world title you can make something with it in other fields.” McCrory opened a gym above a greengrocer’s shop. He was training for a
fight when he fell ill and lost nearly two stone (28lbs) in weight because of the sickness.
After recovering he had a choice - train hard to put the weight back on or train hard to keep the weight off.
So in 1987, his third year as a pro, Glenn McCrory debuted at cruiserweight, a relatively new and entirely unfashionable category, and started the long
road back. “I got in with an American manager, Beau Williford, who to be fair, I didn’t have a lot of faith in,” he admitted, “but he had a few
contacts, so I went to America, had a few fights, paying for myself.” When undisputed champion Evander Holyfield vacated the belts and moved up to heavyweight, McCrory finally got a break and got the nod from the
IBF to be matched for their vacant title. The fight took place in June 1989 on relative home turf for McCrory at Stanley. He recalled: “I was matched with the guy no-one else wanted to
fight, Patrick Lumumba, but I knew it would be him. His camp had never heard of me so were quite happy to come to England.
There were a lot of doubters, one paper had the headline: ‘Glenn’s A Goner’, but I knew I
would beat him. He was never in the fight for the whole 12 rounds - I battered him.” Reaching champion status via such an arduous route made the victory all the sweeter.
“Without a doubt the best night of my life,” said McCrory. “It was absolutely unbelievable.
I can’t explain it. It was my whole life. There was nothing else other than getting to that mountain
top, and it was all I wanted to achieve in life. “But the next morning was the worst morning of my life. Yeah, mega downer.
I woke up and for the first time in my life I didn’t have a goal. I didn’t have anything to aim for.
I didn’t know what to do next.” When a champion’s memories inspire him more than do his dreams, it is probably time to leave.
“It was such a struggle, such a hard road, I couldn’t afford to look past the title,” he said.
“That was it for me,
I just wanted to win it. If someone had given me £1 million for beating Lumumba, I would have retired and never defended.
But I still had no money.” If McCrory’s mind was telling him “enough”, his body was singing a similar tune.
Making 190lbs was getting increasingly difficult and McCrory had no idea of how to make weight correctly; instead he employed
the simple methodology of exercise lots, eat nothing. McCrory was not the same fighter in his first defence, against Siza Makhathini four months later.
“I was struggling like mad and thought I was gonna get knocked out,” he recalled.
“Then I thought: ‘Well don’t
go without a fight,’ so I started throwing punches like mad and I knocked him out.” Northern grit may have allowed McCrory to rescue his title in the 11th round, but it also ensured another battle with the championship scales.
To make weight for a defence against Jeff Lampkin in March 1990, the champion could only allow himself a bowl of cream cheese pasta per day
for five weeks. “I really didn’t care by then [about the title]” he admitted. “The
only thing I cared about was not getting . . . well, I thought something really bad was going to happen.
The night before the fight I had no bowel control. I thought I was going to die.
I was over the moon when I got done with a body shot in the third. It killed, but I could have been
seriously, seriously hurt.” A world champion no longer, McCrory was still desperately in debt. He had bought a pub and that too was now swimming deep in the red.
But he knew the name-value of ex-world champions to the promoters of up and coming prospects.
He smiled as he began: “I thought: ‘Right who’s on
the way up?’ And the only guy I could see was Lennox Lewis! But I knew how
to get the fight.” With a hint of embarrassment, McCrory sniggered. “I went down to a
Boxing Writers’ dinner and got a bit bevvied [drunk], and sat on the table next to Lewis and just started popping at him and
Frank Maloney. I started saying: ‘I’d beat ya, ya Canadian, ya can’t fight - you’re no
good.’ I really, really wound him up! I gave him all sorts of abuse.” Whatever else it took to break Lewis’s legendary cool, McCrory would not say, but, judging by the fact it riled Lewis, it must have been
industrial-strength stuff. McCrory continued to harass until poor Lennox could take no more. In front of the press, the two did a WWF-style pull-apart which, as
planned, made headlines. “I knew what I was up to,” said McCrory. “They
had all the press there and we were standing up shouting at each other. Within a week I was named No. l contender for Lewis’s European title and
I’d only had one fight at heavyweight in ages! “That was the only time I ever had a pop at an opponent and fortunately Lennox, a class guy, is alright about it now.
But I had to clear that debt and that’s why when they first offered me the fight I
asked for more money. Eventually they paid me enough to wipe out the debts.” “I knew I couldn’t beat him. I knew he was too big. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through with
- getting the crap kicked outta me. The strength he had to push you around the ring was
incredible and when he hits you it feels like someone whacking you over the head with a bag of wet cement. “If I’d have fought that Lennox Lewis two years before, I’d have given him a hell of a fight.
But it wasn’t that Glenn McCrory; it was one that just didn’t wanna be there.” It was time to move on and McCrory knew the “former world champion” tag was valuable in other ways.
He had already started on the pundit circuit when Sky asked him to partner Darke as their full-time colour
commentator. “I already knew Ian as he’d interviewed me before a fight,” McCrory said. “We did a great interview and just really clicked.
He actually recommended me to Sky saying: ‘There’s this world champion from the
north-east who’s passionate about the sport and a good talker,’ so they approached me about it.” McCrory became not only an outstanding colour commentator, but a respected critic, analyst and round-by-round judge.
But it did not come together overnight. “The first thing I learned was to forget that I ever was a fighter,” he explained. “Your experience is useful, but most fighters judge fights
with this weird sense of pride. They think: ‘He’s got a similar style to
me, what would I have done in this fight?’ That competitive side of them
is still there, but you have to forget all that and look at it from a totally neutral perspective. “Getting the right tone of voice was difficult as well and one of the early criticisms was the Geordie accent.
I worked on projecting my voice. It’s weird talking into thin air for the first time; you have to
project your voice outwards. “You also have to inject excitement into your voice at the right times and Ian has really helped me with that.
At first I would just talk like I am now, normally, but Ian explained we have to raise it according to
what’s happening in the ring. You have to grab the viewer and get them on the edge of their seats.
In a way it’s a lot like acting.” And McCrory knows something about that, also. Over the last 12 years he has appeared in as varied TV shows as “Casualty” and “Space
Precinct”, and even read for the role of James Bond before Brosnan landed it. He remembered: “One casting lady said to me: ‘Can you even imagine a Geordie James Bond?’ And I said: ‘Yeah, almost as stupid as a Scottish
one, isn’t it?’” Or even an Irish one. Or an Australian one. Although McCrory continues to act, most recently playing a bouncer in the soap “Teesside”, it takes a backseat to Sky.
But it could have been very different. The Royal Shakespeare Company have twice offered him an
18-month contract to tour with them. “But at that time Sky was really becoming something big,” he remembered.
“I thought: ‘Well I’m already doing Sky and I like doing that more.’ Also, I feel very much a part of
Sky. The first world title fight on an outside broadcast on Sky was mine. When Ian and me started, Sky was one man and his video camera and
we’ve seen it grow into the massive thing it is today.” But McCrory had unfinished business. “I couldn’t live with myself because of the way my career ended,” he said. “I just couldn’t.
So I
got back into shape. I wanted to prove to me, nothing to do with anyone else, prove to me that I could fight.” Many observers felt the Lewis defeat left McCrory with nowhere to go in the top division, but he shocked everyone by returning to
cruiserweight. This was possible because for the first time in his career McCrory had a proper team around him, including a nutritionist
which meant no more cream cheese pasta. “After a few fights I got another shot at the title against Al Cole in Moscow and I thought I put up a good performance
- I was doing really well for six rounds,” he said. “Then we clashed heads and he had a
really good round. He put me down, and then he fought on the back foot.
He boxed me after that and won on points. “But I was happy with that. It sounds stupid, because I would have fought to the death to win, but in a way I didn’t want to win.
That would’ve meant I was back, but I just wanted to prove something to myself.” Honour satisfied, McCrory moved on with life. “I still sometimes think about my boxing career and that I could’ve done so much more if I had
the right breaks or more luck,” he admitted. “But then again there are
loads more successful ex-world champions out there and I’ve got the job they all want. I didn’t get the luck in my boxing career, but I got it
afterwards so I can’t complain. “And it’s great I’ve now got the chance to put all that experience, good and bad, to some use.” |
|
Also available to read from issue:
|
|
On sale on the last Thursday of every month Ensure you never miss a copy . . . buy your subscription or back issues here. |