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June 1999
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!
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EXTRA - FRIEND AND FIGHTER
GRAHAM HOUSTON recalls journalistic legend and BM contributor Harry Mullan, who sadly lost his battle against cancer on 21st May at the age of 53, just after June's issue went to press. |
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MULLAN: lost his brave battle against cancer
- Get Big Pic It was in Las Vegas on the morning of Oscar De La Hoya's fight with Oba Carr when
I heard of Harry Mullan's passing. Bob Mee, a longtime colleague of us both, came up
to me at the Mandalay Bay media room with a choke in his voice to say: "Well,
he's gone," and I knew immediately he was talking about Harry, whose long
struggle against cancer had been well-known in the boxing industry. Harry was 53, a young age to die in the present-day scheme of things, although his
snow-white hair and beard made him appear older and in fact lent him what some called a
father-figure image. I go back a long way with Harry. When I was editing Boxing News in the 1970s he was
already established as a writer of merit but who had yet to get his big break. He was
associated with a weekly publication called Boxing World, which had been brought out as a
rival to the long-established BN. But Harry and I were always friendly rivals. When Boxing
World folded, I offered him a job at Boxing News, not once, but twice. Each time he turned
me down, feeling he did not wish to lose the security of his job with the British Civil
Service. But then, in 1974, he made it known to me that he was available should a job offer
again be forthcoming and that next time there would be no turning it down. I was able to
make him the offer, he duly accepted. By 1976 I had appointed him assistant editor. In
July 1977, when I moved from England to Toronto with my Canadian wife of the time, Harry
became editor of Boxing News. His tenure lasted longer than my marriage: more than 19
years. Our friendship continued over the years. I was the American correspondent of BN from
July 1977 to December 1989, when I switched to the new publication Boxing Weekly, an
ill-fated sister publication of Boxing Monthly, before coming on board with the Monthly
itself. Towards the end of his life Harry was again writing in the same publication as
myself with his always informative and enjoyable articles in Boxing Monthly. The circle
had been joined. Although I severed the long link with BN, Harry was never one to bear ill will. We met
every so often on boxing trips, mostly in Las Vegas but also at fights in Monterey, Mexico
and Sacramento, California. Our dinners were happy celebrations of times past, the red
wine flowing as it always did when Harry dined. He was the most generous of men, in every
sense of the word. There was absolutely no malice in him. Even when he was in dispute with
a member of the boxing fraternity - hard to avoid in this business - his overriding
emotion was one of regret. He could be stubborn, as in a long spell of cool relations with
Mickey Duff. But if a move was made to repair the relationship, again as with Duff, Harry
was happy to do so. Born in County Derry and a staunch Republican, Harry naturally had a soft spot for
Irish fighters or those with ancestral links to that country. We were British ringside
colleagues for years and I remember debating with him fights in which he could not be
moved in his opinion that Irish fighters such as Chris Finnegan, his brother Kevin
Finnegan and Pat McCormack had been on the wrong end of bad decisions in fights with,
respectively, John Conteh, Alan Minter and Joey Singleton. (In each case I made the winner
win.) He was so persuasive in his belief that Belfast's Paddy Maguire would defeat
south Londoner Johnny Clark in a much-anticipated bantamweight bout that I actually
changed my prediction from Clark to Maguire; Clark won. His loyalty to Billy Aird, the affable Liverpool heavyweight who moved to south-east
London and became a good chum of Harry's, was touching. He raised a few eyebrows when
he tipped Aird to beat the much more accomplished Bunny Johnson in a Boxing World article,
but later confessed: "To be honest, I thought Johnson would win [which he did] but I
didn't have the heart to tip against Billy." Harry was a guest at my wedding, and he was in the passenger seat of my car on trips to
Liverpool (for McCormack versus Singleton at the famous old Liverpool Stadium) and
Nottingham (first fight between Paddy Maguire and Dave Needham). Our conversations ranged
from boxing to the deeper issues of life. We exchanged confidences about hopes, fears,
dreams and disappointments. On the occasion of our first rendezvous in Las Vegas we said
almost in unison: "It's a long way from Manor Place Baths," in memory of
the gritty old arena in Walworth, south-east London, where we had covered fights in days
when the world seemed young. He wrote a number of books on boxing, was a TV and radio boxing pundit in Britain and
contributed to heavyweight newspapers (Sunday Times, Independent on Sunday). His luncheons
were legendary, and in the later years of his editorship he did not feel constrained to
keep long hours at the BN office, but he gave the publication an air of authority. I felt
this was in many ways because of his understanding of life, the sometimes painful passages
that can shape a journalist's writing, as much as his knowledge of, and love for,
boxing. He preferred what he felt was the "reality" of seedy downtown Las Vegas
to the glitzy Strip, and was more comfortable in the company of assorted people of the
night than in the neon glare of the mega-million hotels a few miles south of downtown. His
lifestyle - the wine, the lavish meals and a total shunning of physical exercise - were
never conducive to a particularly long earthly existence. He was battling health problems
as far back as the 1970s, and there was always a fear that thrombosis (blood clots) in his
legs would one day travel upwards with fatal consequences. But Harry carried on
regardless. Cancer was first diagnosed in 1995 and he had a colostomy performed in September of
that year. "He was given the all-clear at that time," his wife, Jessie, said.
"We were told that, with that type of cancer, there was only a 20% chance of a
recurrence. Unfortunately Harry was one of the unlucky ones. He was fine right up until
two years later, when they found that he'd got secondary tumours." As Harry put it with grim humour when giving me the bad news of the return of his
cancer: "I suppose this is what you'd call the inevitable rematch." This
time the cancer, in the pelvis, was inoperable, and it was a rematch Harry could not win.
I think he always knew this, deep down. But he never gave up the fight. When last we met,
at the Mike Tyson-Francois Botha fight at Las Vegas in January, he was making hobbling
progress with a walking stick. But he never complained. Later he had to resort to a Zimmer
frame (or "walker" for American readers) and then a wheelchair. "He was
getting weaker and weaker, said Jessie, his wife of nearly 30 years, "but he was
still not giving up. The day before he died he said: ‘I think I've turned a
corner,' and I said: ‘I really hope so. ‘He was determined he was going to
get through this and come home. It wasn't to be, but he was a real fighter. He never
gave up. He was just like a boxer in a fight. He got knocked down and got up again and
came out for the next round." John Morris, general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, told me from his
London office: "We clashed occasionally, because Harry was a man of definite
opinions, but I remember him as a friend. I didn't always agree with him but I always
respected him. He loved boxing, and I think in particular he loved boxers, and he really,
truly cared about their welfare." Harry had about a dozen amateur bouts while at university in Dublin but decided he was
better off on the other side of the ropes. He founded a boxing supporters club in 1967, to
have someone to go to the fights with. The club lasted for two years, but by now Harry was
collating records for the old Boxing News Annual and had started to break into writing,
covering the London bouts of Irish boxers for the Irish Independent newspaper. He simply
did not have the time to devote to the club, which, without Harry at the helm, folded. But
Harry was on his way. Now the journey is over. Last year he sent me a copy of his latest, and last, book: Boxing: Inside the Game. He
drew my attention to page five, in which he, flatteringly, dedicated the book to me. I
think this was Harry's way of saying goodbye. Harry leaves Jessie, a daughter
Siobhan, 28, two sons Kevin, 26, and Ian, 21, and four grandchildren. Messages of condolence
can be sent to mullanbox@aol.com. |
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