Being in my old friend’s corner will be a buzz, but I’ll be back in ring again
‘I watched Eric and could see a few areas where he could improve’
THEY go back a long way. It is almost 18 years since a small, blond kid from Athy arrived in Dublin for his first session with the Irish schoolboy squad and came across the tall, rangy southpaw from Limerick. As they travelled together, a friendship wasn’t long in forging.
Life took them on different paths. One went to the Olympics, as Ireland’s sole boxer in Athens back in 2004, before the legendary Emanuel Steward took him under his wing and set him on a road that eventually led to him becoming middleweight champion of the world. The other remained at home, was a stalwart of the IABA High Performance programme, winning five national titles even if he never realised his own Olympic dream.
No matter what detours were taken, they stayed in touch. When Andy Lee was living under the roof of his venerated trainer in Detroit, Eric Donovan was a familiar voice from home that was often at the other end of a phone line.
‘I had to make sure he didn’t get too Americanised,’ Donovan recalled with a chuckle on a chilly Tuesday morning, moments after his friend had collected him for another sweat-stained day at Paul O’Grady’s gym in Harold’s Cross.
This evening in the National Stadium where they first met all those years ago, their friendship enters new territory, Donovan is making the first defence of his BUI Celtic featherweight title against Spain’s Juan Luiz Gonzalez and Lee will be in his corner as his trainer, dispensing advice between rounds.
It’s a role the former champion never envisaged for himself. But his old friend needed a dig-out. Dom O’Rourke had become IABA President which precluded him from working with Donovan. And the friends have more in common than just being two of Irish sport’s good guys. They are both southpaws and Donovan has spoken before of using Lee as a role model.
Lee has a wealth of boxing knowledge that can be mined. Not just from the time in the famous Kronk gym and the long hours spent picking the brain of the late Steward, but also his more recent work with Adam Booth in the UK.
‘I had watched Eric’s fights and could see a few areas where he could improve, a few things that I could tell him,’ says the Castleconnell native. ‘And I could just show him things that I picked up along the way, I had two excellent teach- ers in Emanuel and Adam Booth. Very different teachers.
‘Adam is big into the psychology of boxing, what you are supposed to do when you have your back against the ropes and things like that, so we delve into that a bit. I don’t want to overload Eric either, I just tell him a couple of things in each session.’
DONOVAN is a relative latecomer to the paid ranks, just making his professional debut 18 months ago, a few weeks before his 31st birthday. He’s making up for lost time, though. He has won his first five bouts, three by KO, but having spent so long as an amateur, he’s had to fast-track his education in how different things are inside the pro ropes.
‘The professional game is a lot different to the amateur one. We need to break down the habits of a lifetime from fighting amateur. Eric needs to fight with a professional style, so I am trying to make him more explosive and more three-dimensional,’ Lee explains. ‘But we don’t want to change too much, because he does a lot of stuff well.
‘Eric’s a good boxer, he has got a lot of talent and great experience. The more I work with him, the more impressed I am to see things that he is capable of. I think he has only just touched the potential that he has, and he is capable of a lot more. He’s a very intelligent boxer, I have just put more emphasis on power, head movement and defence.’
Lee’s not sure if this foray into training will represent a career change. He’s still an active fighter — both the WBC and Ring magazine both have him ranked inside the top 10 middleweights in the world. Fifteen months after losing his WBO strap to Billy Joe Saunders, he made a successful return to the ring this past March on the undercard of Gennady Golovkin’s battle with Danny Jacobs.
But his reputation and punching power mean that few promoters are going to risk putting promising upand-comers against him. And at 33, Lee is not going to take a bout for the sake of it. Besides, as a former world champion, he knows his value. He has had a few offers of fights in the past couple of months but none of them have been the right one. ‘I don’t know what will happen,’ Lee says. ‘It depends if I get the right fight of the right magnitude, with the right pay-day most importantly. I have had a few offers, was offered a fight on December 16 but it just gave me four weeks to prepare, which I wasn’t going to take. ‘Working with Eric, I have reminded myself how much I know in terms of ring generalship and ringcraft. If the right type of fight comes along, I will get back into the ring. I’d like to fight Danny Jacobs and I would fight any of the champions. We will see what happens in the spring.’ There are other things to consider. Lee and his wife had their first child five months ago and that has been keeping him busy, while he is also doing
‘Eric’s got a lot of talent, a very intelligent boxer’
some media work, something that has always come naturally to the articulate Limerick man.
But Donovan believes there may be a future in training for his friend, should he desire it. ‘Every day with Andy is a schoolday,’ he says. ‘He has so much experience and knowledge about the pro game. When I was looking around for a trainer, I didn’t know any of the professional trainers in Ireland and I needed someone with Andy’s expertise and knew their way around the pro ring. It has worked out brilliantly.’
Lee reckons that he has had a diligent student. ‘There is no frustration working with Eric, because when I tell him to do something, he usually has it down in two or three attempts. It is not like I am drilling home the same thing, time after time. He is easy to work with, because he has a lot of skill.’
Tonight’s show in the National Stadium is another example of how professional boxing is reviving itself in Ireland. With big shows in Belfast in recent weeks, and the advent of a Last Man Standing prizefighter-style tournament in Dublin next March, the sport has a lot going for it, at the moment. And Donovan is part of that.
‘There is a lot of momentum behind him, he’s drawing good crowds in the Stadium. I think he will get bigger and bigger because of his personality and winning a European title is definitely within his scope, and that should be his aim,’ Lee reckons.
Whether he will be in his friend’s corner if he does continue to climb up the rankings, Lee doesn’t know. It will all depend on how this evening goes.
‘I don’t know if I’m going to do it again. Will have to see. Maybe come fight night, I might get swept up in it all and get a real buzz from being in Eric’s corner and will be keen to do it all over again.’