Irish Thunder

by Bob Halloran

  Micky says, “My mother did a good enough job as a manager. I don’t know, there were a bunch of fights there in a row where every one of them was a tough fight. I lost my confidence. I just think Ron Katz and Top Rank threw me to the wolves, putting me in there with guys who were trying to kill me. It would have been better to get a couple of easy fights, build up my confidence. Without confidence you’re hesitant. I was nervous before those fights. You start having thoughts about losing, or what if I didn’t train hard enough. Will I be able to handle everything? I kept going in there against contenders, and it wasn’t good.”

  Micky did have an offer for new management from Ben Doherty, who had trained Micky at the Billerica Boys Club nearly fourteen years earlier. Doherty, who was on his way to becoming the Massachusetts boxing commissioner, tells the story that he and a couple of friends were looking for a fighter to back. Their plan was to invest money in a fighter, pay him a weekly salary, and cover the training costs—that sort of thing. They hoped to see a return on their investment when the fighter started making big money. Doherty offered to form a corporation called the Micky Ward Association.

  Doherty talked with Micky, first on the phone, and later at a dinner meeting, and explained the terms of the deal. Micky would earn five hundred dollars a week, and he’d do all of his training in Providence, Rhode Island.

  “It was critical that we get him out of Lowell,” Doherty says, echoing the sentiments of Skeets Scioli who had long ago told Micky to “Get the hell out of Lowell.”

  Micky agreed to the deal, and the wheels were put in motion, but everything fell apart about a week later.

  “I called to talk to Micky to set up another meeting,” Doherty explains. “And his mother answered the phone. She was wild! She started blasting away and said we weren’t going to take over. ‘I’m going to manage him,’ she says. ‘He’s my son.’”

  Doherty believed that Alice Ward “single-handedly destroyed the careers of Beau Jaynes, Larry Carney, and Dickie Eklund,” so he asked her, “Why are you going to destroy Micky’s career, too?” Micky was forced to back out of the deal.

  Years later, after he became boxing commissioner, Doherty frequently barred Alice from entering the ring.

  “She wanted to get up there in her high heels, and that was dangerous,” Doherty says. “She was really bullshit at me for that, even threatened to punch me out.”

  Doherty’s biggest criticism of Alice was that she, along with Top Rank, overmatched Micky, giving him too many tough fights, and giving them to him consecutively. His point was made when the next wolf to come knocking on Micky’s door was a twenty-eight-year-old from Philadelphia named Tony “Pound for Pound” Martin, another legitimate contender. Like Micky, Martin had already beaten Joey Ferrell and Johnny Rafuse. Martin also had dominated Livingstone Bramble, the former WBA lightweight champion who had beaten Edwin Curet twice, and who had scored a second-round knockout of Harold Brazier. Essentially, Micky was fighting a guy who had beaten a guy who had beaten a couple of guys who had beaten him. This would not be easy.

  While preparing for the Martin fight, Alice Ward persuaded Micky to accept the help of another trainer, Carmen Graziano, the man who had approached Micky after the Mungin fight. Graziano knew boxing, and he also thought he knew what Micky’s biggest problem was. He thought Micky was running on empty at the end of his fights, and he thought the cause of the empty tank was a dearth of electrolytes. Micky tended to lose as many as five pounds during a sparring session, so Graziano started pouring orange-flavored Gatorade into him. It wasn’t a bad idea, but Micky had bigger problems than electrolytes.

  The two fighters met at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Micky had been losing with regularity while Martin had won each of his last seven fights and entered the ring with a record of 22-3. Sugar Ray Leonard, who was calling the fight for ESPN along with Al Bernstein, summed things up for Micky as the fight began.

  “Micky has been very tentative in his last two fights. He has to be a lot more aggressive. He can’t lay back. He has to take the initiative.”

  Leonard also ran into his former opponent Dickie Eklund, who told him, “My brother’s going to rush out and be aggressive.”

  But it didn’t happen. Micky landed all of six punches in the first round. He was covering up, and putting his back against the ropes.

  “C’mon, Micky!” Dickie shouted from the corner. “Head, body! Pick it up. Head, body.”

  Micky didn’t listen, so Dickie tried again in between rounds.

  “You’ve got to get to him,” Dickie urged. “Don’t stay like that. I want you to get him this round. No more waiting. No more waiting! This is it. Do or die! No more waiting. He realizes, Micky, that he can’t really get to you, so he’s blocking. Now, you’ve got to show him. Punch!”

  Dickie screamed the last word, but he could tell it hadn’t sunk in. So he continued.

  “You must earn his respect, Micky. You haven’t got it. Are you going to fire this round?”

  Micky responded, “Yeah.”

  “Are you gonna loosen up?”

  Again the response, “Yeah.”

  “Go at him! Go, Micky!”

  Just two rounds into the fight, and there was already a desperate cry coming from Dickie. He had seen this from his brother before. It wasn’t easy to watch, and it was guaranteed to spell defeat.

  “It becomes a mental thing,” Leonard explained. “After a fighter suffers a couple of losses, a fighter can get a mental block.”

  Micky had nothing all night. After the bell, Martin raised his arms in victory. Micky hugged him and congratulated him and then ambled over to his corner. He put on a blue baseball cap and smiled while the scores were announced. Micky lost another lopsided unanimous decision: 98-92, 98-92, and 97-93.

  He was no longer a young, promising fighter. He wasn’t a contender or an up-and-comer maneuvering for a shot at a title. He wasn’t even a cagey old veteran. The lasting images he was leaving in the eyes and minds of promoters and fight fans was that Micky Ward was an inactive fighter, a boring fighter, and a loser. Being a white Irish kid who could fight had been his meal ticket. Now, all he had was his ethnicity, his bad hands, and no confidence.

  After his loss to Martin, Micky went back to paving roads and waited for the phone to ring. When the call finally came in, it wasn’t exactly what he was looking for. Boston radio celebrity Eddie Andelman was attempting to put together an all-New England fight card in August 1991. Andelman planned to have as the main event a rematch between Micky Ward and Johnny Rafuse. Their first fight had taken place five years earlier, and fans immediately began clamoring for a rematch. But Micky and his family weren’t satisfied with the five-thousand-dollar offer for the fight and began haggling over money. Rafuse wasn’t happy about the money either and demanded at least twice the proposed purse.

  Neither fighter was in much of a position to demand anything. Micky had lost three straight fights, and nobody was knocking down his doors offering him more than five grand to fight anybody. For his part, Rafuse had lost ten fights since he had last faced Micky, including fights with common opponents such as Edwin Curet, Tony Martin, Harold Brazier, and Joey Ferrell.

  The Andelman promotion, with Andelman receiving a lot of help from Al Valenti, was scheduled for mid-August at Boston University’s Nickerson Field. Micky had just fought in May and said he wanted a couple of tune-up fights before he fought Rafuse, but there wasn’t going to be time for that. Ultimately, Andelman and Valenti tired of dealing with Micky’s demands and delays and matched Rafuse with Miguel Santana, who had briefly been the IBF lightweight champion a few years earlier. That fight, not surprisingly, never came off either, and Rafuse ended up beating Jose Hiram Torres of Hartford, Connecticut. It was not the fight New Englanders were hoping to see. Torres was 6-8 when he fought Rafuse, and wound up losing forty-eight of his sixty-three professional fights.

  Micky found another opportunity. He was given one more shot at either proving himself or
proving to be a stepping-stone for another fighter. On October 15, 1991, Micky returned to Atlantic City to fight a young prospect named Ricky Meyers. The fight would be broadcast on the USA Network, and Micky more than doubled the five grand he had been offered to fight Rafuse. It was a good move on his part. More money, more exposure, more to gain, and less risk.

  “Micky is tough, and rugged,” Meyers said respectfully before the fight. “His fights have come against quality opponents. This is a chance for me to prove that I belong. I’m going to be coming forward and aggressive. I’m going to be moving my head, and just coming in and making him miss, and pressing him, working the body and wearing him down.”

  Micky said he’d be ready. “He thinks he’s gonna be getting the same guy that was in there running and stopping and letting the guy punch,” Micky said, referring to his bout with Charles Murray. “That ain’t gonna be the case. I’m gonna fight, throw more punches. That’s the bottom line, gotta throw punches. If I keep throwing punches, there’s no way he can beat me.”

  Micky walked into the ring at the Broadway by the Bay Theater at Harrah’s Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City wearing black trunks with multicolored trim, weighing 142 pounds. Ricky “The Rock” Meyers met Micky in the ring weighing 141.5 pounds and wearing red trunks with gold trim.

  The two men stared each other down with white-hot intensity as legendary referee Arthur Mercante gave them the pre-fight instructions. Mercante had already worked ninety-five world championships, so Micky and Ricky were in good hands.

  After the first round, a round in which Micky did not live up to his promise to keep throwing punches, Meyers returned to his corner and was told by his trainer, Kevin Rooney, “He’s got nothing. Go right at him.”

  Two minutes into the second round, Micky tried to connect with a big left hand, but failed. The miss threw him off balance, and he finished in a low crouch. He was vulnerable and Meyers countered by clubbing him with a hard right to the top of Micky’s head. Micky rose and felt a left hand sting him with tremendous power. Micky went down in a heap.

  It was only the second time in his career that he’d been down. He was more embarrassed than hurt, and he sprang back to his feet. Mercante wiped Micky’s gloves on his shirt and signaled for the fighters to resume action. Micky aggressively fired another hard left. He missed and slipped to one knee. It was not ruled a knockdown, and the fight continued uninterrupted. It must have appeared to Meyers that Micky was hurt and working on wobbly legs, because he went after Micky with ferocity. Micky took several big shots and was unable to respond in kind.

  Former lightweight champion Sean O’Grady, who was calling the fight for USA Network, said that he had been with Micky before the fight and noticed that his right hand was badly swollen. The doctor must have seen it as well, because on the morning of a fight, a doctor gives each fighter a physical. During the examination, the doctor routinely squeezes the fighter’s hands and asks if there’s any pain. Certainly Micky had pain, but he had learned not to grimace.

  In the fifth, Meyers just pummeled Micky in the midsection. After witnessing another three minutes of his brother being beaten, Dickie asked in the corner, “Do you feel like fighting? Are you okay? If you want to fight, get out there and throw punches.”

  But it was clear that Micky was just going through the motions. O’Grady noticed it, too, and said, “At the age of twenty-six, he could be a shot fighter. You know when fighters see the punches, and they can’t get out of the way, or they stand around and they do nothing, and they wait for their opponents to score, they may be nearing the end of their career.”

  O’Grady was saying what no one in Micky’s camp had wanted to say up to that point. O’Grady continued, “Micky’s worrying about taking a year off and letting his hands heal. If I were him, I would take the year off now

  . . . get my hands fixed, and then decide a year from today if I’m gonna box anymore.”

  By the end of the sixth, Dickie was beside himself with anger and frustration. As bad as Micky had looked in other fights, he had never looked this bad. He was still going out there round after round, but he looked like a quitter.

  “Punch!” Dickie yelled two inches away from Micky’s face. “As soon as you get in there, bang, bang! If he moves like this, hit him in the back of the head. What are you, stupid? He’s doing it to you.”

  Micky gave no response, no acknowledgment that he had heard a word of Dickie’s tongue-lashing. His focus, along with any chance of winning the fight on points, was gone.

  “You’ve got to knock him out,” fellow cornerman Carmen Graziano said. Then Dickie added the necessary punctuation, “You’re a fighter. What are you, a jerk? Punch!”

  Micky went back out for more abuse. When they got to the tenth round, Micky was as listless as he had been in the prior nine rounds. The best anyone could say about Micky’s performance that night was said by O’Grady, a former boxer who had great respect for all boxers. O’Grady said, “A lot of guts from Micky Ward. He’s put up a good little match, even though it’s been one-sided. He could have easily checked out of this fight. Nobody would have said a word. He’s taken some big shots.”

  All three judges scored the fight 99-90 in favor of Ricky Meyers, and the Boston Globe’s Ron Borges wrote a few days later, “Lowell’s Micky Ward got hurt early and pounded around by Ricky Meyers last Tuesday in Atlantic City, losing a lopsided decision. In case his mother, who manages him, hasn’t noticed, it’s time to stop.”

  Micky did stop. He retired from boxing just like 99 percent of all boxers—a hard-luck loser. As always, boxing had been honest. It told a fighter exactly what he was. Micky had tried, and he had failed. That seemed to be the inescapable destiny for tough kids from Lowell. Micky returned to Lowell unfulfilled, unsatisfied, still hungry, and disappointed. He had been unable to bring a championship home. Knocked down and bloodied, he got back up on a street roller in Lowell and tried to make an honest living.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The decision to retire did not come easy, and it did not come without consultation. When a person is faced with a life-altering decision, that person tends to seek the counsel of a trusted advisor. Micky chose Richie Bryan, a friend who had been with him through the good times and bad, and who never asked him for anything but friendship.

  “I’m thinking about retiring,” Micky said on the phone one night. “Go ahead,” Richie responded without hesitation. Micky was surprised by how quickly Richie had agreed to the possibility. Richie’s response did not come across as a dare. It was more like encouragement.

  “You know, they want me to fight,” Micky said. He didn’t specify who “they” were. His parents, Dickie, even Top Rank wanted him to keep going, because Micky still had a recognizable name and a decent record. They could keep setting him up as the fall guy for younger, more promising talents. Micky knew they were using him. He knew that any blood spilled would be his. He also knew that there had been too many days that he trained without the enthusiasm he once had and there were too many nights when he went inside the ring uninspired. Richie knew all this, too.

  “Nothing for nothing, Mick,” Richie said. “But you gotta do what you want to do. It’s not what this one wants or that one. You had a decent career. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You’re not into it. You’re not fightin’. Your head’s not into it. Your hands are bad. You’ve got plenty of reasons to quit.”

  “But everybody wants me to fight.”

  “Fuck everybody! Sure they want you to fight, but they’re not in there getting hit. You are. The fire’s not there. You’re getting beat by these guys who shouldn’t beat you. You’re going in there, and you’re a punching bag. You’re not into it. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Retire. If you’re asking the question, you know what the answer is.”

  With the same determination and conviction that carried him into the ring for twenty-eight professional fights, he called his parents and informed them of his decision. He left it up to them to tell Top Ran
k and Dickie.

  Micky’s decision to retire came at the beginning of 1992. Within a year, Dickie was arrested three times. Micky’s boxing career ran from 1986 to 1991, and Dickie was arrested at least once in each of those years. But the nature of those arrests tended to be along the lines of drunk and disorderly conduct. Then, in the early nineties, Dickie’s criminal activities escalated to armed robbery and kidnapping.

  “In 1993, I got arrested for robbing a guy, and they put me in jail in Cambridge,” Dickie recalls. “I looked at myself with my shirt off. I was 118 pounds. I started crying. And I thought, ‘Who is this guy?’”

  It was frightening for Dickie to see himself aging and emaciated. He may have been something once, but now he was nothing more than the strung-out crack addicts he saw on the streets.

  He spent nearly four months in jail before his mother finally bailed him out. She’d done the same thing for him many times before. In fact, when Dickie was jailed for punching a police officer in 1987, Alice held a fund-raiser to scrape together the five thousand dollars required to get Dickie out of jail. The event was held in the VFW Hall in Lowell and featured a video of Dickie’s fight against Sugar Ray Leonard. Only about thirty people showed up and paid the five-dollar admission fee. Not surprisingly, a fight broke out. With Micky’s help, the skirmish was quickly settled, but Alice and her daughters didn’t come anywhere close to raising enough money to get Dickie out of jail. So, Micky pitched in with the balance due.

  The memory of his skeletal frame, wrinkled face, and ghostly complexion haunted Dickie as he left the Cambridge jail. He walked with a determination to turn his life around, to find a job, to support his son, and to become the father he’d never really had. A few weeks later, he was caught with another gun attempting to commit another robbery. He was back in jail where he saw the same picture of himself. He was a mess. He acknowledged it and told himself repeatedly that he was screwing up his life.