SHANE McGUIGAN has shrugged off the insults Chris Eubank Sr, and Junior, have slung his way.
Shane, the son of Barry McGuigan, was in the corner of Carl Frampton when he became a two-weight world champion, of course with George Groves for his fourth and first successful world title shot and is doing sterling work with Josh Taylor among others. He is a young trainer but feels little need to defend himself. Instead he believes the comments from the Eubanks are revealing.
“They’re threatened. I had an altercation with Eubank Senior in David Haye’s gym and I feel like that was because senior was so annoyed that David was training with me. Because I feel that deep down he’d probably want to be able to work with David and sit on the side of the ring and mentor a guy like him,” McGuigan told Boxing News. “I was training all the lads and he came up and tried to undermine me in front of everyone. He said, ‘Sparring.’ Because we were doing padwork. (It was Tuesday, we do sparring Monday, Wednesday, Friday.) It was [absurd], my dad got offended by it and I laughed at him. Then he came up to me and gave me an apology. I said, ‘Chris I don’t want your apology.’ He went, ‘Well, I’m doing it for your dad then.’ So there’s respect then between him and my father and that’s nice. I think he was a fantastic fighter and it’s a shame that he’s losing the respect and credibility. He’s his own worst enemy. He’s his own on worst enemy. That’s the be all and end all.”
Frostiness in the build up to the World Boxing Super Series clash between Junior and George Groves therefore is understandable. McGuigan declined to dwell on the Eubank team’s analysis of the WBA super-middleweight title fight.
“They’re not underestimating him behind closed doors. It’s all a public façade,” Shane said. “I think everything you hear is pantomime. They live in this world where they feel like they’re a lot more intelligent and cultured than everyone. But in fact they’re not. And everyone can see them for who they truly are. They can’t say these sort of things and get away with. They can’t go and make these brash statements and comments because it comes back to bite you in the arse. You can’t just shake hands at the end of it.”
McGuigan continued, “He [Eubank Senior] says he doesn’t do it for the money, he does it for the love. Come on, let’s be honest. He does it for the money this guy, everything he does is about money. I just hope on Saturday night that he looks after his son. If you have this arrogance and ‘warrior’s code’ or whatever they call it, that he’s invincible. You don’t know. He doesn’t know his son. Everyone’s got their own brain, everyone takes something slightly different… He’s not invincible this kid and neither was Eubank senior. So I hope that for him, as a parent that he does look after him. I hope it never gets to that stage but if he’s taking a lot of punishment, you can’t have this thing that he’s invincible, he can take shots all day long. George Groves is a world class puncher. I think he has to sit back and look at himself. They’re definitely phased a little bit. He’s trying to put me down because maybe he’s a little bit intimidated, a little bit scared. He’ll say that he’s not but he knows that George has finally won that world title, he knows that he’s on form, he knows that he’s looking happy, confident and back to his best. That’s probably phased him.”
