PHIL MARTIN had his back to a mirror working with a kid the first time that Joe Gallagher walked through the doors at Champs Camp.
It was a Sunday morning and Gallagher wanted to be a champion and that is why he climbed the stairs and opened the door at that gym, on that morning. Trust me, getting to the door was not an easy passage, especially in 1987.
Gallagher was just 17, desperate to be a better fighter and a new start inside the Moss Side gym was his solution. It had a reputation back then, the early days; it had a reputation as a hard place to survive, a tough gym in a brutal part of the city. It had other reputations, but let’s leave them. All the best fighting gyms have glorious myths: Manny Steward’s Kronk, Angelo Dundee’s 5th Street. And some stories are even true.
At Champs Camp in Moss Side, there were many stories. Gallagher had heard them all, but he was not bothered. He knew about the gym’s ferocious sessions, the competitive sessions, the champions in waiting.
“I just wanted to be part of it,” said Gallagher. “Phil asked me how many bouts I’d had and told me to come back the next day. That was it, I was in.” Gallagher went back the next day. He told me he ran to the bus station like a child at Christmas, delighted that he was in.
The guns, the daily shootings and the killings were just a couple of years away. The growing dangers on those Moss Side streets were not a problem – Gallagher knew he had found a home.
Joe Gallagher is back there now, back in the Champs Camps gym in Moss Side. He is part of the gym’s resurgence with Maurice Core, who was one of the original British champions from the gym that Martin built. Core and Gallagher are continuing the tradition. They had to get the doors back open, Martin had to build the place from the ruins of the riots. As I said, there are many stories.
The last time I went up the steps, Gallagher was in the ring taking Lawrence Okolie on the pads. The walls in that gym are covered with the memories from the early days and Gallagher is there in those photographs, a skinny boy, a dreamer back then. There are others where he is a man, a coach. Man and boy we call it.
That place has been his home, Phil Martin was his guru and the boys that came and went and died have been his partners in the boxing business. They have been his friends. Gallagher will be there this morning, he is there every morning, working with his boxers, shaping others. It is all he knows.
The boxers were all there when Core spoke at Martin’s funeral in 1994. Martin was just 44, gone too soon, a man way before his time. Gallagher and the men from the gym went off in different directions – that is the boxing way, but they taught the Martin way.
At the end of the service on that cold and windy day, the boxers huddled in the street, mumbling and trying to smile. Gallagher was one of the men at their centre. The fighting men from M14 all gathered one last time to honour the man who saved them. Joe was one of them.
Gallagher is not always the easiest man to get on with. He fights for his boxers, chasing what he sees as justice, and he has total faith in them. Some might say that he is blind in some cases to his fighter’s flaws. He is always up front with his complaints and his observations, and that is a healthy thing in a business that is too often sly and gutless.
It doesn’t mean that he is right, but knowing your trainer is fighting your corner is a reassurance for any boxer. Phil Martin always fought for his fighters, arguing with officials and promoters. Like Joe, he was not always easy to deal with.
Back in 2001, at the World Championships in Belfast, I had upset Joe over something I had said or written about Stephen Foster Jr. Perhaps it was something I had not written. I have no idea what it was, but he hounded me for days. Foster had lost a hard fight to Elio Rojas in the quarter finals. Perhaps I had not mentioned it in the paper. I have no recollection.
Gallagher was not happy. Rojas went on and won a world title as a professional – knowing Joe, he probably told me that would happen and that I should have written that.
A lot of years later, we fell out after Scott Quigg lost to Carl Frampton. That was ugly, but we talked about it and carried on. The next time I was in the gym with him – it would have been Amir Khan’s gym in Bolton to interview one of his fighters – we just cracked on. It was business, not personal and Gallagher was just fighting for his boxer’s rights. I admire that in Gallagher.
In November of last year, Gallagher had an appointment with a medical specialist. He was diagnosed with bowel cancer and then in December he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He kept it quiet; he had fighters to prepare. He had people depending on him; Martin had done the same when he was diagnosed back in 1993.
Gallagher just got on with business and he still is getting on with the boxing business. He has been in boxing since he was 11 and walked through the doors at the Wythenshawe Forum ABC and he is still deep inside our boxing beast now at 56.
Every day, every week, every year and that is because Joe Gallagher is a real boxing man. Say hello when you see him at the fights, but don’t make a fuss. He will like that – that is the Phil Martin way.
