Contender who fought the biggest battles of them all

Every morning, soon after he wakes up, Seamus McDonagh will take the first of what he terms his “twelve steps.”

The steps are mental exercises, long-established ways of helping people deal with their addictions, particularly those who are recovering alcoholics - and they are essential elements in McDonagh’s day. 
The steps include transcendental meditation, something Seamus swears by. They also involve “emptying the brain of resentments and fears” and focusing on the NOW. 
Those twelve steps have saved Seamus McDonagh’s life but heavy drinking - and a career in professional boxing - have left their mark all the same. He will be the first to admit that.
He looks as fit and well as any 55-year-old has a right to be. Yet he continues to struggle with the mental fall-out of years of heavy drinking and a career in professional boxing in America when he shipped blows from powerful pugilists who were out to do him down. Head butts were other weapons employed by some opponents in what is, by any reckoning, a savage industry.

Seamus McDonagh right with Liam Neeson and Derry boxer John Duddy.   

“I boxed for 17 years and there has been damage, some brain damage, from the fights, the training, and sparring, no doubt. Then the drinking. It all has had an effect but I have been healing for 22-and-half years by doing those twelve steps,” he says adding that forgetfulness is one of the manifestations of this “damage” done.   
McDonagh - who spends most of his time in San Francisco - relaxes on the sofa in the house in Enfield where he was brought up.  He’s back home for a short stay. The sitting room wall is full of portraits of his family including his beloved mother Rosaleen who died just three years ago. “She was an angel,” he says. 
The alcoholism is only one part of a very intriguing life this hospitable, kind-hearted man has lived. After all he was once in line to become the heavyweight champion of the world. He was once a contender. 

Seamus McDonagh 

In June 1990 he took on Evander Holyfield in Atlantic City and made it to the fourth round against one of the best heavyweights of all time. Suddenly thrust into the limelight McDonagh admits that he was totally unprepared for what was involved. He found the whole experience “traumatic” and “overwhelming” but he lasted until the fourth round when the referee looked at McDonagh, waved his hands, and said enough was enough.
The fight was over and Holyfield declared the winner. McDonagh’s heroics went almost unnoticed back home as the fight took place during Italia ‘90 and Irish eyes were elsewhere. 
“I wasn’t knocked out by Holyfield, I fell over a few times but I was never knocked out,” he says. “I was robbed!” he then adds with a loud laugh. 
Boxing has long played a major role in Seamus McDonagh’s life. His father Jim, who was originally from Mayo, emigrated to Birmingham. It was there he met and married Rosaleen. They moved back to Ireland in the early 1970s settling in Enfield to bring up their sizeable clan after a spell in Mulhuddart.

Jim McDonagh, the second oldest, loved boxing and set up a club “behind Gorry’s garage” in Enfield. Seamus learned from excellent coaches including Christy Kelly and his brother Frank from Kildalkey. He pays special tribute to them, especially for their encouragement. 
Seamus was good at the sport, became All-Ireland junior champion and travelled with a group of boxers to Chicago for a tournament. Jim, who was also a builder and who constructed the family home in Enfield, went with them as a coach. Jim stayed to work in America while Seamus returned to Ireland - but not for long.  

Opportunity

He completed his Leaving Cert in Kilcock CBS but there were few oppportunities in Ireland in the early 1980s.  “I had got a taste of America, I had seen America and there was nothing here in Ireland.” He went to New York and got a job taking tourists around Central Park on horse-drawn carriages.

Seamus McDonagh lands a big right on Evander Holyfield. 

It was in America he found out something else about himself. “I discovered I was an alcoholic, I couldn’t stop drinking. I had no money to drink in Ireland but over there I was making a fortune.” 
During a few months off the booze he saved “a bunch of money” and enrolled in St John’s University in NY to study English literature. The works of the great writers have long held a great fascination for him and he was, in time, to earn his degree.  
He also turned to boxing and he was so good he won the New York Golden Gloves - “the longest running amateur tournament in the world.” Seamus’s brother John was also a very skilled boxer.
Seamus was given the chance to turn professional and decided to do it in order, initially at least, to pay his college fees. There were parts of the job he liked - the training, the gym - but there were elements of it he found less appetizing. “You’re there to inflict damage on someone, real damage.”   
Despite his reservations he did well. He fought many times in Madison Square Garden; was ranked third in the world as a cruiserweight, ninth as a heavyweight. 
Then at 27 fate intervened. McDonagh got an opportunity to take on Holyfield in Atlantic City, the offer sugar-coated by the prospect of earning $25 million - if he won. As it turned out he was paid €120,000. After expenses he was left with €60,000. “It was one of the biggest fights of that year but I found it traumatic. I had never been on the world stage before. I was thrown right into the limelight and the nerves got to me.” 
Afterwards, a then big-shot businessman by the name of Donald Trump, came into McDonagh’s dressing room. “He came in with his entourage and said ‘You put up a great fight, we were all rooting for you, I want you to fight here again.’ Whenever he would see me in Atlantic City he would come over to me.”
In the following few years McDonagh’s life started to unravel. In his last fight, in 1991, he says he was “battered” by Jessie Shelby. “It was the worst beating I ever took.” Disillusioned he decided to retire from the ring. He says, with a touch of sadness, he didn’t REALLY start to learn to be a boxer until shortly BEFORE that final bout. 
While his boxing career stopped, the drinking continued. He became depressed - and suicidal. “I was 28 and I was living my my girlfriend in New York. Some of the money I had invested in a house but the deal went sour. I thought about suicide but do you know what kept me alive? I always had to stop drinking a month before a fight. Now I realised I could drink all the time.”

Seamus McDonagh with legendary boxing trainer Freddie Roach and actor Mickey Rourke.

McDonagh tried rehab, medication, therapy to deal with his drinking; nothing worked until someone told him about the twelve steps.
In more recent times McDonagh has turned to acting. He has taken part in New York plays such as ‘Kid Shamrock’ and ‘Bobby Sands MP.’ He has also worked on number of films including one called ‘Shankill Road,’ a sitcom ‘Surviving Sam’ and a crime series ‘Split Second’ although he admits they haven’t made much of a impact. He is hoping to do further plays in the near future. 
He says he would like to do more acting and completed a course on how to make “Holywood-standard films” much less than what they cost in the Californian dream-factory.  
These days he makes a living by running a shoe-shine enterprise that does promotional work all over America but he intends to spend more time in Ireland. 
Life as been tough for Seamus McDonagh but he has found redemption - step by painful step.