Brutal to watch the fight and the aftermath but McClellan and Benn were giving the people what they wanted.
Very sad.
Those first 2 rounds were something else - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc-G4KMOllU
I loved that whole British middleweight/supermiddleweight period between 88-96. Although the quality of fighers were dubious in terms of world class and some of the belts questionable, Watson, Eubank, Benn and Collins had some humdingers.
McClellan's coach at the time seemed to be a rocket. Should the referee have stopped the fight? Should McClelland's corner have thrown the towel in?
Quote from: ONeill on December 06, 2011, 12:09:33 AM
Those first 2 rounds were something else - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc-G4KMOllU
I loved that whole British middleweight/supermiddleweight period between 88-96. Although the quality of fighers were dubious in terms of world class and some of the belts questionable, Watson, Eubank, Benn and Collins had some humdingers.
A lot of toe-to-toe banging in those fights which made for great viewing but ruined Watson and McClellan. It's the risk and all fighters know the score.
Difficult watch alright, McClellan's dopey coach didn't help matters should have picked up on the unusual blinking,breathing problems during the fight. He had a dark side (torturing animals) but it's still sad to see a young man waste way so bad & have absolutely no quality of life.
Seen this last night. Tragic stuff. Just multiple f**k ups by different folk involved and should have been prevented
repeated on itv4 next tuesday at 9pm
Have to agree with O'Neill, there were some great fights during that period, throw in Leonard, Hearns, Haglar and Duran and there were some magic middle weights around at the time.
Quote from: brokencrossbar1 on December 06, 2011, 10:32:23 PM
Have to agree with O'Neill, there were some great fights during that period, throw in Leonard, Hearns, Haglar and Duran and there were some magic middle weights around at the time.
Another tragic but enthralling round - Watson v Eubank II round 11. Why he was allowed to go out for the 12th I don't know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SrCVph8-u0
Eubank Jnr is handy too - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Q6BCpImTI&feature=related
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/dec/02/nigel-benn-gerald-mcclellan-fight
Quote from: brokencrossbar1 on December 06, 2011, 10:32:23 PM
Have to agree with O'Neill, there were some great fights during that period, throw in Leonard, Hearns, Haglar and Duran and there were some magic middle weights around at the time.
These guys were at an entirely different level again altogether. Hagler/Hearns - 85 I think it was - must be one of the greatest fights ever. Only lasted about 5 rounds but........
Quote from: moysider on December 07, 2011, 09:46:45 AM
Quote from: brokencrossbar1 on December 06, 2011, 10:32:23 PM
Have to agree with O'Neill, there were some great fights during that period, throw in Leonard, Hearns, Haglar and Duran and there were some magic middle weights around at the time.
These guys were at an entirely different level again altogether. Hagler/Hearns - 85 I think it was - must be one of the greatest fights ever. Only lasted about 5 rounds but........
Completely agree that these boys were at a different level, just pointing out it was a golden age for middle weight boxers. In fact maybe its rose tinted glasses but I thought from mid 80s to mid 90s was a golden age for boxing as a whole.
The best British talent of that era was Kirkland Laing here beating a 31 year old Roberto Duran: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEMP6N3VhhE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEMP6N3VhhE).
Wasted it all though.
Watching the Eubank Watson fight. If the ref had given Eubank the mandatory 8 count Watson might not have got hit. Also at the end obviously Watson should not have gone back in for round 12 but after the ref stops it one of his corner men hops into the ring to give out to the ref for stopping the fight.
The early 90's was certainly a golden age for British/Irish middleweight boxing probably because most of the fights were on terrestial tv at a prime time Saturday night slot. Remember looking foward to some of these fights for ages before they took place and on the whole they didn't disappoint.
Quote from: Forever Green on December 06, 2011, 08:44:52 PM
Seen this last night. Tragic stuff. Just multiple f**k ups by different folk involved and should have been prevented
Agreed. Imteresting to hear is former coach blamed McClellan for how it all turned for sacking him.
Found the documentary enthrauling the other night. Very sad to watch. At the beginning I really didnt like how McClellands sister was talking about Benn. Saying he was an animal, that he wanted to kill Gerald and that she wished he was dead. But the more it went on, both men were as ruthless as each other. Both men had the same goal. I really felt sorry for Benn because obviously he didnt want that to happen. His tears spoke volumes when they met and had the fundraiser for him.
Wrestling the legend of Sétanta
Hand-to-hand combat: Eoin Geoghegan and Seán T Ó Meallaigh during rehearsals of Sétanta. Photographs: Joe O'Shaughnessy
In this section »
• 'Brian, I mean Skibby, it is with great honour I call you an elf'
LORNA SIGGINS
The playwright Paul Mercier, best-known for English-language work set in Dublin, is a Connemara resident who has always wanted to interpret Irish mythology for the stage. Now he has done so, as Gaeilge
CELEBRITY MEETS POWER, power meets greed, greed meets war . . . and two foster brothers are pitted against each other in combat. If it's violence, brutality and societal breakdown you're interested in, look no further than one of our oldest soap operas, one that ends in a final duel north of Ardee, Co Louth, when Cú Chulainn, alias Sétanta, uses a ga bolga, or barbed spear, to disembowel his opponent, Ferdia. An "avante-garde depiction" of the tale and a "theatrical mirror for the political fallouts in contemporary times" is how the Connemara-based Fibín theatre company bills its new work, Sétanta , which is being produced in association with the Abbey Theatre. It opens at the Peacock tonight, following last week's run at Seanscoil Sailearna, Indreabhán, Co Galway.
The production is Mercier's first full-length play in the Irish language. Although the Abbey points out that it has a long history of Irish-language theatre, with recent programmes including Aodh Ó Domhnaill's Idir an Dá Shúil, the last time there was an association on this scale was in 1984 for a production of Cúirt an Mheán Oíche (The Midnight Court ), by Brian Merriman, adapted for the stage by Siobhán McKenna.
Darach Ó Tuairisg, the Fibín co-founder and managing director, notes that Irish-language theatre has tended to draw a minuscule percentage of funding from the Arts Council. Companies such as his have relied on grants from Foras na Gaeilge and other funding sources to survive. Undeterred, he and his team have produced more than 20 shows since 2003, touring parts of Europe and Africa with the support of Culture Ireland.
Fibín commissioned Paul Mercier to write the script of Sétanta , with music written by his brother Mel. The multimedia dimension of the production includes explosive visual effects and the use of some 50 masks hand-made by Matthew Guinnane.
Best-known for his body of work with Passion Machine, which has been credited with defining his native Dublin through the decades from the 1980s, Mercier's most recent venture with the Abbey involved productions of two of his plays, The East Pier and The Passing, in repertory. This particular Dub, however, lives in Carraroe, Co Galway, and has directed the successful TG4 teenage drama Aifric, which he created with Micheál Ó Dómhnaill five years ago. Two years ago, in an initiative known as Gach Áit Eile, Mercier directed three short Irish-language play readings by three writers, Dave Duggan, Celia de Fréine and Aodh Ó Dómhnaill, in three Irish-language dialects; and last year he ran a workshop at the Abbey, Bí ag Scríobh, with Irish-language writers.
For a long time, he has wanted to interpret Irish mythology on stage. In 2006 his English-language play Homeland used Oisín's legendary return from Tír na nÓg to define a materialistic new Ireland. Sétanta as Gaeilge is a new challenge, one which, in his version, does not stick rigidly to the original story of the young boy with the hurley. Instead, according to Mercier, it focuses on friendship in a contemporary setting and the ultimate "savagery and stupidity" of "betrayal and battle when the glory-hunting by one leads to the death of the other".
The use of masks gives the production another dimension. "Usually we associate the masks with an ancient art form and a world that is supernatural and fantastic, but this world is ordinary and commonplace. It involves two outlaws in a culture where we tend to hero-worship some of our criminals," he says. "It is a story of abuse of position, and of how the power of capitalism can lead to violence where certain people benefit."
The way the Sétanta legend has been told and retold is a story in itself, Mercier says, citing its resurrection during the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century, its impact on Lady Gregory and Yeats, and the Cú Chulainn depiction associated with blood sacrifice during and after the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1966.
"We had the children's version, we had the GAA taking the hurling motif, we had Flann O'Brien taking the piss out of all that mythology after we had a binge of it," he says. "And then Thomas Kinsella came out with The Táin, and this time there were no political connections."
Kinsella's translation, published in 1969, was illustrated by Louis le Brocquy. Another modern poet, Ciarán Carson, published his version in 2007. These new versions relate the myth in all its raw, honest savagery. As the author and broadcaster Dermot Somers has written in Endurance: Heroic Journeys in Ireland , the Táin Bó Cúailgne, or Cattle Raid of Cooley, "runs far deeper than a domestic squabble" and represents an account of the conflict between the early provinces and tribes of Ireland that sundered the nation nearly 2,000 years ago, long before other colonisers.
While myth paints the characters as heroes, the actual warriors, according to Somers, would have been "a straggling mass of tribesmen, dressed in motley wool and rawhide, ill-disciplined and crudely armed". The brown bull of Cooley was an "elite symbol", he writes, for the real targets of the men of Ireland as they raided Ulster for cattle, women and slaves.
The famous duel between the childhood friends Cú Chulainn and Ferdia was a later addition to the saga. It was on the fourth day of combat, after they had nursed each other's wounds on each of the previous nights, that the Cú Chulainn used his ga bolga to rip open his opponent. Ferdia's body had to be butchered to extract a weapon that opened out into 30 points.
"Our legends have universal appeal, and the messages are universal," Mercier says. "I find it ironic that Camelot could be shot in Wicklow, and yet we haven't fully represented our own myths, as if we were almost afraid of them. Sétanta is about universal moments, savagery between two men in close combat, and the price we sometimes pay for the things we do. This interpretation should be able to stand on its own merit, without a prior knowledge of the story, just as West Side Story is based on, but doesn't depend on, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet."
It should also be suitable for students from transition year up to Leaving Cert, Mercier says. "I'm not a native Irish speaker, but with the Irish I do have I find there's a different feel to this.
"It's natural, just as natural as a Chinese play staged in Mandarin, which could lose something in translation. And when the Irish language steps outside of the Gaeltacht, this is where it can really live."
Quote from: muppet on December 07, 2011, 12:34:46 PM
The best British talent of that era was Kirkland Laing here beating a 31 year old Roberto Duran: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEMP6N3VhhE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEMP6N3VhhE).
Wasted it all though.
Not sure if he was the best talent of that time, he had a good team and good promoter behind him at the time. You are right he did throw it all away and wasted all the chances he was given...... SAD