‘I wouldn’t be coaching him if I didn’t think he was talented,’ Ken Egan said from the stands at the National Stadium on the South Circular Road.
Egan took a phone call last year from his former Ireland teammate Eric Donovan about taking him on as a fighter after years of training with each other in the IABA’s High Performance Unit.
Donovan had been travelling to Belfast from Carlow to train with renowned coach Gerry Storey but the travel was too much and the contact nowhere near as frequent as he would have liked.
“I need to be working with coaches on a weekly basis and they were too far away,” said Donovan.
“I’d go up in the lead up to fights but it wasn’t ideal. Sometimes I wouldn’t even get to see them, I’d see them on fight night. I’d be doing my own training and I knew with the goals that I had for myself that this wouldn’t do it. That this wasn’t normal.”
So Donovan sought familiarity and a friend in Egan and a mentor in experienced trainer Joe Clifford. The trio sat down and discussed Donovan’s goals and what he had planned, and most importantly, how they thought they could contribute to his cause.
After that, it was just a matter of getting to it.
“Eric approached Joe and I last year and we’ve been working together for the last couple of months in Macho Gym in Ballymount,” said Egan. “It’s a fantastic facility and we’re there most mornings sparring and boxing.
“We’re working together and we’re working well. I’m not a very experienced boxing coach and that’s okay.
“I know Eric as a teammate and I’m learning as much as he is. Eric is a southpaw, I was a southpaw, so I’ve a lot to hand over in that sense but Joe Clifford, who has been around boxing and MMA for 40 years, knows a lot of the ins-and-outs of the pro game in terms of how to hold and grapple and all that stuff so we work great together.
“Look the pro game is tough. It’s a business. The sparring and the training is one thing but then getting in there and fighting and taking punishment and head shots… it’s not an easy game. If I thought that Eric hadn’t got the talent I wouldn’t have come on board.
“I would have said ‘Look Eric, wrap it up, you’re doing well and you’re an educated bloke. There’s 101 ways to make money and you don’t have to get into a ring and fight someone, and he understands that, but he feels, and I feel, that there’s more in the tank.
“He walked away from the sport and he’s back now and he’s giving it 100%.”
After a few years battling personal issues and injury, Donovan has compiled an impressive 8-0 record as a professional fighter and he wants to aim for a European title should he defeat McAfee this month.
Promoters reckon McAfee will be a tough test for Donovan but bookmakers have ‘Lilywhite Lightning’ as the firm favourite and Egan insists that it’s up to Donovan to show why the market has such faith in him.
The end of a hard gruelling testing training session. On the 30th of March, I get to represent my family and my town on the big stage for the biggest prize in Irish professional boxing.
I'm having the time of my life 😄 pic.twitter.com/RhUkrpC0Lv
— Eric Lilywhite Lightning Donovan (@ericdonovanbox) March 20, 2019
McAfee is an interesting prospect given his prior background in both football and kickboxing and as he bounces from interview to interview at the National Stadium he remains calm and composed and unshaken by the more experienced Donovan.
“As it gets closer it’s starting to become more real,” said McAfee.
“You have to take risks like I’m taking with Eric, in life too, not just boxing. I could have chose someone else and just went under the radar but it’s about getting out there and making noise. I’ve got far enough with that attitude so need to change it.
“Every fight I’m trying to improve and relax a bit more but it’s just learn as you go. If someone said to me a few years ago that I’d be main eventing a card on television for a title I wouldn’t have believed you but it just shows you where you can go if you back yourself.”
Donovan said he has the utmost respect for McAfee taking the fight and he encourages fight fans and non-fight fans to get down to the National Stadium on March 30th for a huge night in Irish boxing but him and Egan know this is it.
“It’s the make or break fight!,” added Egan.
The clock is ticking for Donovan, the miles are adding up too, but his energy is contagious and his fire is brighter than ever. With Egan and Clifford in his corner in the ring, his fiancee Laura in his corner away from the ring, it’s all set up for Donovan to get to the place where he’s always aimed for and as Egan told me:
“He just has to go and do it!!
