EMMET BRENNAN MIGHT not have gotten the game-changing opportunity to fight for the Celtic light-heavyweight title on Katie Taylor’s undercard this Saturday had he not broken into tears following his exit from the Tokyo Olympics two summers ago.
In February of this year, Brennan found himself at a boxing crossroads: he was in talks with several managers about finally turning professional but none of them especially convinced him the Dubliner that they would have his best interests at heart.
Brennan was trying to enter a young man’s game at 31. He didn’t have time to get “effed over”, as he puts it. His gut told him to keep the lid on his pen.
After a meeting with one final, unsuccessful candidate, Brennan received a message from Bahrain national-team coach Tony Davis, formerly part of Britain’s amateur coaching setup, with whom he’d become acquainted at various international tournaments over the years.
Davis had gotten in touch only to ask Brennan his permission to show Brennan’s emotional post-Olympic interview at a demonstration for Bahraini boxers and members of the country’s boxing, some of whom were apparently of the belief that funding alone would yield Olympic success. Davis’ contention was that you have to first and foremost want it so badly that you would be willing to park everything else in your life to achieve it.
The highly regarded trainer felt that no boxer would encapsulate this sentiment better than Ireland’s Emmet Brennan, who poured his soul into the Tokyo Olympics and spilled it back out again following his 81kg defeat to Uzbekistan’s two-time major medallist Dilshod Ruzmetov.
"It's heartbreaking." An emotional Emmet Brennan speaks openly after his narrow defeat to Dilshod Ruzmetov in the men's 81kg light-heavyweight division.#Tokyo2020 #RTESport #Olympics
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Brennan, naturally, gave Davis his blessing; the coach probably needn’t have checked at all, but it was nice that he did. The two of them then caught up on boxing, on life.
Davis inquired as to why he hadn’t yet seen Brennan in a professional ring, this 17 months after the all-action Irishman had raised his profile to such a degree in Tokyo.
Brennan replied, ‘To be honest with ya, I haven’t found the right manager. I haven’t found the right person to guide me. At my age, I’m not going to go into the game just for the sake of going into the game, I need a manager who matches my ambitions and does the best for me.’
Davis suggested that he put Brennan in touch with his good friend, England’s popular former middleweight Darren Barker, who was Eddie Hearn’s first ever world champion and who had recently begun to manage a small stable of fighters.
A week later, Brennan travelled to London so that he and Barker could suss each other out. Barker had done his homework in the meantime, and he was in disbelief that a boxer of Brennan’s calibre was still on the shelf so long after the Olympics.
The pair hit it off instantly, and Barker has since parted company with his other clients to solely focus on guiding Brennan.
Consequently, the Dubliner’s second pro fight will take place within walking distance of home, at the 3Arena, where he’ll challenge Limerick’s Jamie Morrissey [5-0-1, 1KO] for the Celtic title at 168 pounds on Saturday night. No messing.
“We’re just getting on really well — and I suppose the age gap isn’t there,” Brennan laughs. “I’m 32, he’s 41. It’s not like he’s talking to a kid.
“I know that Darren can only open doors for me if I’m winning and if I’m doing the work in the background to promote myself. I’m not naive where I expect him to work miracles for me without doing the work myself.
“But Darren’s been hassling Eddie for a while trying to get him to give me a shot. And I suppose this being my hometown, being a kilometre from me house, the fact that I’m an Olympian with a fan-pleasing style, it just made a lot of sense for Eddie to put me on it.
“But I don’t see this as me being just gifted an opportunity, either” Brennan stresses.
And he’s right: Eddie Hearn told The 42 on Wednesday that Brennan has shipped somewhere in the region of 700 tickets; that amounts to nearly 10% of the sold-out audience on Saturday night.
“If you look at my fight… Put Katie Taylor and Chantelle Cameron’s fight to one side for the moment, because that’s obviously going to be a humdinger with a capacity crowd. But in terms of the crowd and the atmosphere, my fight is a proper all-Irish fight.
It could be 50-50 back and forth in the actual fight and it’ll be a 50-50 kind of atmosphere as well. I kind of think of it as being similar to Taylor-Serrano at MSG — but on a smaller scale, obviously!
“I’ve looked at footage of Jamie Morrissey and without overlooking him, for where I want to go in my career, I should be taking care of the likes of this guy. But he makes up for his lack of boxing experience and technical ability with his will and determination, his non-stop coming forward. He’s a warrior.
“This could be an absolute cracker between us. In terms of the undercard, it could be the fight that steals the show.”
Heading into this potential rip-roarer with the six-foot-five Morrissey, Brennan finds himself in the unusual position of being both the popular Olympian and the antagonist in the build-up.
Morrissey, 29, has held the Boxing Union of Ireland’s Celtic super-middleweight title since dominating Scotland’s Ben McGivern just over a year ago, and has since claimed the same honours up at light-heavy after two thrilling Munster derbies with Kevin Cronin of Kerry which ended in a narrow Morrissey win in Belfast in February and a split-decision draw in Galway a couple of months later.
Even in only his second pro fight, the onus is on former Olympian Brennan to make a point by relieving former Muay Thai fighter Morrissey of his belt. Brennan has certainly not been shy in speaking to that effect, believing himself capable of stopping the Treaty man in four rounds.
Morrissey, meanwhile, has shrugged off that assessment and mostly refused to engage in any kind of verbal sparring before the pair trade blows for real this Saturday.
“The way I look at it”, Brennan says, “I’m in professional boxing now.
“I haven’t said anything disrespectful, I haven’t gone out and talked smack where I’m actually insulting the person. I’ve said what I believe is true. I believe I can get him out of there. I believe I’m a lot better of a fighter than him. But to show respect to his ability, I’ve left absolutely no stone unturned: I know I’ll need to be at 100%.
“And out of respect to this massive show that I’m fighting on, and to a massive night for our sport in our home country, I’ve tried to build the profile of the fight.
“He’s been vocal in the past but he’s taken a quieter approach this time around. I completely respect he has his own way of preparing for the fight. But just with the fact that he’s been so quiet… I think he might feel he’s bitten off more than he can chew. That might be what’s going on with him.
“Listen, I’m not going to think about that too much. It’s good to try to raise the profile of the fight but at the end of the day, the aim is just to have my hand raised. That’s all that ultimately matters.”
The excitement of his own hometown derby fight is such a stark contrast to where Brennan found himself just 18 months ago, and in several ways.
For starters, he was in New York at that point. He had hoped to turn professional, build himself in the Big Apple, and become a Madison Square Garden fighter, John Duddy-style.
Duddy himself was even on board as his trainer.
Brennan had mapped out the bones of a compelling final chapter to his boxing career, and yet he became completely lost.
A few things fell apart — most notably one of his shoulders, which had been an issue since long before the Olympics. Surgery in January 2022 put everything on hold and New York’s nightlife began to grab a hold of Brennan, who found himself with little else to do.
“Imagine the difference in my life across that year,” he says. “Not even 12 months previously, I was competing at the Olympics. Now here I am in New York, literally in a ditch, lost; I’m using alcohol to escape from the feeling of being a complete loser.
“I started thinking this only about two weeks ago. Before the Olympics, you have this massive goal in front of you; for the previous four years — or for the previous 20 years or for however long it is that you’re trying to get there — your life revolves around that goal of competing at the Olympics. It’s your sole focus.
“But then the Olympics comes and goes and suddenly, you have all this spare time. The big goal is gone — or it was for me, anyway. And I was injured for a long time after Tokyo so it wasn’t a quick transition into professional boxing. I had a lot of downtime.
I look at the person I was before the Olympics, the person I was after the Olympics, and the person I am now. And like, I still can’t believe the person I was after the Olympics,” Brennan scoffs. “I’m gonna call a spade a spade: I was a fucking idiot. It wasn’t like I was 21 years of age. I was 30.
“Look, you can lose yourself at any time of your life but, like…
“I felt like I had thrown everything away because at this stage, the Olympics were eight months ago,” Brennan continues. “They’d been and gone. You build a bit of a profile off the Olympics and you get opportunities for sponsorship and opportunities to go pro, but I’d missed the boat. I’d lost momentum with the injury initially and then I’d thrown it all away.
“Take into account I’m in a new city 5,000 kilometres from home. I know a few people in New York — but the only people I know are working in bars. On their days off, they’d be going to the pub. So I had someone to drink with every single day.
“So, I’d go drinking for 12 hours, I’d wake up at eight or nine in the morning after only getting in at four or five; you’re not working off a lot of sleep and suddenly you’re feeling low again. You text someone who’s off work: ‘Are you going for a few drinks?’
“I was in New York for 70 days and I worked it out that I drank for 60 of them — possibly more. And I’m not talking about drinking two or three pints. I’m talking about going out at four o’clock in the day and not getting back ’til five in the morning.
“My self-esteem was so low. I was starting to get some very bad thoughts in my head. I was starting to feel a bit depressed.”
Brennan feels it important to make the distinction that he’s not an alcoholic: he’s never felt like he ‘needed’ a drink.
But at a low point in his life, he developed a drinking problem. He made the conscious decision to use alcohol as a crutch.
“And usually when you need crutches, you don’t just need them for a day — you might need them for a month or six weeks!” he says. “So a conscious choice to use alcohol as my crutch quickly became a pattern.
“I had become lost post-Olympics. The shoulder wasn’t recovering. Now, bear in mind I wasn’t doing everything I could to help it recover, either. But suddenly I was thinking, ‘My boxing career is literally ending here. It’s in the ditch.’ And I just became very, very lost.
“I should add as well that is spirals because when your main focus is getting rid of a hangover, you lose ambition. You’re not thinking, ‘Can I get up and train today? Can I get up and be a better person? Can I get up and complete a goal or two?’ All of that goes out the window and you just try to survive the day.”
Eventually, Brennan clocked that he had to haul himself out of the abyss that he had created. He left New York on 3 May of last year. He hasn’t drank since.
The Dubliner doesn’t think any less of anyone whose means of winding down involves a few drinks. There have been loads of times over the intervening 18 months where he’s wanted a pint — social occasions, naturally — but only in the same way that “anyone in their 20s or 30s” might fancy one when they’re surrounded by friends who are knocking a few back.
He realises, now, at least part of the issue for him personally: “When I train or get a goal in me head, I’m all in on it. I take it overboard. And unfortunately, when I drink, I’m the exact same. I’d have no problem staying up for two or three days drinking. It’s just not something I want to be doing in my 30s.
“The thing is: I couldn’t even think of going into a pub now on a Friday night and not stopping drinking ’til Sunday. I wouldn’t even dream of it — it just wouldn’t be part of my thinking at all. But that’s what I was doing only 18 months ago.
“I have this new goal of going very far in the professional boxing world. At 32, alcohol isn’t going to help me get there. And you look at where I’m at now: I’m fighting for a Celtic title in my second pro fight on the biggest show that this country has seen in 15 years. If I didn’t give up alcohol 18 months ago, maybe I’d still be in the same position. But I reckon a lot of it has to do with that sacrifice that I made.”
In hindsight, Brennan says, he’s glad he endured those couple of months where he lost the run of himself.
The New York bar scene — and particularly the Irish-pub scene — is extremely partial towards boxers. Throughout his low ebb, Brennan met countless people who still follow his career. He still gets messages two or three times a week asking him when he’s fighting next and, more pertinently, when he’s going to box in the Big Apple. A lot of them are valuable connections.
“I always had a dream of going professional in New York. I was fascinated by Madison Square Garden as a kid. I’ve been fixated upon boxing there at least once in my life. I wanted to have no regrets in boxing so I wanted to give New York a bash. And I still do.
“In 2024, we’re going to work on fighting in New York. There’s an Irish lad, a super-middleweight, whose name is Harley Burke. He’s 8-0 with seven knockouts and he’s very popular up in Yonkers, I’ve heard.
“Now, I haven’t seen the lad box: he could be very good, he could be mediocre, I don’t know. But I know he’s a super-middleweight and I know I intend to become Celtic champion this Saturday.
“Wouldn’t it be great to fight him in New York with the Celtic title or even the Irish title on the line next year? I think that fight would really capture the imagination of the Irish community over there. If you built that fight the right way, that could do two or three thousand tickets, even more.
“I’m a bit of a weirdo: I have the next six to nine months mapped out in my head, and Harley Burke in New York is part of that.
“But obviously, if I don’t beat Jamie Morrissey on Saturday night, the plans for 2024 are gone. Saturday night is the first hurdle.”
