KENNETH EGAN, ONE of the 10 Irish boxers who won Olympic medals under the watch of Zaur Antia, has paid tribute to the departing IABA head of coaching.

Antia announced his retirement from the ring yesterday, aged 62. The Georgian coached Irish boxers to 154 medals at elite level across a 22-and-a-half year period.

Beijing 2008 silver medallist Egan paid a heartwarming tribute on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.

“Without Zaur, I don’t think the high performance would have been as successful as it was,” he said.

Egan recalled his first meeting with Antia, when he was appointed as the IABA’s new technical coach under Billy Walsh in 2003, and their years working together.

“He had limited English, he was quite shy because he hadn’t got confidence in his English, so he was quiet enough and kind of timid. But when he got going on the floor and showed us how to box through demonstration, it was amazing to witness that.

“I thought I was quite good before he landed. I was three-times senior champion, and I thought I knew my way around the ring, but watching him move and try and speak to us about boxing and the different levels opened my eyes.

“I kind of thought I was an eight out of 10. When Zaur, in his broken English, told me I was a two out of 10, I could have went two ways! One, I could have told him to F off, or the second option would have been, ‘Okay, make me an eight out of 10.’

“I went with the latter, and we built an amazing relationship over the next five years, working together. Boxing is so complex, but he made it so simple. He was a fantastic coach. Him and Billy Walsh got on like a house on fire, and he had a great humour as well. He always maintained Georgia and Ireland are very similar.”

Egan described Antia as “very relaxed” and a “very proud Georgian” outside the ring, telling some more stories from through the years.

“If we spoke about bread, Brennan’s bread, he would say Georgia had better bread. If we said we had the Irish greyhound or whatever kind of a dog, he’d say the Georgians have a better dog.

“He was very proud of Georgia, and he’d never let that slip. But over the last 20 years he has become more Irish and he’s been very proud to represent Ireland across many different championships, whether it’s Europeans, worlds, or Olympic Games.

“A great character, very funny man, and he loved the craic as well outside of boxing. When we were sitting down having a bit of grub, he would do a bit of slagging in his broken English, and he would take a bit of stick as well. He was just a great man, all in all.”

Kenneth Egan, pictured in 2022. Gary Carr / INPHO Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO

Asked to sum up Antia’s contribution to Irish sport, Egan continued: “Without Zaur, I don’t think the high performance would have been as successful as it was. We needed that link.

“Billy Walsh was an amazing coach, a great people person, a great manager of all the different personalities, but when we were on the floor and we started training, Zaur just took over. And he would stay on that floor for hours. Billy had to pull him up a few times and say, ‘Zaur, that’s enough, that’s enough.’ Because he just got so engulfed in the session that he wouldn’t want to stop. Billy would be saying, ‘Zaur, calm down, we’re going to train again later.’ He’d get sucked into the session.

“He had a little black book with all his different methods in it, and he’d read it out before a session. He was very professional, very switched on.”

“Don’t forget, he’s the one that made the connections for us to travel,” Egan added. “We were stuck in and around the British Isles, England, Scotland, Wales, doing a bit of training, but with the language barrier, he got us into Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine. That’s when we really started to learn about what we needed to do to compete at the highest level.

“He opened those doors for us. And he was well respected by all the Russian coaches and Uzbeks and the Kazakhs because he was such a good coach. He was well respected and he was welcomed into these places. We would have never got in there without Zaur.”