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Irish boxer brings his dream to St. Petersburg

 
Published June 15, 2018

ST. PETERSBURG — In his vision for this weekend, Connor Coyle is standing in the ring at the Coliseum, and the referee is raising his gloved fist.

He's got a National Boxing Association middleweight championship belt around his waist, the first of several he'll need before he can get near a unified title, and he's savoring a moment that's been years in the making.

The fight he's been seeing in his head for months actually happens Saturday, against Danny Pastrana, who has six wins, three losses and one tie, with two knockouts. Coyle, 28, comes into the fight with a 7-0 record and hopes to become the latest in a long string of championship boxers who have grown up or trained in St. Petersburg.

"This is a big opportunity I've been given," Coyle said this week at Spinnergy Fitness, where he trains. "It's my first professional title. It means a lot."

***

Coyle, aka "The Kid," has flown from Ireland seven times since the fall of 2016, his professional debut.

The hardest part, he said, is leaving his 2-year-old daughter, Clódagh-Rose, behind. Tattoos on his right forearm show a calloused hand holding a much smaller one and a little girl with a teddy bear.

"Before I was doing it for myself, but this made me even more hungry," he said. "I have a mouth to feed now."

Coyle fought 140 times before going pro, but he bears no visible scars, nor any of the wear some boxers show around the nose and ears from punches they didn't see coming.

Jim McLoughlin, his manager and coach, has that boxer's nose, earned from years as an amateur fighter. After moving to Florida, he opened the St. Pete Boxing Club (later known as 4th Street Boxing), which grew champs David Santos, Ronald "Winky" Wright, Jeff Lacy and welterweight Keith Thurman, one of the best boxers in any division.

"A ton of fighters are coming out of Florida now," said McLoughlin, 67. "The rest of the South is a place where you find fighters to beat."

Coyle heard about McLoughlin through another boxer and reached out.

"He came over here really to meet me," McLoughlin said. "We weren't even planning on fighting him. He talked me into putting him into his first pro fight."

Coyle faced Euris Silverio, who was undefeated after four fights. In the first round, Coyle threw a left hook to the body — breaking two ribs, McLoughlin said, one of his two knockouts as a professional.

"He hits hard," McLoughlin said. "I know it doesn't show a lot of knockouts on his record, but everybody we fought, including a few that were undefeated and had big KO records, he dropped them."

The last bout, in November against undefeated Calvin Metcalf, did not go so smoothly. Coyle had the flu.

By the third round, he turned to McLoughlin. "Coach, my legs are just gone."

McLoughlin offered to stop the fight.

Coyle refused.

"I'll find a way to win," he said.

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He danced. He moved. He walked into punches that "should have killed him," McLoughlin said.

Coyle nonetheless won the fight, the judges awarding him seven out of eight rounds.

***

Coyle grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland, the son of a street cleaner and a cook. The city was ground zero for "Bloody Sunday" in 1972, when British troops shot 28 protesters, part of a 30-year skirmish known as the Troubles. His neighborhood, the Galleigh area, was recently cited by a local politician for "decades of neglect," one that still lacks even a community center.

He discovered boxing in one of those not-so-random accidents of goodwill. At age 11, he and a few buddies entered a gym, started hitting the heavy bags and generally "messing around," Coyle said.

A coach shooed the boys away if they weren't there to learn. The friends left. Coyle stayed. He showed up again the next day.

He played other sports, including skateboarding, Gaelic football and hurling, an Irish variant of lacrosse. He boxed out of the St. Joseph's Amateur Boxing Club but was losing fights he should have won because he wasn't in shape.

"There were days I never showed up for training," Coyle said. "And my coach, Cahir Duffy, would go down and be banging at the door, pulling me out of my bed."

At 21, after medaling in major tournaments, he realized he shouldn't squander his talent.

"And ever since," he said, "I just started getting better and better."

***

Promoters are showing interest, with scouts from Oscar de la Hoya's Golden Boy Productions and Top Rank Boxing coming to the Coliseum, McLoughlin said. Both fighter and manager say they'll stick with Fire Fist Boxing Promotions, based in Riverview.

"Everybody wants to be with this big promoter," McLoughlin said. "They get you locked in. They can sit you on the bench for a year and not even fight you."

Coyle's schedule stays the same. In Derry, he remodels kitchens with his brother and shares custody of Clódagh-Rose with the girl's mother.

In St. Petersburg, before fights, he gets up at 6:30 a.m. and is in bed by 8 p.m. He works on speed and strength training, and with rappers Eminem or House of Pain on headphones. Workouts make up most of his Twitter entries the last two years, along with the occasional photos or references to his daughter.

"She could melt a stone wall," he writes in one.

He says he'll stop fighting at 35, which gives him seven years to reach his goal. Each fight can derail the dream or move him closer to being a world champion.

***

On Tuesday, Coyle climbed into the ring at Spinnergy. His white shoes danced, lifting his 6-foot, 160-pound body off the floor for fractions of a second at a time. Always moving, always balanced.

"Step around him a little more, Connor," McLoughlin said.

Coyle stepped to his left, facing mitt man Rick Caronongan at a different angle.

"That's it, that's it," McLoughlin said. "Now pick up your speed."

Coyle threw jabs, double jabs and overhand rights. He fired off a sudden left hook, which Caronongan, a former amateur boxer, caught with his right mitt.

He's been working with fighters for about 20 years. It's a fine art, he said, getting to know their styles, the angles they throw.

Caronongan said Coyle could be special.

"He's got great power and speed," Caronongan said. "But his ability to bounce around, and utilize his feet to judge his range, to place his punches — that's where it's at.

"Every great fighter out there has great feet. And he's got great feet."

***

The accolades won't mean much if Coyle can't move through the ranks. He'll be facing more rounds per fight and increasingly tougher competition.

He's counting on it. He's already seen how this movie ends, having played it out in his head every day for years.

In the ultimate vision, whenever and wherever that is, he'll be holding the belts that make him the unified middleweight champion of the world. Taking in the roar of a packed arena. The crowd will be on its feet, and he'll be walking around, waving, shaking hands. It will be electric.

Contact Andrew Meacham at ameacham@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2248. Follow @torch437.