EVERYTHING was stacked against the underdogs.
100,000 fight fans turned Wembley Stadium into the Coliseum and it seemed like they were all cheering for the other guy – Anthony Joshua - as he strolled towards the ring.
Pundits and punters said Joshua would flatten Daniel Dubois and the bookies’ odds reflected their predictions.
It was supposed to be the night that Joshua regained his world title but less than 15 minutes’ after the first bell ‘AJ’ was sent tumbling to the canvas for the fourth time.
And this time he didn’t get back up.
Joshua’s over-confident team hadn’t realised what they were up against.
The men in the other corner didn’t believe the hype. These were men who would never give up and one of them, by Dubois’ side in the corner, was his coach Kieran Farrell.
Farrell almost died in a boxing ring.
Twelve years’ earlier, he’d been passed through the ropes in a stretcher after a 10-round battle against fellow Mancunian Anthony Crolla. Farrell had suffered an acute subdural hematoma (a bleed on the brain) and his life hung in the balance.
It was his superb fitness levels that pulled him through but even then it was touch-and-go.
He described his “close to death experience”…
“I went from being on top of the world to almost six feet under,” says Farrell.
“I went from running eight miles every morning to getting spoon-fed by my mum after that fight. I couldn’t get out of bed – I was bed-bound for eight weeks. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t put my socks on and I remember sitting on the edge of the bed crying.
“I went from a fit athlete with a heartrate of 28 beats per minute to not being able to move. I’d always been active and busy and doing something, so it was very hard.”
Farrell had won 14 fights out of 14 when he went into that English title battle with Crolla. From the age of seven he’d been a boxing nut and when he eventually got back on his feet he wanted his life back, he wanted his dream of becoming a world champion back.
It wasn’t coming back.
“I remember walking to the local club in a sweatsuit,” he recalls.
“My brother went: ‘What the f**k are you playing at?’
“I said I wanted to go and train and he was like: ‘Kieran, it’s done, you can’t go and train, you’ve had a brain injury….’
“I walked halfway to the gym and then I just turned round and started crying my eyes out. I knew he was right, but I was 22 years-old… My career shouldn’t have been over but it was. Yeah, they were dark times…”
RETIREMENT was forced upon him and his dad Brian encouraged him to join him in the tarmac business.
However, Kieran was determined to go down a rockier road. If he couldn’t box, he would be a coach and so he opened ‘The Peoples’ Gym’ an amateur club in Manchester and began to pour his enthusiasm and knowhow into local fighters.
“I wanted to make something in boxing,” he explains.
“With what little money I had I opened a boxing gym for kids and I went from there. At different points I didn’t think it was going to work but I stuck at it.
“You’ve got to be passionate about what you do and I am about boxing. I don’t have any other hobbies – I don’t drink, I’ve never drank beer in my life - I just do boxing. I always said: ‘This has to work for me’ because it’s puts a roof over our head and puts food on the table. So it’s got to work.
“I got my head down and worked hard and I ended up getting a medal off the Queen.”
In 2016, in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, he was awarded the British Empire Medal in recognition for his work in the community and services to boxing.
He recalls how he and his wife went to Buckingham Palace to receive the ‘gong’.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he says.
“There was a thousand people there at a garden party, the Queen was there and my wife said to me: ‘What are we meant to do?’
“I didn’t have a clue, I said: ‘We’ll get a cuppa tea and a cucumber butty (sandwich) and see what happens’. We only stayed there 20 minutes and I got the medal and we ended up going to Burger King and getting the train home.
“I regretted doing that, so last week at Wembley, when we walked out in front of 98,000, I said to myself: ‘You’ve got to take this all in’ and I did. I loved it, I loved every second of it. It was a great moment in my life and it’s etched in my heart forever.”
ALSO in action at Wembley that night was Belfast fighter Anto Cacace who beat Josh Warrington to retain his super-featherweight titles. He and Farrell go way back to when the Mancunian with strong Irish roots – his grandfather hailed from Dun Laoghaire in county Dublin – spent a year living in Belfast.
“I’ve always stayed in touch with my Irish side,” says Farrell.
“I remember I went to Belfast in 2006 and I boxed Michael Conlan and beat him.
“After that I would always go over for sparring. I couldn’t get sparring in Manchester so I went over to spar with Paul McCloskey and ended up staying.
“I moved to Belfast in 2012 and lived in Ardoyne for a year. I was living in Eamonn Magee’s late father’s house and I was training with John Breen (Breen was in his corner the night he fought Crolla). Eamonn and John looked after me, I was at John’s house every night for my tea with him and his missus Laura.
“They said they’d train me and that was great. I sparred Eamonn Magee junior, Cacace, Dan McShane, Andy Murray… I loved it. Me and ‘Dudey’ (McCloskey) did hundreds of rounds as well.
“Even since my career as a boxer finished, I’ve always taken the amateur kids I coach over to Holy Trinity in Belfast – it’s one of the best club’s in the world. I take my son Frazer (8) over there and he gets great sparring.
“As a coach you’re always learning off people like Michael Hawkins senior. It was great to see him and Anto and the team win at Wembley.
“I knew he would beat Joe Cordina. I was telling people: ‘Cacace punches so hard…’ I remember sparring him and the first punches he caught me with were two jabs and he closed both my eyes! I couldn’t see!
“When I met him in London during fight week we had good craic talking about it all.”
THE adventurous spirit that took him to Belfast still drives him on. As a fighter he went wherever he could learn and develop his skills and he’s doing the same as a coach.
He moved his family from Manchester to Brentwood in Essex earlier this year: “In London it’s a bigger playground and that’s where I needed to be,” he says.
The switch to the south of England has paid off spectacularly.
He didn’t sit on his backside and wait for opportunities to come to him. Instead he chased his dreams and the opportunity to work with Dubois came along out of the blue. As he explains, it was a bit of a “mad one”.
Last December he was offered a job at Mike Tyson’s Boxing Gym in Saudi Arabia and accompanied former Ring Magazine Trainer of the Year Joe Gallagher and one-time Carl Frampton foe Scott Quigg to Riyadh.
“My son got poorly and, as much as it was great money and stuff like that, I decided to come home,” he explains.
“Within a week of coming home I got a phonecall from a friend who had been speaking to Daniel Dubois’ dad and said he wanted me to come and work with Daniel. The background was that I’d worked with a few kids at the local club and they’d got a lot better and Daniel Dubois’ dad noticed that.
“So he asked who they’d been working with and they told him: ‘Kieran Farrell’. Basically, he asked if I was available and he put a few guys on trial to see who worked well with Daniel. I turned up with my pads – I’m 5′7″ and he’s 6′6″ so it was like Jack and the Beanstalk but he loved the session we did.
“He loved my energy and enthusiasm and my boxing knowledge and how I was getting him moving.”
Since they linked up in March this year, Dubois – once overlooked as an alsoran who was knocked out by Joe Joyce in 2020 – has risen from the chasing pack and developed into a genuine contender. He showcased his improvement when he stopped Filip Hrgovic in June to win the IBF and rubberstamped those credentials by routing heavily-fancied Joshua at Wembley Stadium nine days’ ago.
Joshua, over-hyped and underestimating the challenge ahead, swaggered to the ring and was floored in the first, third and fourth rounds before a Dubois right hand finished him off in the fifth. It was an absolutely comprehensive victory for the Londoner.
“Daniel looked like Mike Tyson the other night,” says Farrell.
“He looked great and that’s after just six months so we’ve got plenty more to go. He’s moving his head more, getting his feet moving… I’ve been a big fan of Daniel since day one so when I came into his team I knew how I wanted to make him look.
“I spoke to Don Charles (head coach) and he said: ‘That’s how I want him to look’ so we were singing off the same hymn sheet and that’s why it works.
“People said him beating ‘AJ’ like that was a big surprise. It wasn’t a shock to us, we knew what we were there to do and we got the business done. Daniel has shown what he can do but we know he has so many more layers to improve and he’ll only get better.
“He turned 27 two weeks’ ago so he’s still baby in the heavyweight game and he could be on top of the division for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great fighters out there but are they sliding down a bit now and moving away? The way the heavyweight division is going, a fresh face like Daniel coming through with his power and experience is exciting.”
THE intersection in their careers came at the perfect time. Dubois’ victory has sent him into the boxing stratosphere and he is expected to meet the winner of the Oleksandr Usyk versus Tyson Fury rematch, scheduled for December in Saudi Arabia.
There’s also talk of a rematch with Joshua.
“I wouldn’t advise AJ to have a rematch,” says Farrell.
“I don’t think that’s a wise decision on their behalf. But if they want to do it again, I know Daniel would be well up for it and we’ll just deal with whatever’s in front of us.
“Usyk is a great fighter too and there’s a bit of unfinished business between him and Daniel (Usyk made the most of a borderline low blow when he beat Dubois in Poland last year) so maybe that’s the fight in the future. Whoever it is, I’ll work on what I’ve got to work on to make Daniel the fighter he can be. He hasn’t reached his potential yet but he still knocked AJ out inside five rounds and did it with relative ease.
“My boxing career got cut short but I’ve gone into training and I’ve been managing (he had signed Pody McCrory at one stage) and promoting. I’ve been involved in this game for years now and it’s always onwards and upwards – we never sit on our hands and celebrate too long.
“After the fight at Wembley I came back to the hotel, I got a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate cake and that was my celebration done. You keep pushing and you never know how far you can go.
“I can’t wait to see what comes next.”