WBO NABA Super-middleweight title: Edgar Berlanga (21-0) v Padraig McCrory (18-0) (Caribe Royale Resort, Orlando, live on DAZN at 3am (approx.) on Sunday)
DISNEYLAND is so close, just a few miles down the road from the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando where McCrory and Berlanga trade leather on Saturday night.
It was far, far away from Disneyland that Padraig McCrory grew up.
With his father in Long Kesh and his mother struggling, he didn’t have much and he didn’t get much.
Naturally shy, a speech impediment meant he kept his mouth shut when he could.
He didn’t receive any professional help for his stoppage so, like most things in his life, he had to sort it out for himself.
On Thursday, he did something he would never have thought possible. He sat on a high stool on a stage beside Eddie Hearn with a microphone in his hand and told a packed room, and boxing fans around the world, how he would shock them all by becoming the first man to beat Edgar Berlanga.
McCrory’s upbringing has made him tough and the resilience he has shown to get to this stage, the determination, the skill, the fighting heart… What ‘Pody’ McCrory has achieved in life and in sport is a lesson to us all and no-one would deserve winning more than the father of three who’ll have his wife Natasha roaring him on from ringside.
Yes, McCrory is a great story and you couldn’t meet a nicer fella but does Berlanga give a hoot about that? Of course not. ‘Deserves’ has nothing to do with it in sport and the ring is no place for sentimentality. If McCrory wins, he’ll do so because he’s better, he wants it more and he can take more than the other guy.
And there’s the gameplan as well and that’s the job of McCrory’s trainer and friend Dee (David) Walsh.
Since this fight was made, Walsh (a former professional fighter who retired unbeaten with a 12-0 record) has been studying every bit of footage he could get of Berlanga: How he moves his feet and his head, his feints, his hands, his trigger movements, how he attacks, how he defends, how he reacts…
It has kept him up nights but in camp Walsh and McCrory have ironed out their gameplan and included adjustments for what the other corner comes up with.
“I watch opponents so much that I can find patterns in what they do,” says Walsh.
“So you’ve got two options, you either try to nullify their pattern and stop them doing it or you let them do it and set traps. We’re going to do a bit of both and there are a couple of things that are really vital and I believe that, if Pody does them, he’ll win.
“Since I’ve been in Orlando, everybody’s attitude has been: ‘Berlanga’s winning, that’s it’.
“I started to question myself and go: ‘Should I even be this confident?’ because I am, I really am. So I’ve gone over it all again and, when I weigh everything up, I think I’ve got a right to be confident.
“Other people don’t know Pody. I listened to Teddy Atlas (Hall of Fame coach) doing his prediction for the fight (Atlas predicts Saturday will be a “coming-out party” for Berlanga) and then I went to myself: ‘You know what, Teddy Atlas doesn’t know Pody’. He doesn’t know why he does what he does in a fight, he doesn’t know Pody’s upbringing, he doesn’t know how tough Pody is, so you can’t make a prediction on someone you don’t know.”
So how tough is McCrory? As tough as he needs to be, is the answer. You don’t go from where he was to where he is now unless you have a drive inside you that is pushing you away from memories you want to forget.
“He comes across as a nice guy and he is a nice guy but he is a tough man, trust me,” says Walsh.
“Me and him would have played football together. Pody could be very nasty on a football pitch. “You see him and he’s cool and calm but he’s competitive, he wants to win. I can tell you he would die in the ring to win, that’s the type of Pody, a very, very tough fella.”
CLOSE friends who go back 30 years, Walsh and McCrory were brought up on the same West Belfast street. They started out in boxing together and played Gaelic Football at Cardinal O’Donnell’s and soccer with St James’s Swifts.
“We go back to primary school,” Walsh explained.
“Pody is a couple of years older than me but because St James’s is such a tight-knit community, everybody is friends with everybody. It’s the only community that I know where everybody supports each other. It’s not one of them places where people are jealous of each other and hates to see them do well. St James’s is different, I don’t know one person who isn’t right behind Pody.
“All anybody has been talking about for the last week is this week, everybody is so excited.”
The community had its own boxing club – St John’s ABC – with coach Frankie McCourt. The fighters were Walsh, McCrory, Ruairi ‘Dook’ Dalton (another former amateur star who had a short pro career) and Miley Connors who won a couple of All-Ireland titles.
Walsh and McCrory sparred many rounds against each other, then went their separate ways but reunited four years’ ago as fighter and coach.
As we chat, a relaxed McCrory is sitting nearby in the lobby of the Caribe Royale, the extravagant, palatial resort that will host the fight on Saturday night.
“When it comes to fight week, Pody is a lot different to most people,” Walsh explains.
“I trained Lewis Crocker and when it came to fight week he couldn’t speak to people for a couple of days but Pody is the type of person.
“Five minutes’ before a fight, he’s laughing and joking with someone about the biggest load of crap and then he gets into the ring and knocks somebody out cold within a minute. Right now, he’s relaxed and there’s been no trash-talking with Berlanga and that’s all going to suit Pody. We’ve never been ones for trash-talking and going back and forward with opponents so we’re happy with this. Everything is going to plan.”
JAMIE Conlan is McCrory’s manager. Older brother of Michael, Jamie is another former pro fighter who reached world title level and since then has made a success of Conlan Boxing who recently signed a deal for their bills to be screened on DAZN.
It was Conlan’s idea for McCrory to travel to Germany 16 months ago and fight up at light-heavyweight (for the one and only time in his career) against IBO champion Leon Bunn. Some questioned the move, but Conlan no doubt that McCrory would win and he did, in brutal style. He dropped the German with a left in the second and a right in the third. Punch drunk, Bunn went to the wrong corner after the third and made it to the sixth round but the fight should never have been allowed to go that far.
McCrory’s form has dipped a little since and Conlan said his under-par performance against Steed Woodall at Falls Park last summer was the wake-up call he needed to kick on again.
“Pody is not over-awed by this,” said Conlan.
“If a fighter is up against it and they’re a big underdog, you can see it in them. You can see that they’re feeling that the event is bigger than they are and they start to shrink into themselves. But Pody has gone the other way, he has come into his own, same as he did in Germany.
“Berlanga is a different level of fighter but it was the same attitude against Bunn – everybody expected us to lose and just make up the numbers. As the week went on the confidence just grew and it’s the exact-same feeling this time. There’s going to be rough moments in this fight, Berlanga has been in with bigger and better opposition that Pody but he hasn’t been in with someone as… driven.
“What Pody has inside sets him apart. Heart, desire, toughness, grit, honesty… All the blue collar values. That’s what he gives you and I think that’s what will upset the flashy, flamboyant, extravagant Berlanga.”
SATURDAY night’s opponents are polar-opposites in how they live their lives now but, like McCrory, Berlanga has had to fight his way up from the streets of Bushwick, the Latino area of Brooklyn, New York.
As a kid he was regularly involved in fighting and he was brought to the local boxing gym when his father, Edgar senior, was released from a term in prison.
He is flashy now but he has seen the other side to life and, after he sparked out 16 guys on-the-trot in the first round, he has seen another side to professional boxing. The last stoppage win was three years ago, his last five opponents have taken him the distance, he served a six-month suspension for biting, he’s been put on his backside, split with and then reunited with coach Marc Farrait and struggled with bouts of depression as his form dipped.
So, as much as we can get misty-eyed about McCrory, Berlanga is also from the ghetto, he is hard as nails too and one highlights-reel knockout away from fighting ‘Canelo’ on May 4.
That’s not going to happen, Conlan insists.
“I believe Pody will break Berlanga’s heart on Saturday night and the closer we get the more confident I am,” he said.
“I don’t think it’ll go to the judges. I’ve been watching him on the pads and everything they’re working on and I think Pody will do him. This is a massive step and when you’re in the ring you know when you’re in against somebody on a different level – I knew when I got in against Jerwin Ancajas (the Filipino super-fly who knocked him out in Belfast) that he was a level above.
“But I also know when fights are supposed to be a level above and they’re not and that’s where we’re going to be on Saturday. Berlanga is an enigma, some over-hype him, some say he’s a hype job and some praise him and think he’s the next Miguel Cotto.
“He has been built up and pushed for the Puerto Rico market and I don’t think he has learned from his previous fights. He believes in his own hype and Pody will beat him.”
Will it be fairytale story in fairytale land for McCrory? Will Ireland’s ‘Cinderella Man’ shock the world in the shadow of Cinderella’s Castle?
Those who don’t know McCrory see little hope for him, those who do predict a famous win and what a story it will be if he pulls it off.
Disneyland is so close.
Tactical Take: McCrory has to hold the centre of the ring
BOTH fighters are listed as 6′1″ in their biographies. McCrory is/Berlanga isn’t, so the Belfast man has advantages in height and reach and it is vital that he uses them and gets that thumping jab of his going.
Donegal native Jason Quigley went the 12-round-distance with Berlanga in New York last year and says the Puerto Rican’s jab is much better than he is given credit for. One of the key challenges for McCrory is to better it and keep Berlanga at distance because if he finds himself being pushed back into the corners he will be in big trouble.
McCrory has to hold the centre of the ring and if he does he’ll win rounds and stack up points. The longer the fight goes on the better for him and the more his opponent – who is expected to win and to do so impressively by knockout – will begin to feel the pressure. That’s when he will start to make mistakes and McCrory can bring the power he has in both hands to bear.
There are other, parallel factors at play. McCrory will need to get to Berlanga early on, let him feel the heat and push him onto the back foot.
He could use similar tactics to those Josh Warrington employed against Carl Frampton. Apparently Warrington had worked tirelessly on a gameplan for weeks before the Frampton fight and then, just before the first bell, they decided to just jump on him.
It worked and McCrory could try that but he will have to be very smart about it because one wrong move and it could be all over for him.
So keep that jab in Berlanga’s face, stay in the centre and, when the chances comes, let the hands go. If it becomes a battle of will as much as skill, McCrory is favourite there.