FROM the age of 12 when he took up boxing the only weapons that mattered to Barry McGuigan were his two lightning-fast fists
So the day undercover police officers issued him with a gun and taught him how to fire it is seared for ever in his memory.
It was 1985, the height of the Troubles in the North. The new world featherweight boxing champion was a Catholic who had married a Protestant, united fans from North and South and fought with the dove of peace on his shorts.
So The Clones Cyclone, who sparked a cross-border slogan “Leave the Fighting to McGuigan”, wasn’t entirely surprised to learn Republican terrorists had put a price on his head.
“I was told there was a plot to kidnap me,” recalls the boxing legend. “Security forces on both sides of the border were keeping an eye on me.
“It came at a time when people were disappearing and not long after the kidnapping of the racehorse Shergar.
“So I was issued with a gun and the police taught me how to shoot it.”
Then Barry laughs. “I couldn’t hit a barn door!I was terrible. It was really funny...butat the same time deadly serious.
“I had plain clothes police guys travelling with me everywhere for a while in case I was nabbed.
“My suspicion is it was all about ransom – attempting to raise money for terrorist activities.
“But I think the terrorists then realised that because of my popularity andnon-political stance, kidnapping me had the potential to backfire.
“Perhaps that’s why – thank God – the threat never materialised. Now, when I look back at some of the things I did and the statements I was making, I was very lucky to come through it unscathed.”
Those dark days seem a lifetime away as Barry, 50, relaxes in his 18th century country home near Whitstable, Kent.
The Mirror columnist and boxing commentator has been reliving all the highs and lows of his life and career while writing his autobiography Cyclone: My Story. And it’s a real twister of a tale.
For Barry, whose world title victory against Eusebio Pedroza was watched by a sell-out crowd of 27,000 at QPR’s Loftus Road stadium in London, plus another 20 million TV fans, has faced his toughest battles out of the ring.
In the frank and moving book the father-of-four tells how he almost gave up boxing at the age of 22 after an opponent died.
He watched his 11-year-old daughter battle leukaemia, lost his beloved dad Pat to cancer in 1987 and was rocked by his elder brother Dermot’s suicide.
Barry believes his devoted brother never got over him losing his title in 1986. After splitting from his girlfriend Dermot became depressed and hit the bottle. He hanged himself in 1994, at the age of 34.
Barry’s pale blue eyes well-up as he admits: “Writing the book was tough. It was particularly hard to write about my brother. Even to talk about him is still so difficult.
“I miss my brother, he was such a great man. I don’t know if I will ever get over it.
“I only wish there had been a way I could have helped Dermot more. I know I would have been the one who could have talked him down off the box that fateful day.
“I know that because he left only me and my mother a letter. To have to live with the fact I’ll never see him again is agonising. Then my dad died so early – just 52. He was such an important part of my life. And then my daughter got leukaemia.
“Those were huge events in my life, so have to be recorded.”
In 1982, as his career was taking off, Barry took on a Nigerian fighter called Young Ali. Barry won by a knockout in six rounds but Ali fell into a coma and never recovered.
Barry says quietly: “It’s been a terrible shadow to have over me. A young felladied... they switched off his machine.
“It was a very difficult time. I was only 22 and I didn’t want to continue. But my wife was pregnant, I had dedicated my whole life to boxing, I had left school at 16 without any qualifications. So how could I give up all the millions of punches I had thrown andthousands of miles I had run? I simply had nothing else.
“I can’t change what happened but I have done my utmost since to help push through new medical rules. But when people fight, very occasionally we have a tragedy.”
Barry continued to fight and in June 1985, when he won the world title, he dedicated it to Ali in a tearful-post match interview with TV commentator Harry Carpenter.
“I was hugely emotional,” he says. “It meant a lot that people remembered Young Ali.”
The victory made Barry a household name and he won the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award.
His eloquence and humour made him a popular chat show guest – and later host.
He was made an MBE in 1994, is chairman of the Professional Boxing Association and has set up his own Barry McGuigan BoxingAcademies to help young fighters combine boxing training and education.
In 1997, Barry and his wife Sandra suffered a terrible blow when their daughter Danika, then 11, developed leukaemia.
Barry says: “It was like being hit with a sledgehammer. No amount of fighting in the ring could have prepared me for it.
“I was in Ireland when I got a call from our doctor and I could hear Sandra sobbing in the background.
“We spent the next six weeks staying in the hospital hoping and praying Nika would get better. They gave her chemo straight away.I can’t tell you how terrified I was, seeing her go through it all.
“She was in a high dependency ward. At one point there were seven kids in there and four of them died.
“We got to know those children and their families. We were going to the funerals, feeling their dreadful loss and wondering if it was going to happen to your child.
“But Nika was incredibly strong andpositive. God, did she fight. I was so proud of her. I’ve never seen such will power.”
Danika, now 25, was given the all clear in 1999 and is now an actress. Barry and Sandra have three other children. Blain, 27, is a politics graduate and talentedmusician, Jake, 24, is working with his dad in the boxing academies and Shane, 22, followed Barry into thering and won several English and Irish titles.
Barry was born in the border town of Clones in 1961. His paternal grandfather had been an IRA captain in the 1920s but Barry says: “I always promoted peace and reconciliation. It was important to make a statement of neutrality.”
Barry is still passionate about reconciliation in Ireland. Last year he was honoured with the United Nations Inspiration Award for Peace.
On the cover of Barry’s book, fellow peace campaigner Bono sums up his achievements.
He writes: “At a dark hour in Ireland Barry McGuigan’s spirit shone a light towards peace.
“Barry’s not only a champion, he’s a hero.”