Irish Arm in America
Irish bare-knuckle fighter Dan Donnelly and his arm I told you about a couple of days back, features today in The Sweet Science by George Kimball (courtesy of The Irish Times), as the Irish limb made its appearance at a media reception in midtown Manhattan yesterday.
George tells a tale of his first aquaintance with the famous Irish limb, involving Gerry Cooney, Charlie Haughey, and Finbar Furey, together with a history lesson for those of us who were schoolboys in Ireland but slept in that day:
As every Irish schoolboy should know (although, in our experience, startlingly few actually do), Dan Donnelly was the first Irish-born heavyweight champion of Britain, in an era in which the claimant to that title was the de facto heavyweight champion of the world.
Donnelly’s two most celebrated bouts took place at the Curragh of Kildare. In the first, in 1814, he defeated Tom Hall from the Isle of Wight for a prize of 100 sovereigns, with upwards of 20,000 spectators on hand.
At Donnelly’s Hollow a year later he knocked out George Cooper in eleven rounds. Then, in 1818, Donnelly traveled to London, where he defeated the English champion Tom Oliver at Crawley Hurst. Over 100,000 pounds is said to have changed hands that day, and Dan was subsequently knighted by the Prince Regent (later King George IV), who became his patron
See also:
• Unique Irish Exhibition
• Former KC Wizard Mo Johnston in Shamrock Rovers v Celtic
• Ireland, Argentina and Germany
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