Don’t let the broad Brummie accent fool you. He was born and bred in Birmingham, but Matthew Macklin, the European middleweight champion, is more than happy to use his Irish roots to get a world-title shot.
On Saturday, at the National Stadium, Dublin, Macklin, a former British champion and England international as an amateur, boxes Rafael Sosa Pintos, of Uruguay, the latest step to what Macklin hopes will be a bout against Kelly Pavlik, the WBC and WBO champion.
“My dream would be to face Pavlik at Madison Square Garden on St Patrick’s Day,” Macklin said. Not that Macklin is merely boxing under a flag of convenience.
“I consider myself Irish, which may sound odd as I have lived all my life in Birmingham,” Macklin said. “I was proud to box for England as an amateur and very proud to be British champion, but I grew up in the Irish community. I didn’t play football until I was seven or eight, I grew up with a hurly in my hand. In our house, we watched hurling and Gaelic football.” Macklin was good enough at hurling to represent Tipperary, where he spent many of his summers, up to under-21 level.
Macklin has been a beneficiary of the present Irish boxing boom under Brian Peters, his manager. “Until 2005, if you were Irish and had any ambition, you had to go to America or England,” Macklin said. “Brian changed all that. He got RTE involved and things are really buzzing now.”
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He intends to be ringside when Pavlik defends his titles against Miguel Angel Espino on December 19 in Ohio. “Pavlik probably doesn’t know who I am, but I want to go there and make a bit of a noise,” Macklin said.
The last world middleweight champion from the Midlands was Randolph Turpin, who beat the great Sugar Ray Robinson at Earls Court in 1951. A statue of Turpin now stands in the Market Square in Warwick. Maybe one day a statue could mark Macklin’s achievements? “That would be nice,” he said. “One in Brum and one in Tipperary.”