Moate's other king of the ring

It's 6pm on a cloudy Thursday in Moate, and a small number of boys and young men are standing outside the red, metal door of the local boxing club. Denis Galvin comes along and turns the key to the gym, in the town's old fire station. The lights flicker on, the boxers don their training gear, and soon there is the unmistakable sound of the first punch of the evening smacking the heavy bag. The club's current claim to fame is that it's home to an exciting Olympic prospect in 18-year-old Joe Ward. But before Ward burst on the scene, Denis Galvin was without question the best boxer ever to hail from Moate. A five-time Irish senior champion, he represented Ireland on 32 occasions, winning a bronze medal at the world junior championships in 1987 and coming desperately close to a medal at the European senior championships in 1991. In later years he turned away from the sport and became a clean-living Jehovah's Witness. However he admits returning to some bad habits, such as smoking and taking a drink, and therefore was disfellowshipped (or excommunicated) from the Jehovah's Witnesses in early 2010. He subsequently returned to the amateur boxing scene and is now assistant coach at the Moate club, working alongside head coach John Joyce. Last month, on the night Ward defeated Kenneth Egan for the second time, Denis climbed back into the ring at the National Stadium to receive an award from the Irish Amateur Boxing Association for his services to the sport. Now aged 42, he discussed his eventful life to date in a recent interview with the Westmeath Independent. Denis is a son of Ann and the late Denis Snr, who died twenty years ago this month, aged 49. The family, which was involved in farming, lived on the Dublin Road in Moate until Denis was eleven. They spent most of the 1980s living in Coolatore House, the Rosemount residence where pop star Michael Jackson stayed when he was in Westmeath several years ago. Denis now lives on Lake Road in Moate. He first became involved in boxing at the age of 12. "A friend of mine, Paddy Donoghue, was in the boxing club, so I said I'd go along with him. The 'Rocky' films were out at the time and that probably got me thinking about it. "I was strong for my age and I was decent at football and sports in general. I was headstrong and wild, and the first night I went in I sparred with a couple of lads who had been boxing for much longer. I beat them and the trainers stopped it, but I didn't think much of that because I had a weight advantage over them." It soon became evident that he was a formidable fighter. At 13, he won a Leinster title. The following year he retained the provincial title and also claimed his first All-Ireland crown, stopping his opponents in the final three bouts. "That's when I would have clarified in my mind that I was fairly good," he stated. Discussing his qualities as a boxer, he said: "I was strong. I hit hard and threw a lot of punches. I had a high work rate as well, so I would overwhelm fellas and stop them. Also I was very determined, especially when I was young. As you get a bit older you see the other side of life and you're not quite as determined as you once were." For the remainder of his teens he was unbeaten in Ireland and in 1987, at age 17, he was one of four Irish boxers to be selected for the world junior championships in Cuba. It was the first time he had travelled abroad. "I remember the lads were slagging me when we were getting on the plane because I was terrified!" he laughed. Denis secured his bronze medal at the championships with an impressive second-round stoppage of a Bulgarian opponent. Cuba was the dominant country in amateur boxing at the time and a Cuban, William Silva, stopped Denis in the semi-final. "At the time, I was prone to getting a rush of blood to the head. The Cuban, who had seen me boxing the night before, read me well," he recalled. "I threw an uppercut that was a silly shot to throw and he caught me and knocked me down. When I got up I tried to do the same thing again, and that was that. Unfortunately I didn't have great boxing intelligence at that stage but I developed it in later years. "It was hard because it was the first time that had ever happened to me. At the time it felt like it was the end of your world. Now, when I look back on it, I realise that I just wasn't as technically advanced as he was." When he moved into the senior ranks, Denis established himself as Ireland's outstanding middleweight, winning four consecutive national titles between 1989 and 1992. "Winning those titles was a great feeling, but then I was always able to get up for the national finals because there was local pride involved. If you went out to an international competition and got beaten there was no shame. But I would have felt ashamed if I was beaten in Ireland," he said. The closest Denis came to another significant medal internationally was at the European championships in Sweden in 1991. He defeated Israeli and Dutch opponents in his first two bouts, and then came up against a Polish boxer, Robert Buda, in the quarter final. "That fight was so close that the computer couldn't find a winner. It was a draw, the score was tied at 17-17. The computer arranged a countback and the countback was a draw too! "So the judges had to pick a winner by pushing a button for the red corner or the blue corner. Three judges pushed for him and two pushed for me," he said. "The next day the Hungarian referee who was in charge of the fight got suspended because he had cautioned Buda six times for one offence but didn't give him a public warning. You're supposed to get a public warning after three cautions - and at that time a public warning meant a deduction of three points. "At a hearing the next day they asked the referee why he didn't give Buda a public warning after cautioning him so many times. He just shrugged his shoulders." Denis attempted to win his fifth consecutive Irish senior title in 1993, but he was beaten by Donegal fighter, Danny Ryan. A year later he overturned this result, conquering Ryan in the final to claim what would prove to be his last Irish championship. The national final in 1995 was a tight affair in which Denis lost to Belfast's Brian Magee by a single point. Magee competed at the Atlanta Olympics a year later, before turning professional. He is still boxing and is the current European super middleweight champion. Denis himself flirted with the idea of going professional. He trained for a time at coach Brendan Ingle's gym in Sheffield, which was home a number of professional champions including 'Prince' Naseem Hamed. In the late 1990s he moved to New York and trained in the Bronx with the intention of turning pro. His training there were going well for a time, but then his interest waned and he stopped turning up at the gym. A few weeks later, there was a knock on his door from a representative of the Jehovah's Witnesses. "It was coming up to the start of the new millennium and there was talk that the world was going to end. The woman (from the Jehovah's Witnesses) mentioned that in her presentation and asked me what I thought about it. "Then she showed me something in the Bible and asked me a few questions. I developed a great interest in it. I don't know if you've ever been contacted by them or talked to them, but it's worth listening to. "Before this, I'd hear 'the Bible says this' or 'the Bible says that' and I always thought to myself that this must be a very interesting book. I had that spiritual side to me and I was open-minded about it. If I came across anyone of a different religion I would talk to them and listen to them." He said that, as a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses, he "couldn't be associated with any form of violence" and so his ties to boxing were severed. When he returned to Moate he was involved in evangelism, knocking on people's doors to share information about his beliefs. From around 2007 onwards, he "drifted" and became less strict in following the lifestyle required of a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Despite being disfellowshipped in 2010, Denis said the personal spiritual beliefs he developed as a member of the Witnesses are still in place. "Oh yeah, definitely. That doesn't change," he said. Today, he works as a window-cleaner. When asked if there was anything about his career that he wished he'd done differently, he said he ought to have made a bigger effort to qualify for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. In the qualifying tournament for those games, Denis was beaten by a Danish opponent. "I wasn't robbed or anything, he won the fight, but I should have beaten him. I wasn't trying hard enough. To be totally honest, I didn't wake up and say to myself 'this is 1992, this is the Olympic year'. I was real easy-going. "When I lost that bronze medal fight (at the '91 European championships) the other boys would be in the dressing room all depressed and I'd come in, rub my hands together, and say 'alright, time for a beer now!' "I'd take things in my stride - I wouldn't be sore or annoyed about it. I was happy with how I'd performed and the fact that I'd gotten so far and came so close." But the biggest regret he has is that he "wasn't born 20 years later," as the structures supporting amateur boxing in Ireland today are much more advanced than they were when he was in his prime. Preparation for big tournaments in Galvin's heyday consisted of a few weeks in a training camp with a Cuban coach. Today the top Irish boxers are members of a year-round High Performance training programme. "The structure of it is all different now, with high performance training and nutritionists and psychologists. In my era we did well given the structures we had to work with and the fact that we were part-time boxers. I still managed to win those medals, but I don't know where any of them are now!" Getting involved in boxing again, this time as a coach, has been a rewarding experience. "It's a pleasure to train the lads. Even the novices we have coming in to us now are very good," he said. "We're a successful club so it's productive to be a part of it. There's a joy in the training and in helping to bring young lads along."