‘Irish’ Jack O’Halloran has been in the ring with Foreman, filmed with Brando and says he was the inspiration for Rocky
‘IRISH’ Jack O’Halloran has worn a lot of hats.
He was a pro footballer with the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles before moving into boxing.
He was a player in the greatest heavyweight era of the 1960s and 70s, a 6ft 6in hardman who was friends with Muhammad Ali and battled George Foreman, Ken Norton and Ron Lyle.
He was a movie star, starting off with Farewell My Lovely alongside Robert Mitchum and starring as the mute villain ‘Non’ in Superman 1 and II.
And he was a mob guy, claiming to be the son of one of the men who helped to found the American mafia — the infamous Alberto Anastasia.
One thing he never actually was was Irish — but he did live here for a while.
ANGLO-IRISH RELATIONS
O’Halloran, who is now an author, told this week’s episode of our new boxing podcast ‘Rocky Road: Rewind’: “I started my career in Philadelphia and they sent me up to Boston and gave me that name there.
“I lived in a village called Dunlavin in Wicklow back in the early 80s. I was married to an English woman and I had a horse ranch down there.
“I met Jackie when I was in Ireland looking to do a film. I was at the Shelbourne in Dublin. We met at an affair there and boom, Bob’s your uncle. Next thing I know I was in Ireland.”
O’Halloran boxed for eight years between 1966-1974, winning 34, losing 21 and drawing two.
STORIED CAREER
He was consistently linked with Ali and Joe Frazier bouts and while those did not come to pass, a glance at his record suggests he was willing to get in there with anyone — and nearly always at short notice.
Those he beat include Cleveland ‘Big Cat’ Williams, Al ‘Blue’ Lewis and Rahman Ali — kid brother of ‘The Greatest’.
They all come with a yarn.
He recalled: “I was like a white Ali. I could move and I was big and strong — and I could punch.
NEAR MISSES WITH ALI
“I had a great left jab. When I fought Cleveland Williams, he told me, ‘You hit me with more left jabs than Ali did. Damn, son, your left hand is like a piston’.
“I think Cleveland Williams hit me harder than anyone in my whole career. Thank God I was in shape. He hit me a left hook and I felt it in my toes.
“Me and Ali, we were supposed to fight four different times. The first time I was California heavyweight champion and he called me on the phone.
“I was fighting his brother Rahman and I didn’t know that was his brother. He said, ‘That’s my brother, you’ve got to get him out of boxing because he’s embarrassing me’.
“I said, ‘I’d better go in the gym for a couple days’.
"And I knocked him out and he never fought again, and Ali and me put the deal together and we were going to fight in San Diego.
POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS
“We had the venue all set up, we had agreements all done. But Norton had some wealthy people behind him and he got the Ali fight instead.”
Ali beat Lewis at Dublin’s Croke Park in July 1972. A rematch was in the works the following year — before O’Halloran threw a spanner in them.
He said: “They made the fight between Al ‘Blue’ Lewis and myself trying to prepare him for another Ali fight if he beat me — and I beat him very badly.
“After that I went up to Ali’s camp in Deer Lake and I sat down with him and said, ‘Let’s do this, let’s get it on’.
BRING A GUN
“And he said, ‘If I give you a title fight, will you really, really try to beat me?’
"And I said, ‘I’ll tell you something, for the very first time in my career I will go away to a camp like you guys do and I will train for a couple of months.
"And when you come in the ring you better bring a gun with you’.
“And he said, ‘Two steaks please’ — we were having dinner — and we laughed. He was a great individual.
"I had a lot of time for him. But we never got it on. Same with Frazier.”
MOB MYSTERY
O’Halloran was a connected guy but feels the dwindling influence of the mafia on boxing around the time he was coming up worked against him.
Frankie Carbo, a member of Murder Inc just as his father had been, was a kingmaker in 1950s boxing but was busted after a 1958 wire-tapping.
O’Halloran said: “If Carbo was around when I was boxing I’d have been world champion — because they would have put me in camp.
“My management team were mob guys from Philadelphia. I begged them, I said, ‘Stick me in a camp and the only time I wanna come out is when I’m fighting. Just lock me up. Get me off the street. Period’.
OTHER CONCERNS
"I had too many things I was doing in the streets for the mob, and boxing was like a day job — because you had to have a day job or you’d be busted by the law.
"If my father was alive I’d have been world champ. I’d have done my career different and it’d have been a different situation.
“I had a lot of anger in me and not too many people could tell me what to do.
“The problem was I had too much talent. I could take a ten-round fight in a week without a problem.
TOOK IT HANDY
"I could fight ten rounds on my head. I just had a great ability.
“If you’re not in the proper condition, and you walk into punches, you don’t have a control over certain things — and that was my problem.
“When I fought Foreman in 1970, I was beating him in the first couple of rounds and I walked into a punch.
“That’s what really made me mad. I got up — but they stopped the fight right away.
“They were looking for an excuse. Once again, boom. It happened to me in my career quite a bit because I didn’t care.
“I trained for like a week for Foreman and George was a pretty good fighter.
ROPE-A-DOPE ORIGINS
“Ali asked me about him, and I said, ‘I’ll tell you the truth. If you take him into the depth of the fight, I think you’ll wear him down’.
“And that’s when Ali did the rope-a-dope in the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974. He’s the one that loosened the ropes himself, Ali.
"Muhammad Ali was a great fighter. George was pounding at him and Ali kept whispering in his ear, ‘My wife hits harder than that’.
“And when you wind up, you’re throwing haymakers all the time and you’re missing, that takes more out of you than if you’re connecting because you’ve got to reset yourself.
“And if you’re fighting a guy like Ali . . . the punch that he knocked Foreman out with, if he’d hit him with that punch in the second it wouldn’t nearly have affected him that much.”
REAL LIFE ROCKY
When he went into acting, he mixed with Hollywood heavyweights such as Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando and Robert Mitchum but another, Sylvester Stallone, is not in his good books.
Boxer Chuck Wepner is said to be the inspiration behind the Rocky movies but O’Halloran disputes that version of events.
He added: “That’s poppycock. I was doing Farewell, My Lovely, the first picture I ever did, with Robert Mitchum.
“Stallone had a bit-part in the movie. And he came to me after in New York and picked my brain every day.
"Because he didn’t know Philadelphia. I was the gangster fighter from Philly.
“I belonged to the mob and was involved in the mob. And I told him about the waterfront, and the gym that they show in the movie — I trained there.
MOST READ IN SPORT
“I gave this kid the truth about me and he wrote the story of Rocky.
"And when I saw the movie, I said, ‘Are you kidding me, man? This is a joke’.
"He made a lot of money. God bless him.”