The Star: May 26, 2016
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8 Thursday <strong>May</strong> <strong>26</strong> <strong>2016</strong><br />
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Star</strong><br />
News<br />
‘I set a path for amateurs’ – Barry<br />
Heavyweight boxer Joseph Parker will fight<br />
in Christchurch in July – the last step in a<br />
bid at a world title shot in England. Patrick<br />
McKendry looks at what makes his trainer<br />
Kevin Barry tick<br />
NEW ZEALAND businessman<br />
Bob Jones first connected Kevin<br />
Barry with Joseph Parker, but the<br />
union was not straightforward.<br />
Jones (left), a<br />
boxing aficionado<br />
and millionaire,<br />
wanted Barry to<br />
train Parker in<br />
Las Vegas before<br />
the 2012 Olympics<br />
in London.<br />
For one reason or another it<br />
didn’t happen. Parker then lost<br />
the final qualifier and never<br />
made it to the United Kingdom.<br />
Next it was Dean Lonergan<br />
with an offer. “Kev”, the promoter<br />
said to his friend on the phone<br />
in Las Vegas, “I want to sign this<br />
guy as a professional and I want<br />
you and only you to train him”.<br />
“Okay”, came the uncertain<br />
reply.<br />
“I thought, ‘I had never met<br />
him, I had never met his family’,”<br />
Barry told the New Zealand<br />
Herald this week.<br />
“I’ve got to sell this whole<br />
concept to my wife – Dean wants<br />
to send this guy over to me to<br />
live with us. Dean said: ‘well if<br />
it doesn’t work out then I’ll put<br />
him up in a hotel’.<br />
“I said: ‘look, you bring a<br />
young Samoan boy from South<br />
Auckland and you put him in a<br />
hotel, it’s never going to work,<br />
mate’. I said: ‘this whole thing,<br />
if it works, I’m going to have to<br />
invite him into my family’. Dean<br />
said: ‘he’s a lovely guy’.”<br />
That conversation happened<br />
more than three years ago.<br />
It took seven months for the<br />
contract to go through. Now<br />
56-year-old Barry and his<br />
24-year-old fighter are standing<br />
on the brink of a world title shot<br />
and the bond between them<br />
looks likely to endure for a long<br />
time.<br />
<strong>The</strong> victory over Carlos Takam<br />
at Manukau’s Vodafone Events<br />
Centre at the weekend was to<br />
have made Parker the mandatory<br />
challenger for the IBF world<br />
heavyweight title.<br />
But he now has to hurdle<br />
Australian Solomon Haumono<br />
in Christchurch in July.<br />
Barry has been alongside<br />
Parker for the past 14 of his 18<br />
professional fights.<br />
Another thing worming into<br />
Barry’s mind as he considered<br />
Lonergan’s offer was the fallout<br />
from the David Tua affair.<br />
Barry, who was very close to<br />
Tua and trained him for 12 years,<br />
had a massive falling out with<br />
him over money following the<br />
heavyweight’s world title defeat<br />
to Lennox Lewis in 2000.<br />
A legal battle ensued and the<br />
emotional scars remain for both<br />
men.<br />
However, after watching<br />
Parker train for the first time,<br />
and meeting his parents Sala<br />
and Dempsey, Barry’s fears were<br />
eased. Later they would vanish.<br />
“He was very much an amateur,<br />
not using his whole body,<br />
no leverage from his legs,” Barry<br />
said. “I waited for about 15 minutes<br />
and gave him a couple of<br />
instructions.<br />
“What I showed him he<br />
adopted straight away. That was<br />
massive. I thought: ‘this kid is<br />
coachable. He wants to learn’.<br />
“I met with his Mum and Dad<br />
and they said people had come up<br />
to them and said: ‘oh you shouldn’t<br />
put Joseph with Kevin Barry, he’s<br />
the wrong guy, look what happened<br />
with Tua after 12 years’.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> family said: ‘we want<br />
what’s best for our son. We want<br />
him with you’.<br />
“I made a pledge to them at<br />
the time that I would become<br />
his father figure and would treat<br />
him like I would treat my own<br />
children.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> trip to Samoa earlier this<br />
year for Parker’s fight against<br />
American Jason Bergman,<br />
helped Barry shut the door on<br />
the Tua controversy.<br />
“I had a lot of love in Samoa;<br />
a lot of respect from the Prime<br />
Minister and elders, and a lot of<br />
thanks for what I’m doing with<br />
Joseph.<br />
“<strong>The</strong>y knew what I did with<br />
David for 12 years, with Masalino<br />
Masoe [a middleweight world<br />
title], a lot of other Samoan<br />
fighters.<br />
MATES: Kevin Barry and<br />
Joseph Parker. Left: Parker in<br />
training.<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re will always be a scar<br />
there,” Barry said of the Tua<br />
fallout. “When I agreed to come<br />
back here and start training Joe,<br />
it was very important for me that<br />
I put that behind me.<br />
“In a sense I had years prior<br />
. . . but you spend 12 years with<br />
a person and it leaves emotional<br />
scars. <strong>The</strong> fact I was now spending<br />
more time in New Zealand<br />
that it was even more important<br />
for me to completely close that<br />
chapter. And I have.<br />
“That name very rarely even<br />
comes up now. No one even really<br />
cares, it’s a long time ago now.”<br />
Barry began boxing at eight<br />
years old under the care of his father,<br />
Kevin senior, who would go<br />
on to become a Commonwealth<br />
and Olympic Games coach and<br />
an amateur boxing identity in<br />
Christchurch.<br />
His late father remains a huge<br />
influence. Barry junior had his<br />
first fight at nine years old and<br />
once fought three times in one<br />
night as a 10-year-old at a Canterbury<br />
under-16 championship.<br />
He won the first two and lost the<br />
final to a 15-year-old.<br />
He thrives on boxing and<br />
everything to do with it. During<br />
our interview, his phone<br />
rings several times – promoter<br />
Lonergan has been putting him<br />
through media paces like never<br />
before, he said – but he picks<br />
up his train of thought without<br />
hesitation.<br />
As a light heavyweight, Barry<br />
won all sorts of medals and<br />
awards, and became synonymous<br />
with Evander Holyfield at<br />
the 1984 Olympics at Los Angeles<br />
after the American was disqualified<br />
for repeatedly hitting<br />
after the break, a controversial<br />
decision which helped Barry to a<br />
silver medal.<br />
“I set a path for the amateurs<br />
coming behind me and I was<br />
very proud of that,” he said. “I<br />
boxed for 16 years and it gave me<br />
a great start – it built the character<br />
and person I am today.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> Holyfield fight at the<br />
Olympics . . . I was bitter at the<br />
time because I was a proud guy<br />
and ended up winning my fourth<br />
fight there by disqualification. I<br />
was coming second in the fight.<br />
But I had never been off my feet in<br />
16 years and he was never going to<br />
get me off my feet even though he<br />
knocked everyone else out. So he<br />
hit me with a cheap shot.<br />
“As well as launching Holyfield’s<br />
professional career, it<br />
opened a lot of doors for me in<br />
America back in the late 80s<br />
when I started travelling there.”<br />
During our interview, Barry<br />
receives a call from an old mate<br />
in Christchurch, plus Lonergan,<br />
and the latter he finishes with<br />
a stream of good-natured foulmouthed<br />
insults. Parker visits<br />
briefly, and leaves again after<br />
being told he has a BBC phone<br />
interview before training.<br />
Once he leaves, Barry said:<br />
“Joe is a gifted athlete, a very<br />
talented young man who has so<br />
much going for him. He’s special.<br />
And I feel there is a piece of me<br />
in Joe. It’s the coaching that<br />
keeps me awake at night, thinking,<br />
‘I’ve got to try this particular<br />
combination’. I get up and write<br />
things down. <strong>The</strong> coaching occupies<br />
all my spare time.<br />
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