200th Episode Special: John Duddy - Part 1

The Rocky Road hits its 200th episode during Paddy’s week – so who better to have on than the King of New York himself, Ireland’s John Duddy. He had a famous fan in Jake LaMotta and later worked closely with Robert DeNiro, who had starred as The Bronx Bull in Martin Scorsese’s epic Raging Bull back in 1980. Even today he’s boxing royalty in the Big Apple but John Duddy is also a son of Derry and an Irish boxing cult hero, someone who helped popularise professional boxing in the early noughties, leading to a wave of up and coming fighters to follow their dreams either at home or across the pond. Show that you can become a big name in Dublin and you could be labelled ‘the next Bernard Dunne’. Show that you’re ready to break the Big Apple and you might, you just might, be labelled ‘the next John Duddy’. The Derry Destroyer fought nine times at Madison Square Garden between 2005 and 2010 – winning them all – and lost just twice in a 31-fight career. At one stage he was right in the mix to fight for the middleweight championship of the world – which LaMotta held between 1949 and 1951 – but boxing had other plans for him. John wrapped up his career in 2011 when he realised his hunger had dimmed, cancelling an all-Irish match-up with Andy Lee, and, bitten by the acting bug, he’s never looked back. He’s still involved in the sport to this day, spearheading a new programme with the Moving Brains Foundation which put on 54 two-hour sessions for people with Parkinsons Disease in 2024 – and continues to grow and grow. And he is also coaching at Trinity Boxing in New York City, a stone’s throw from the World Trade Centre, with the hope of one day opening his own gym. In Part 1, we look back at John’s early years in the Irish amateur ranks, his determination to unseat Michael Roche as light-middleweight champ and the Corkman’s incredible gesture before he finally did, his boxing pals who made it all so enjoyable, and hunkering down to avoid a hurricane in Cuba during a training camp. We also discuss the links in the chain that go from his early life until now – his uncle Jackie, his dad Michael, Charlie Nash, Ken Buchanan, Barry McGuigan and Roberto Duran. This is the ultimate Rocky story.

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