Joe Egan - The Toughest

Big Joe Egan joins the podcast this week to tell his story and he’s well and truly travelled The Rocky Road to contentment. Raised in Ringsend, Dublin, he took up boxing after being bullied as a kid and never looked back. His first fight was against future world champ Steve Collins and he went on to become multiple-times Irish heavyweight champ, which brought him into the orbit of Floyd Patterson, Cus D’Amato and a young Mike Tyson. He became Tyson’s sparring partner in the Catskills, surviving savage rounds where others couldn’t and even earning the moniker, ‘The Toughest White Man on the Planet’ from the man who couldn’t knock him down, try as he might. The pair became lifetime friends and Tyson even fought some of his early professional bouts in Joe’s Ireland shorts, which he’d absconded with during a trip to the USA. Here, Joe delves into his amateur career and nights at the National Stadium, the support he got from his family, his anger at not being selected for Seoul 88 and helping to make an elderly Lugs Brannigan walk tall after a chance encounter in town. Joe also talks about his own pro career, the crash that effectively finished him, and life after boxing which saw him shot twice during an attack on his pub which featured from machetes, hatchets and shotguns, releasing his life story, after-dinner speaking and featuring in the movies. It’s a hell of a tale. 

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