Boxing trainer Joe Gallagher might be fresh off surgery for Stage 4 cancer, but he’s already itching to get back into the gym.
Gallagher couldn’t have been happier to attend the latest episode of the Opening Bell podcast, hosted by broadcaster Alex Steedman and BoxingScene editor-in-chief Matt Christie.
“When Matt reached out about doing the podcast, I was like, ‘Yeah, please, please, please – it’s killing me not being back in the gym at the moment,’” Gallagher confessed.
What follows is an inspiring conversation about recovery and resilience, but primarily a boxing lifer’s enduring love for the sport. Gallagher gave details on the surgery (“removed some of me bowels and some of me liver,” where the cancer lay) and his desire to deal with cancer and chemotherapy on his own (though he knew family and friends were ready to support him, he felt “it was my battle”).
The majority of the episode, however, was dedicated to Gallagher’s relationship with boxing.
Though he isn’t able to come back to his gym just yet, Gallagher is making do remotely. “I tell [the fighters] every day what the training session is, arrange the sparring sessions for them. They film it, they send it [to] me. The pad work, everything else, and it’s very good to have that structure.” As much as he loves the work, Gallagher is glad the gym can operate without him if need be.
Among the stable of Gallagher fighters is Lawrence Okolie, a former cruiserweight titleholder who also won a belt in the fringe bridgerweight division before moving up to heavyweight last year. Most recently, Okolie, now 22-1 (16 KOs), easily outpointed Kevin Lerena on the undercard of the Oleksandr Usyk-Daniel Dubois rematch. Lerena had previously returned from a 14-month layoff to blow out Serhiy Radchenko at home, but Okolie thoroughly outclassed him.
Even more impressively, Okolie fought through an injury he suffered in the first round: a torn biceps. But he found himself facing a continued narrative that he clinches too much.
Gallagher wants to break that narrative.
“Lawrence goes in, wins with one arm, and then it’s just, ‘I can’t believe all Lawrence’s holding,’” he said. Gallagher added that they had five weeks’ notice for the fight, and that many fighters have turned down bouts with Okolie. “I thought it was a very good performance for the circumstances.”
Gallagher’s belief in Okolie was palpable, both in how he spoke of the 32-year-old and how much. Gallagher’s own remarkable battle against adversity seemed less on his mind than Okolie’s.
“He hates me in camp, but it’s a good type of hate,” Gallagher said, recalling how hard he’d pushed Okolie ahead of the fight.
At the end of the episode, at the hosts’ asking, Gallagher talked a little bit more about himself. His bout with cancer has seen his love for boxing threatened by his mortality, and though he’s aware of it, he’s only planning to slow down a bit rather than stop.
“Boxing has been very good to me. I can’t abandon boxing…I think in boxing, you only get out what you put in, and I’ve put an awful lot of me time since the age of 10 into the sport. Forty-six years, of every level – from an amateur boxer to an amateur coach to professional, the whole lot. Manager, promoter.
“This is the last team,” he conceded. But, as the hosts’ laughter referenced, Gallagher still trains more than a dozen fighters.
“He’s not going anywhere, folks,” Steedman announced.
