Bernard Dunne, the former WBA super bantamweight world champion and Irish Olympic boxing team coach knows all about success, failure and moments that can change the course of lives.
Now he is learning something new, as pads in the gym have been put aside for pens in the garden.
His pivot from the boxing world to writing has taken him to broadcasting and a Sunday evening slot on RTÉ Radio 1 where Dunne Talking explores the stories around success in sports men and women.
Two revealing conversations with double Olympic gold medallist Kellie Harrington and footballer Niall Quinn have been aired with six more to follow in the current series taking in Dublin footballer James McCarthy, Mary O’Connor, Jack Woolley, Sonia O’Sullivan, Ellen Keane and Jim Bolger.
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“That whole transition piece. I’ve seen what that looks like, trying to refind yourself, figure out who you are as a person. That’s a huge challenge,” says Dunne.
“Most of these people, they’ve pushed their bodies not just physically but mentally as well right to the edge where most people won’t go. It’s trying to find out what those hidden ingredients are, when you are under that pressure, when you need real resilience, when you need to stay focused on something, what was it that got these people to do it.”
On that subject Dunne has a considerable advantage over most. His thrilling win over Ricardo Cordoba, that would win ESPN’s Fight of the Year in 2009, was entirely about mental and physical integrity.
In a relentlessly brutal fight, Dunne hauled himself off the canvas twice before winning the title in an 11th round knock-out. In one moment, he moved from world title contender facing bloody defeat to world champion.
“I’d a whole out of body experience in that fight,” he says. “What happened was basically a two-second moment for me was a 25-minute conversation with myself around what the future looked like and what was I going to accept here.
“People are going to say well done but hard luck. Is that what you want to hear? I went through all the choices I made throughout my life, the choices that my family made to allow me to do what I’ve done.
“I was on the fire brigade panel. I asked myself is that what you are going to be? Do you want to be a fireman instead? Is that what the next step is because if you don’t get up here it is over? Your career is finished. I had a whole out of body experience at that moment in time. That got me through it. That helped me to become a world champion.”
In Dunne’s conversation with Quinn, the young wannabe professional finds himself in Fulham manager Malcolm McDonald’s office at Craven Cottage. McDonald says to the 14-year-old Dublin kid: ‘I’m a misogynist. Do you know what that is?’ Quinn answers: ‘No I don’t know.’
McDonald continues. ‘I’m not a lover of men sexually. I love men’s ways. I’m a man’s man. That’s why I’m going to give the news like a man. As long as you have a hole in your backside you will never make a footballer’.
“The Niall conversation I could have made two episodes,” says Dunne. “We spoke for two-and-a-half hours. To think what he went through, and he still continued. The sliding door moment for Niall was the postal strike when he was in Australia for a combined rules game and the strike was on.
“He’d been offered a contract and signed for Arsenal and then the Sydney Swans manager knocked on the front door saying you haven’t responded to any of our letters. Niall said I didn’t get any letters.
“He said ‘we sent contract offers over to you’. Niall had signed but they were trying to convince him. It turned out Jim Stynes ended up getting one of the contracts. Again, you never know what’s going to happen. You are just one conversation away from getting what you want to get.”
There’s a natural flow to the conversations and as an athlete, Dunne knows how guarded athletes can be. But, he says, he tries to break that barrier down straight away. The conversations are about success and the honour, but also about the challenges, the hurdles that are put in the way, the resilience piece and what empowered them to face knock backs.
“We’ve eight commissions and we’re going to build on that, but we have to see how it goes, how it resonates with people, if people enjoy it,” he says.
“The feedback seems to be positive at the moment. I’m still writing and working on ideas I have on different things. But I think there is a place for something like this.”
– The third episode of ‘Dunne Talking’ with racehorse trainer Jim Bolger will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on Sunday at 6pm.
