In every episode of imagination, Packey Mahoney from Cork was a terrifying hefty weight. In an era in which most of the heavyweight looked, as if someone who could be avoided at all costs. Jim Jeffries is another good example. The Irish always had a reputation of the fight, and this was mainly because so many of them had to leave their country during the great hunger in the 1840s and ended in Great Britain, doing all the demanding work. Without them, for example, most of the railways could not be built.
According to Matt Donnellon in his book Irish heavyweight book 1The Packey family emigrated to Wales, where Packey was born in Cardiff in 1883. Soon they returned to Cork, and there a newborn boy learned to fight. Matt describes Mahoney as “one of the most crucial fighters who have ever left Ireland, and a retrospective look at his career shows that he was the highest class of heavyweight.” He served in the British army during the Burska war and I am sure that he would be presented to noble art.
In 1910, at the age of 26, he had his first professional competition, beating Sid Barber in the planned 15-government advertisement as Munster championships in hefty weight, with victory in the eighth round. The following year, Packey raised the championship in the heavyweight of his family Cork, beating Bombardier Coates in a 20-round competition at the Cork Opera House, a place where Packey became a great favorite. According to Bn“The crooked, which greeted the victory of a local man, were deafening.” Packey Polokski of his man.
Then he went to the invincible run of 12 competitions. In 1912 he attracted the Irish heavyweight title against a private Delaney from Leinster Regiment, again at the Opera, and then won two competitions in England, including one against the American, newborn Johnson, and the other by knockout in Paris. In October 1912 he was re -broadcast with Johnson, this time at the House Opera in Cork. Johnson was nearby, he fought with this great American, Joe Jeannette, in Glasgow only five months earlier. In the uninteresting fight, Mahoney won again.
His reward was the 15th-Runder against the future British heavyweight champion, Joe Beckett, at the National Sporting Club, and Packey won this chance with both hands. According to Bn“Mahoney was always at the top, until, seeing that he had his man on his mercy, Packey entered and, without even worrying to break the right to the jaw, and Beckett dropped like logs that could be counted.”
After two defense of the Irish heavyweight title in 1913, winning excellent victories over private Dan Voyles and Seaman Brown, he was adapted to the leading British man of weight, Bombardier Billy Wells, in the British title. It inevitably took place, as it had to, at the National Sporting Club. Wells lost the last two matches, both through a knockout for the world opposition at Gunboat Smith and Georges Carpentier, and could not afford to lose it. In our preview, Bn He described the style of Mahoney as “a warrior, immaculate and elementary, whose one idea is to move to his opponent, sticking close to him and piercing him.”
Unfortunately, the peculiar lack of boxing skills of Packey led to his fall against Wells. Several times in the first two rounds he caught the master, but into the third “he was stuck in every variety of strokes. Hooks, stabs, right crosses, peaks found his face, nose and mouth,” and Mahoney was finally displaced with a net of hooks. This was his first and only failure.
Packey has never been blooming again. He retired to Cork, where he became a worshiped and beloved figure. He died at the age of 85 in 1968.