Finbar Patrick ‘Barry’ McGuigan won the WBA featherweight professional world title on 8 June 1985 at Loftus Road, London, defeating the legendary Panamanian Eusebio Pedroza in one of the most celebrated nights in Irish sporting history.

His path to the world title began in earnest at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, where he lost his second bout in deeply controversial circumstances to Zambia’s Winifred Kabunda – ending an Olympic dream that had been literally written into a T-square the 15-year-old made in woodwork class at St Patrick’s High School, Clones in 1976, inscribed with the words ‘Please God, let me win the gold medal in 1980.’

He beat Tanzania’s Isaack Mabushi in his opening bout with two standing counts, but arrived for the Kabunda fight carrying a hand injury requiring a local anaesthetic and a rib injury sustained sparring with professional welterweight Tommy Davitt at the Drogheda training camp – his trainer and mentor Frank Mulligan was back home in Clones.

Four of the five judges awarded the decision to Kabunda 59-58.

From Clones, Co. Monaghan, and a member of the Smithboro Club, he had won the Commonwealth Games bantamweight gold for Northern Ireland in Edmonton in 1978, overcoming Tumat Sogolik of Papua New Guinea despite being knocked down twice. He trained obsessively at the gym converted from the mill room at the back of the family shop in Clones, funded by the Monaghan Men’s Association who provided £40 weekly, and sparred at the London gym of promoter Terry Lawless with professionals Charlie Magri and Jim Watt.