Who Cares about "Irish" Andy Lee? Or the Search for Brooklyn's Irish Boxing Fans

The game plan was simple. Find some Irish-y folk who were going to see their countryman Andy Lee fight Brooklyn's own Peter "Kid Chocolate" Quillin in his first middleweight title defense at Barclays Center. This does not seem hard, but from the start nothing went quite as planned. For starters, Quillin lived up to his sweet-toothed handle and couldn't make weight at 160 pounds, which made the fight a non-title affair. Beyond that, a planned meeting with two contest winners who came to see the match all the way from Lee's hometown of Limerick fell through; and hopping on a busload of fans coming from Sunnyside, Queens never came to fruition. I was as alone as a person with Irish ancestors can be in New York.

I had no choice but to do my job and shoe-leather it out to the pubs. My first inquiry as to the level of Lee interest came Wednesday, over a Reuben sandwich at Molly's Shebeen, a longtime Manhattan sawdust-on-the-floor joint. The barkeep was unaware of, well, not just the fight, but the existence of Andy Lee himself. This was not totally surprising, given the bar's literary afternoon crowd, all of whom had books in front of them. On Friday night, I checked in at Putnam's Pub & Cooker, my local in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill. This isn't a sports bar either, but they do have two large TVs. I asked the manager Sarah, a native Irishwoman, if they were doing anything for the fight. She had at least heard of Lee, and pledged to put it on, but didn't know he was starring in NBC's second live network television night of boxing of 2015. This was not the ringing endorsement I was seeking. A post-fight, um, reporting visit revealed that Sarah forgot about the fight, but another bartender said two patrons requested it, so Lee found a home at Putnam's. Progress!

A few hours before the Saturday night fight, I hopped the R train to Sunset Park where, even if you've never been to the Irish Haven, you know the Irish Haven, if only because it served as the home base for the Costello crew in The Departed. (The Scorsese is strong in this one: beyond being the spot where DiCaprio requests cranberry juice, my visit also featured an impromptu bar sing-a-long of the Ronettes "Be My Baby.") Once again, I asked the lovely lass behind the stick.

"You know, someone mentioned something about it, but he said the guy's name was Quinn," says Mary, chuckling after I explained that the guy had gotten both the fighter and the other fighter's Gaelic-sounding name wrong. As we spoke further, it became clear that I'd finally found an Irish person in New York City who had a real dog in the fight; her father is from Limerick. "He doesn't care about boxing so I'm sure he doesn't give a shit, but I wonder if he knows who Lee is," she said. "Is he a Traveller? I'm going to look him up."

When I asked what a Traveller was, Mary responded, "An Irish gypsy. They're looked down on back home."

"A tinker!" piped in another guy at the bar. As it turns out, Andy Lee is a Traveller. I still may not have found what I was looking for, but at least we were all learning fun fight facts together.

Unsurprisingly, a different vibe prevailed in the hardscrabble town Mary affectionately referred to as "Stab City."

"The fight was screened at 2 a.m., so I watched on my own in my living room, well me and a six-pack, as is a bit of a tradition these days. All the pubs were locked but I heard a lot of them were open if you knew the 'secret knock,'" says 40-year-old Ken Moore, the head coach at the St. Francis boxing club, the longest running in Ireland going back to 1928. Moore trained Lee in his early days, and he remains an important figure in the club's history. "Having a fighter like Andy represent St. Francis is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. He was our first Olympian and professional world champ, so we're are all very proud of not only his achievements, but how he carries himself outside the ring and how he represents Limerick."

Back at the Irish Haven, I finally met two guys heading to the fights, self-described "big boxing head" (and a former Gold Gloves fighter) named Luis and his buddy Christian, two Puerto Ricans from the neighborhood. Their primary interest was the bout following Lee's, between Danny Garcia and Lamont Peterson, but they had predictions.

"Lee's tough, has decent power, but I think Quillin will get him because he's pissed off about how bad he messed up with the weight thing," says Luis. "I bet he gets Lee early."

"No way, Lee plays it smart and wins the decision," says Christian.

Beers were wagered.

I'd found boxing fans, at least, but not the Irish rowdies I was after. I hustled back to the bars near the Barclays Center. I was going to hit up O'Connors, a solid dank Par Slope dive that I'd forgotten had closed, been renovated, and reopened as McMahon's Public House, one of those awful cavernous pricey stupidly loud places that spring up around stadiums. I turned and walked down to the Cherry Tree, which isn't remotely Irish, although they at they at least have a Guinness sign out front. I asked the \bartender, Marc, if anyone was talking about the Barclay's bouts. He pointed to a large group who were leaving, a large group of fans up from Philadelphia to watch their hometown hero "Swift" Garcia. There was not an Irish man or woman in the bunch. I was O-for-the-week, but at least Marc gave me another bit of trivia about the guy I was heading to see.

"I'm an Andy Lee fan, because he's a Kronk fighter, but I haven't met anyone today who's rooting for him. Tonight, I'm staying neutral because Quillin is a Brooklyn guy," says Marc.

Desperate times for desperate headlines call for desperate measures. I walked back and went in to McMahon's.

Bingo. I found a group of four Irish folk having beers right down to the final bell. They'd all emigrated 15-plus years ago to Woodside, in Queens, but still had brogues thick as bonnyclabber. After a few minutes of busting my chops about being from immigration, they threw down for their countryman.

"Maybe a lot of people around here aren't clued in to Andy Lee, but they should be," says Gerry.

"It's a hell of a thing to see an Irish fighter, as champion, right here in New York City," adds George.

"I'm not into boxing and if he was from Dublin, I wouldn't give a shit. They've got a chip on their shoulder in the north," says Ann, the only female among them. "Limerick is a fucking great place and Andy Lee is a true Limerick man."

I took that beautiful bit of blarney as a sign and went to Barclays. It was late and the fight, the fight, was calling.

As it happened, Lee and Quillin half-battled to a 12-round draw in a fight that had three knockdowns—Lee in the first and third, Quillin in the seventh—and a lot of dancing. Quillin was the aggressor early, Lee came on late. There were a smattering of Irish flags and Lee was the partisan favorite at the start, although not too the raucous extent of Garcia, who beat Peterson in a majority decision. At the end, though, there was hearty booing and cries that Quillin got robbed. In the morning light of replays, the second knockout was more of a inadvertent trip, and the stats from CompuBox had the fighters more or less dead even, so it was a wash. From where I sat, it wasn't an especially memorable bout, but the view was a bit different from an Emerald Isle easy chair.

"I had it a draw but only because the ref scored the trip as a knockdown, a three-point shift, otherwise I'd have Andy by a couple of points at least," Moore told me. "He had great conditioning to come back from the first six minutes, great professionalism in the corner, there was no panic. And above all, Lee has the Irish heart to come back."

On the way out, I ran into Ann and Val, the fourth of the Woodside crew, who was was convinced the fix was in once the title fight was off, with the draw designed to ensure a rematch. Ann, however, had different concerns as to the outcome. "I just feel really really bad for all the people who spent all that money to fly over here from Limerick," she says in all sincerity.

After a beat, Val, chimes in, "It's not like they just took a fucking vacation to Iraq."

Ann busted out laughing. The fight was over, but the night was just beginning.