February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“I am delighted on two fronts,” said Dunne’s Los Angeles-based promoter, ring legend Sugar Ray Leonard.
“The first is that after stringent tests he [has] proved to be healthy, and secondly, that I can now work with one of the best prospects in America and help him get to the featherweight title.”
Dunne’s manager, the millionaire Dublin businessman Brian Peters, was equally ecstatic over his exciting charge’s return to the ring and wasted no time in announcing a three-fight program.
“Bernard will be out again on Jan. 3 in Oklahoma City at the Wild West Casino and then again on Feb. 7 and March 7. That’s the action he needs to build up some momentum,” Peters said.
“He’s in very good shape because he has been ticking over in the gym. He’ll head back to the States on Boxing Day to get ready for the four rounder at the start of next month.”
He explained how he received word of Dunne’s health clearance, following a battery of tests in New York last October, from a Sugar Ray Leonard Promotions official and relayed it to the young fighter in a cinema.
“He had the mobile on waiting for a call in the cinema while watching “Lord of the Rings.” Relief is not the word, his life has been upside down over the past two months. This is the perfect Christmas present,” Peters recounted.
A 2-0 126-pound contender hailed as the best Irish prospect since former World Boxing Council bantamweight titlist Wayne McCullough, Dunne returned to Dublin from his Santa Monica, Calif., base last month to await the outcome of neurological tests by the New York State Athletic Commission.
This followed the discovery of a cyst in his head during a routine scan before his first fight for Sugar Ray Leonard Promotions, in Buffalo last October.
The entire event has been an eerie replay of the Wayne McCullough cyst scare, which also had a happy ending, albeit after the “Pocket Rocket” had spent two years out of the ring.
Dunne is the son and prot