McCullough’s ring return threatened by lack of TV deal

By Jay Mwamba

There is a new hurdle in Wayne McCullough’s attempt to reignite his star-crossed career. His scheduled bid for American Willie Jorrin’s World

Boxing Council super bantamweight title in Dublin next month now hangs in balance because there is no TV deal.

“Right now we don’t have anything,” Cheryl McCullough, the Ulsterman’s manager and wife, said in Las Vegas last Friday. “We don’t know if it will go ahead. The main stumbling block is TV.”

Cheryl said that although Dan Goossen of America Presents, her husband’s promoters, had told her that there was a signed contract for the match, there is no TV deal in place.

“HBO say they have no dates in September or October, Showtime says they

don’t have money for it, SKY TV have not been approached, and the BBC won’t

touch Wayne because he’s been denied a British license,” she explained.

McCullough, who last fought 22 months ago, agreed to a $150,000 purse for the Jorrin fight, whose tentative dates are Sept. 9, 14 or 15.

“This is a championship Wayne can win,” Cheryl said.

McCullough holds an amateur victory over Jorrin, who defeated Britain’s Michael Brodie in a controversial points verdict in Manchester last September to claim the WBC title last September.

The challenger, WBC bantamweight champion from 1995 until 1997, when he relinquished the title to move up to super bantamweight, is meanwhile carrying on as if the fight is on and is working out twice a day under trainer Kenny Croom.

“He’s still optimistic that this [match] can happen and, if not, he’ll

fight someone else. But this is the one he wants,” Cheryl said.

Asked if she and her husband had set a deadline by which to secure a TV deal before scuttling the Jorrin fight, Cheryl replied: “Time is coming up quickly.”

Since losing a brutal 12-round points decision to then WBC 122-pound titlist Erik Morales of Mexico in October 1999, the 31 year-old McCullough has seen his attempts to return to the ring thwarted.

He was in Belfast last October for a non-title bout with European super bantamweight champion Sandor Koczek of Hungary when a MRI revealed what appeared to be a two-inch cyst on his brain, leading to his suspension and the cancellation of the fight.

Further tests in the United States, however, showed that the cyst was in his head but not on the brain. And after being examined by leading American neurosurgeons, McCullough was cleared to resume his 23-3 (14 KOs) career, at least in the U.S.

But the British Boxing Board of Control has since refused to license him and denied him permission to fight under its jurisdiction in Britain.

McCullough has fought some of the best fighters of his generation, from bantamweight to featherweight, and is renowned for his high work rate, which earned him the nickname “Pocket Rocket,” and for his granite chin.

Daniel Zaragoza and Prince Naseem Hamed are the two other boxers to beat him.

The Belfast-born fighter was a silver medallist at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.