After British and Commonwealth bantamweight title defeats, Maguire would avenge a previous loss against David Needham in 1975 to get his hands on the Lonsdale Belt – and in the build-up, reunited with Ali at Wembley.<\/p>\n
In August 1977, they met again in the Grosvenor House Hotel for a testimonial in honour of Ali’s friend Paddy Monaghan, the Fermanagh-born bare-knuckle boxer.<\/p>\n
By then, Maguire had drawn with European champion Daniel Trioulaire, while a second crack at the title brought a loss to Franco Zurlo before defeat by Johnny Owen proved his final stand.<\/p>\n
“There were ups and down,” Maguire says of his career, “but it’s one I’m proud of.”<\/p>\n
While his days in the ring were over, he would remain connected to the sport, serving as a member of the British Boxing Board of Control’s Northern Ireland Council.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Maguire will watch from home as Taylor, a trailblazer for women’s boxing, makes the same walk as Ali.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had the opportunity to tell my kids and grandchildren about my time there, so for those boxing this time, they can do the same one day,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Katie Taylor has had a great career and deserves her big night, but hopefully it’s not another 50 years before boxing’s back in Croke Park.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After British and Commonwealth bantamweight title defeats, Maguire would avenge a previous loss against David Needham in 1975…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-755481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}