Long Awaited Biography Of Champion Boxer Eamonn Magee Released

‘Magee is Ireland’s answer to Johnny Tapia – Gibson captures the craziness of his life brilliantly. A book that is impossible to put down.’  -Carl Frampton

‘Eamonn Magee has lived a harrowing life. But it is a life that gains fresh meaning in this raw, riveting book. Magee thought he had run out of luck years ago but, this time, he got lucky again. In Paul Gibson he has found a writer who has the grit and the tenderness, the skill and the heart, to lay Magee’s life bare on the page … and uncover the humour and even the beauty of a dark story. This is also a book about Belfast and boxing, about the Ardoyne and a family, which deepens our understanding of a lost life. An unforgettable book.’ – Donald McRae, The Guardian, and author of Dark Trade

 

The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee written by sports journalist Paul D. Gibson and was released on Friday 20 April.

Eamonn Magee is widely regarded as one of the most gifted fighters to ever emerge from Ireland. Yet, despite becoming a world champion in 2003, such was his genius it will always be considered a career unfulfilled. Women, drink, drugs, gambling, depression and brushes with the law all took Eamonn away from his craft. Then there was the violence: a throat slashed, an IRA bullet in the calf, a savage, leg-shattering beating. Wherever Eamonn went, trouble was never too far behind. Upon his retirement, Eamonn turned his attention to training and helped oversee the rise of his son’s boxing career.

However, the prospect of a Magee dynasty was cruelly halted in 2015 when Eamonn Jnr was brutally stabbed to death in West Belfast in a premeditated attack. The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee is a uniquely intimate telling of a barely believable life story. It is a compelling story filled with heartache and laughter, violence and love, unthinkable lows and fleeting, glorious highs. Eamonn’s is a story for which the term ‘brutally honest’ might have been coined.

The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee will be available nationwide and online from Wednesday 25 May.  ISBN 9781781175736. RRP €16.99/£14.50.

Eamonn will be signing copies of the biography at the following launch locations:

Eason, Donegall Place, Belfast, 26 April at 6 P.M.

Eason, Patrick Street, Cork,  3 May at 6 P.M.

About the Author

Paul D. Gibson is a journalist whose work appears regularly in The Guardian, the Belfast Telegraph and Boxing Monthly, amongst many others. His first book, an autobiography of the UFC fighter Dan Hardy, was released in March 2017.