The professional boxing card that was held last Saturday night at North Bergen’s Schuetzen Park featured one of the most bizarre scenes that anyone involved with pro boxing has ever witnessed.
Jersey City firefighter Patrick “Paddy Boy” Farrell was scheduled to meet Chicago-based Phillip Triantafillo in a six-round heavyweight bout, headlining the card promoted by Andre Kut’s KIA Boxing.
There were approximately 250 fans in attendance, with more than 100 or so there to cheer on the local hero Farrell.
As the two fighters entered the ring for the pre-fight instructions, Triantafillo, who already failed to make the 220-pound weight restriction for the fight and was subject to a fine, suddenly left the ring and refused to fight.
Since the opening bell was never rung, the fight was declared a no-contest.
Needless to say, Farrell was not pleased.
“He goes through all the motions like he was going to fight and he got scared,” Farrell said. “He just stormed out of the ring and left like a coward. I went through 12 weeks of training and got nothing to show for it. I spent the last three months busting my tail for this fight.”
Farrell, who has already been part of cards in Atlantic City and at the Prudential Center in Newark, wanted to give his hometown fans a chance to see him up close and personal without a high ticket cost.
Obviously, Triantafillo wanted no part of Farrell or was not physically prepared to fight. But it certainly left a lot of local boxing fans – and one particular local boxer – very angry.
Farrell, who turned 30 earlier this year, said that he wants to fight for about three more years and then retire.
“I’m going to stay in shape and continue to do my strength and conditioning training,” Farrell said. “I’m going to get ready for my next fight sometime in October.”
But Farrell can’t get back the time and effort he put in to get ready for a fight that never happened…
Tom Mullahey, who spent the last five years as the athletic director at Snyder High School, has decided to move on, taking the position of athletic director at Clifton High School beginning this month.
It was an emotionally wrenching decision for Mullahey, who spent 13 years in the Jersey City school system, the last five as the hard-working and highly respected AD at Snyder.
“Without a doubt, it was tough for me,” Mullahey said. “The Hudson County ADs are the best and the Jersey City ADs are very close. It’s tough for me to leave the kids and the coaches. But this is a step up for me. Clifton is closer to my home. I have two young children now. It’s something I had to do for me and my family.”
Mullahey’s daughters are 2 and nine-months, so he has to spend more time at home.
But the 34-year-old Mullahey will always remember the time he spent at Snyder.
“When I got there, there was no AD for a year and the teams were struggling,” Mullahey said. “We made some personnel changes and things changed. The boys’ basketball team came back strong. The track team bounced back. The coaches worked so hard to have all the teams become more successful. Kids wanted to play again. When I got to Snyder, the challenge was to just get teams back on their feet. We were able to do that.”
Mullahey knows that the pressures will be greater at a school with a higher profile such as Clifton.
“The community expects their teams to be successful,” said Mullahey, who will also serve as the district administrator at Clifton. “It’s challenging in itself. I guess we have to start at the bottom again, but we’ll make it work there.”
Mullahey will be sorely missed, because he was affable, efficient and knew what was good for his program. There is no word on Mullahey’s successor at Snyder…
The bizarre football life of former St. Peter’s Prep great Will Hill took another wild turn Saturday, when the New York Giants safety admitted that he failed a drug test for smoking marijuana.
The failed drug test, Hill’s second in six months, may very well cost Hill his pro football career. Hill is staring at another National Football League-imposed four-game suspension. He had one last year for taking the stimulant Adderall, which is banned by the NFL.
But Hill said that he used marijuana because of the pressures he felt going back to his hometown of East Orange.
“It’s from family members, everyone reaching out their hands, thinking I’m an ATM machine,” Hill said. “People who think you owe them something. It was just a situation where I was visiting my hometown and a guy pulled a shotgun on me right then and wanted money. How do you deal with those situations? I really can’t, so I dealt with it the best way I knew how.”
Wait a minute, someone puts a gun to your face, so you resort to smoking dope? That’s downright insane.
Hill also admitted to going to a clinic in Boston for a month and is currently attending regular counseling sessions with an outpatient clinic in Parsippany to deal with his drug use.
Hill, who played in 12 games for the Giants last season as a rookie, making the team as an undrafted free agent, has no guarantees this year. If he makes the roster out of training camp, he will miss the first four games of the season.
“We’re disappointed in Will,” Giants head coach Tom Coughlin said. “Hopefully, Will is going to get his life straightened out.”
Hill remains in Giants’ training camp, but if he makes the 53-man roster next month, it’s nothing short of a miracle.
While he was at the University of Florida, Hill had previously boasted about using marijuana on his Twitter page, which he later claimed to be false because he claimed the page was hacked.
Hill also has four children with three different women.
Hudson County currently has three players in the NFL and none of them are what you would call bastions of society. We have Kenny Britt, the Bayonne native who has been arrested seven times during his pro career, for driving without a driver’s license, DUI, and eluding police; Evan Rodriguez, the North Bergen native who was arrested twice in a span of three months for alcohol- related activity like public intoxication and DUI, and Hill, whose illegal behavior is well documented in a website entitled, “The Happy Football Life of Will Hill.”
It’s amazing to think all three are still in NFL training camps. The Chicago Bears cut Rodriguez after his second arrest, but the Miami Dolphins claimed him off waivers.
Not exactly what one would call positive role models now, would they? – Jim Hague
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com.