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IT’S JUST GONE four o’clock in the afternoon on 30 June. Jack Marley plonks himself on a stool in the red corner of the ring at the Nowy Targ Arena, about an hour and a quarter south of Krakow, Poland.
He has lost the first round of his European Games semi-final. He has two more rounds — six minutes — to turn this bout on its head and book his seat on the plane to the Paris Olympics next summer.
Here’s the problem: sitting opposite the 20-year-old Marley, wearing both a blue vest and the satisfied glint of a man who knows he’s comfortably in the ascendancy on the judges’ scorecards, is Enmanuel Reyes.
A decade Marley’s senior, Reyes is the vastly more experienced heavyweight. He has already thrown fists for Spain at the Olympics and he has two major international medals to his name: a World bronze in 2021 and a European silver in 2022. (Marley, by contrast, is representing Ireland at only his second major international tournament as a senior. His first campaign, the previous year’s Europeans, was halted by a cut after little more than a round of his opening bout).
Trailing on four of the five cards, the distinct likelihood is that Marley will have to try again in the first half of 2024, when the final calls for Paris will sound from a couple of unpredictable global qualifying events.
But the men in Marley’s corner are still adamant that their kid has the minerals to pull this one out of the bag, reach a European final, and punch his ticket to Paris at the first time of asking.
Head trainer Zaur Antia calmly implores Marley to adhere to the same tactics, but to significantly up the ante. For co-trainer Damien Kennedy, this bout is now slightly less about tactics and more about absolutely tearing into Reyes.
Two rounds to will the dream into existence. Six minutes to avoid a 12-month delay, or worse.
Marley rises from his stool.
“And I’m just thinking two words,” he recalls.
“. . .Unfortunately, you won’t be able to print them in this interview!” the young Dubliner laughs.
Let’s just put it this way: the first word began with an ‘F’. And the second word was ‘it.’
“And that is all I was thinking, basically,” Marley says.
“My coaches and I went in with a gameplan and we felt it had worked to perfection in that first round. But the judges didn’t give me the first round. So, it’s a case of, ‘Well, there’s no point in leaving it up to them, so.’
When it came to trying to qualify for the Olympics from those European Games, I had always just thought to myself, ‘I don’t wanna have to go through this again,” d’you know what I mean? Yeah, you might get another chance next year. But it was, ‘I’m here now: I might as well give it socks, like!’
“And the thing is I knew after being in there with him (Reyes) for the first three minutes that I’d already started to chip away at him. I felt, slowly but surely, I was breaking him down. I knew if I upped it another gear, he wouldn’t want it.
“So I just went for it. That’s the easiest way to put it: I just went for it.”
And he got it.
Marley turned the tables on Reyes in the second round, winning it 4-1 across the five cards and squaring the bout going into the last.
The Sallynoggin native, who represents the nearby Monkstown Boxing Club, picked up where he left off in the third to complete a remarkable turnaround against a legitimately world-class opponent.
Marley sunk to his knees and sung towards the heavens as he was announced the split-decision victor (4-1 overall). A new Irish boxing star was born.
So too was a new Irish Olympian.
“Although, I’ll have to wait ’til the first bell goes, now, before I can say that!” Marley interjects.
It still hasn’t kicked in. Sure I only got a little piece of paper — that’s all; a little ticket saying I’m going. It won’t sink in until I’m actually in Paris.
“But it was hugely satisfying, at the same time. At those European Games, I just had it in my head that I had to focus on one fight at a time. Honestly, I’d look at them the same as a spar in the gym or the same as just hitting the bag: one session at a time. I never looked past anyone or anything.
“If you look past what it really is, you’re screwed. You can look towards the destination, or the goal, but if you focus too hard on it, you might slip up before you get there.
“Like, after I’d won the semi-final and qualified for Paris, people would ask me, ‘Oh, were you nervous ahead of that fight?’ But if you think about it, that semi-final was no more a ‘qualifying’ fight than the fights beforehand; sure if I’d lost one of those earlier fights, I was out.”
Earlier in the tournament, Marley had learned of the importance of not looking too far backwards, either.
He opened his perilous 92kg campaign against a familiar face in Greek powerhouse Vagkan Nanitzanian, who had eliminated him from his first major tournament, the Europeans, 13 months prior.
Their initial clash in Yerevan, Armenia, in May 2022 — Marley’s first ever international bout at the highest level — had ended in excruciating circumstances in two ways.
The Irish heavy had edged the first round on three of the five scorecards and, consequently, Nanitzanian came out like a man possessed after the first break.
The Greek’s come-forward aggression led to an accidental clash of heads just 10 seconds into the second round, opening a gruesome cut over Marley’s right eye.
The bout was stopped immediately. It went to the cards, where those formative moments of the second round were taken into account as part of the scoring process.
One judge saw it for Marley, 20-18. Another saw it for Nanitzanian, 20-18. Three had it level, 19 apiece.
Amateur boxing’s remedy for such stalemates is that the judges who scored the bout level must simply pick a winner.
With the nature of his cut having likely finished Marley’s tournament irrespective of the verdict, it was the Greek who was sent through to the quarter-finals.
Marley’s first major international tournament had lasted just 190 seconds.
A year later in Poland, his second crack at the big-boy stuff began with a bout against the same opponent at the same stage.
“Ah, look, obviously, in the back of my mind, I wanted to get him back, like,” Marley says of Nanitzanian.
“But I had to push that aside and focus on the bout for what it was — and I did.”
Wary of Nanitzanian’s propensity for throwing his noggin around, Marley dropped a relatively cagey opening verse.
But in a bout that would foreshadow his semi-final heroics, the plan “went straight out the window” from the second round onwards.
The young Dub set the record straight, even opening a two-inch cut atop Nanitzanian’s left eye towards the finish — this one from a punch.
“You know what you’re capable of in situations like that,” Marley says of his last-16 comeback win. “You know what’s in the tank.
“When I’m in that physical condition, I can go non-stop for three rounds. Non-stop.
“I may be ready to drop dead afterwards, like”, he laughs, “but once the final bell goes, you don’t care.”
It was plainer sailing in his European Games quarter, where Marley defeated former six-time Croatian amateur champion Marko Calic, who also boasts a 14-1 record in boxing’s paid ranks.
That win secured Marley at least bronze which, remarkably, was Ireland’s first medal in the heavyweight division of an international major since the great Gearóid Ó Colmáin won European gold on home soil 76 years earlier.
His subsequent, career-best victory over Reyes in the 92kg semi saw Marley become Ireland’s first heavyweight Olympian since Cathal O’Grady at Atlanta 1996.
The Monkstown BC man’s rousing race through his weight class in Poland was halted at the final hurdle by the sublime Italian southpaw, Aziz Abbes Mouhiidine, who pocketed a second European gold (and has since added a second World Championships silver to his brimming cabinet).
Marley, carrying some silver of his own through John Paul II International Airport, returned to sheer bedlam in Sallynoggin.
“Ah, it was crazy,” the 20-year-old laughs. “Thank God I went away on holiday, then, the week after! But the support has been amazing.
“I do just be amazed at how many people watch it or follow it.
“Any accomplishment I’ve ever had in boxing, it’s good for me, obviously, but really, it wouldn’t bother me either way. It’s more for everyone else.
It’s an amazing feeling to be able to do something that lifts the spirits of everyone around you. Maybe when I win something, it might encourage younger people to . . . not even take up boxing, but just take up anything that interests them.
“It can be taken away from you in the morning, like, but it’s a privilege to have to try to be a good role model. It can be difficult at times: kids from different sets of circumstances will arrive and you’ll get asked some difficult questions, but you just have to try to think all the time to set as good an example as you can.”
Marley has been sharpening his tools since summer and he still has 10 months to prep for Paris 2024.
As such, it still feels like a somewhat abstract concept, distant enough that it’s still blurry. His focus is on his day-to-day, ticking every box so that when next summer comes into focus, he boasts a deep enough tank to give opponents sleepless nights.
There is one aspect of the Games about which he admits he has begun to grow excited, though.
“The opening ceremony sounds like something out of a movie!” Marley says. “It’s going to be the first opening ceremony not to take place in a stadium.
“Each country will have a boat that will travel the length of the Seine with millions of people along the banks of the river.
“So, that’ll be cool.”
It might sink in at that point that Jack Marley is about to become an Olympian.
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