With this week being mental health awareness week and given the current state of the world there’s perhaps few better in boxing to comment on mental health than one Tyson Fury.
Current lineal heavyweight champion Fury has come through more than most in the sport and backed himself when very few else would.
Ultimately, this is surely what it comes down to for anyone in life.
Man or woman. Rich or poor.
No ego or any of that crap, nothing special about me at all, you’ll meet many chumps and low-level bums in life who’ll try to use you for your free advice or pick your brains for your valuable time in life.
Or tell you what you should do according to their limited human perception.
Or they might seem confused, or a little slow at the level you are operating at mentally just being too fast for them.
Just keeping it real and being honest at this point. All we can do is try to be good to one another and help people and humanity as best we can during our time here.
Regarding the bad folks you’ll encounter every now and then, besides it becoming very easy to see through people like that the older you get in life — all of that stuff in the end is irrelevant nonsense anyway.
Pay no attention.
It’s what you think that counts. In the very end that is. Follow God and the rest takes care of itself.
Once you fight your demons and beat them the rest is a cake walk in life. It really is.
This trip to Italy helped me finally move on in life after a life time of maybe 100s of addictions and hurting myself after years out of my head.
Put your total faith in God and everything works out in the end, always.
Once I get me a good Christian woman next I’ll be complete — God is good as they say 🙂
She’s coming to America one day too though unless a new venture comes along in this Europe dump 🙂
Never settle for second best in anything. Turn everything down whether work or life until the right one or thing comes along.
The good guys win in the very end. Make no mistake about that. They did in the beginning and the will at the end again too.
Don’t worry about the enemy the devil. He’s overrated and only as powerful as you let him be. He’ll be dealt with at the end.
Until then its just about living life now, following and being a servant of God.
We all have a choice everyday in life.
Never forget that.
No matter how bad things might seem.
You have to stay strong and keep on trucking until you can’t truck no more.
I now have found my reason to stay alive for now, not destroy my work, my creation in this website or myself — nor hurting myself anymore through many ways on purpose — and indeed work towards more new goals in the future.
I’ve decided to do it for my (birth) mother in heaven who I didn’t get a chance to meet.
A woman who reached out to me in my twenties whom I never met in my life, only to then receive a letter from her just a few years after she had died when I went looking for her that she wrote trying to reach me before she left.
A letter addressed to me as my name at birth, Patrick, now my middle name.
Indeed, this trip and pandemic got be thinking about the reason why I started this site years ago in the first place.
It was born out of learning of my biological mother’s death in 2014 with me missing her funeral in 2009 after starting the search process not long after that I guess but my memory ain’t the best. Nor my eyesight.
But getting the news in 2014 taught me that life isn’t going to last forever and to follow what I want to do in life as someone who has loved the sport his entire life.
You have to, life is too short.
I am very sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye to her or meet her before she went and this sums up pretty much the very root of the problems I had over the years:
I’ll never get that chance to see that woman’s face, hear her talk, hear her laugh, see her smile or ask me how I was. I’ll never have that chance to meet my mother, not yet anyway, and God help the man or woman who prevented her from meeting me if I ever find them in this life.
Forgiveness is a tough thing but I somehow don’t think they’d be brave enough to come across me or any of my people, I suspect.
Over the years I’ve considered and toyed with the idea of taking out various lawsuits for justice and/or damages stemming from a sense of betrayal at birth to various other things, which, I’m sure I would have easily won and without difficulty crushed various people in a number of ways without much effort in truth.
My whole life I never really felt part of a family to be honest.
That changed a few years ago, though, now having some small family as well as friends around the world who I count as family.
I’ll start my own family anyway in the years ahead in America but looking back on it all, God is good. Everything leads one to the point they are in their life in line with God’s will, in my humble opinion.
Sometimes some very bad things happen to good people but in the end God reconciles everything.
No doubt in my mind. Life is a test I truly believe.
Winning, fighting and entrepreneurship are pretty much who I am as a person but there comes a time in life where you just have to let go and let God.
There is no such things as problems or issues for humans in the end — just challenges and hurdles you overcome along the journey.
I truly believe God is control and if you have give him the glory he’ll give you the victory in the end.
Moreover, the above would have made me a bad guy, which, I’m not. Fundamentally you have to forgive in order to move on.
Furthermore, life is short as my uncle used to say.
It passes most people by while they make grand plans for it instead of making each day count.
A German-born Swiss fella also used to say too that you can’t fix problems with the same way of thinking as before. He’s right you know.
Never change for anyone but listening and considering even using 1% of other viewpoints in line with your core beliefs, if they are of use to you, with God first of course, can even make a big difference sometimes.
That 1% can be big.
Moving on, alas, we continue to battle on. What are you going to do. I accept it now. There’s no more denying it. She’s gone.
But, in honor of her, I’ll carry on for now.
As for modern day human psychology, with respect, while it might be useful for some, honestly, it just proved not enough, nor advanced enough for me in the end.
The end of this scene in the Sopranos summed it up for me, in truth:
No one has all the answers and for me, in the end — God is the final judge and in control.
Starting this website was inspired to be honest after learning of my mom’s death years back.
I held my own private funeral ceremony shortly for her at a chapel. I’ve never been fond of goodbyes to be honest but it was bye just for now.
Something I wanted to do on my own in the past and I’m man enough to admit for the first time, that all week in private before hand I was crying my eyes out ahead of it.
It’s something I should have done a few years back when this crap all started, and the years of isolation and lonesomeness in a prison-like existence that ensued, that to me, made this pandemic look very small in comparison.
I suppose hindsight is a wonderful — if not a painfully, ironically annoying thing in this instance.
Man, what a weight off me to even write that.
There’s always someone worse off out there and all you can do is your best and try to have a positive impact on humanity during your time here on Earth I’ve found at least.
Once you are dead honest with yourself, know the demons, batter them and overcome them, there’s really little that you can’t do in life.
Don’t you worry about that for a second.
Trust me, I’ve achieved many huge goals in life already while remaining small, working on my weaknesses humbly along the journey back to America one day, traveled the world and seen a lot and I’m still only 32. To be honest I can’t bloody wait for the rest of life now.
Switching gears in the reconciliation of God with capitalism and business, you must know your value and never let someone else decide it as if you do it will be less than what you’re worth – as former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins poignantly put.
You have to have all your eggs in your basket as one English fella Guy Ritchie said one time:
You’re beliefs and faith are your own. Not anyone else’s. People are powerless over you in reality.
You’re writing your own book ultimately.
A dear friend of mine and an American gentleman of the highest caliber and outstanding character said one time that the teacher will appear when the student is ready.
The teacher in the end was life.
The best one too.
As Bruce Lee used to say.
Life is a constant learning journey and I’ve found, for what its worth from my own meandering experience I guess, that one must be ready to learn every day of their life to be a better version of the man you were yesterday.
That’s all I try to do nowadays. Be a better man and follower of Jesus Christ then I was yesterday.
I’ll always be Irish but I suspect after all this travel is done that I’ll end up back home, where my heart and spirit is now.
Back in the good ole USA one day — home is where the heart is.
Where I am already there though in reality — in every State with readers in you guys across the country online being American.
In homes across every town, city and State across the country. Another painful Christmas away from America and my people for now but heck, we roll on.
This pandemic and being without my passport for a while, stuck in Italy, taught me I really have moved on now and to be honest, no longer have any interest in going back to Ireland.
I’d rather promote Irish interests around the world from America where there’s over a hundred million of us scattered across the Earth as opposed to the small five million or so that live on the island itself.
In the years ahead through some new ventures, if I’m lucky that is.
I humbly and without ego say, it was just too small in the end, way more opportunities and chances to reach one’s highest potential in a place like America.
Reaching highest potential surely part of God’s will. Furthermore, I just got sick of the crap Irish weather too in truth.
Adios to that outside of some vacations back. Maybe down the road in a few years, who knows.
Having the biggest boxing site in Ireland, the UK and then Europe for reader numbers, although were all things I achieved with relatively little effort back in some dark times, even at my lowest to be honest — were never where the challenge was for me — always leaving a bit in the tank and bread in the fishes mouth for one day in America to turn on the real stuff — while working on my weaknesses in the meantime.
I was always driven to be the best since a kid. That’s just how I’m wired.
I’m a very intense, full-on, old school kind of guy but perhaps a very, very odd sense of humor.
It’s not for everyone but I am enough for me and my own people.
You can’t please everyone and these days I just take people on face value and go by life’s golden rule — treat others how you’d like to be treated yourself.
If someone or businesses go the other way with me or people I love, which isn’t often these days for some reason, I never lose when it comes to people or people they love.
For some reason. I’m not sure why that is to be honest. I tend to believe God puts you where you need to be in life.
I just try to live life now in the present and when it comes to work am just emotionless nowadays for work tasks.
Business is business but one must never do business, friendships or relationships with women for that matter — who are liars.
That theme is ubiquitous to all aspects of humanity I have found over the years in different nations.
Admittedly, all I actually know is winning. That’s all I actually understand.
My Irish grandmother used to say I would have been one of the best lawyers.
Maybe in another life, who knows.
That mentality has always been with me all the way back since my chess champion days starting out as a kid in sunny Ireland.
Admittedly, Scotsman Alex Ferguson and Irishman Roy Keane were both big influences on me as a child growing up in Ireland as a Manchester United fan, as was my Irish uncle I must concede.
Those three probably influenced my personality according to human comprehension and of the term at least, more than anyone.
I don’t care what anyone says, America, as well as being the home of the best people in the world — is still the best country in the world in my opinion — as well as being home to the best sport in the world (boxing).
Era, maybe I’m a tad bias but sure, what harm 🙂
Opinions are like a**holes — everyone has one.
Until then, being blessed to be able work online anywhere in the world with an internet connection and travel while working has allowed me to remain small and flexible.
Maybe Ukraine, Russia or Jerusalem next — who knows. One second and one breath at a time.
Thanks to you good folks. My readers.
I am very thankful and grateful.
Big shout out to the good people of the UK too, London and everywhere else that has read this site in the UK and the many great people I’ve met who’ve helped in England over the years.
Big respect.
Like Ireland and America, England will always have a special place in my heart too — I’m sure I’ll be back again one day.
While I don’t have any heroes or idols in life (other than God) anymore there’s certainly some people in life I have time for and a good bit of respect for in fairness.
Tyson Fury in boxing is without doubt one of them.
This brilliant interview with Adam Smith of Sky Sports (hat tip) where Fury rattles off literally ten times how he was written off is one of a kind.
Surely for a boxer in recent memory at least:
Outstanding stuff.
A man who believed in himself throughout all the darkness to get to where he is today.
As for his next fight, Fury is expected to take on Deontay Wilder in a third fight at a date to be determined.
SEE ALSO: Adrien Broner Says He’s Found A New Career
With today also being Eid al-Fitr — have a safe and peaceful day to any of our Muslim readers around the world.
While Fury might be a modern boxing genius in his own right — I recall another heavyweight one from the past especially on today — Muhammad Ali no less with a rather incredible video appropriate for the day that’s in it:
Ali showed to never try to get smart with, p*** off or come after a genius unless you want some rather extreme consequences.
Perhaps the best example of this was against Cleveland Williams where Williams just didn’t quite realize what type of genius he was coming after:
What a fighter and what a human being.
Moving forward as some of the restrictions start to lift around the world continue to stay safe folks and do the recommended things.
It appears that boxing will be back on June 9th via promoters Top Rank in the US.
Roll on.
In conclusion, thank you to all you folks, the readers of this website over the years, one — along with all the social media and partnerships around the world that I’ve built from nothing with some help from great people over the years — who I look forward to seeing again down the road — that I’m quietly contented and at inner peace to see still serves a purpose by circulating to (still) a huge audience of you all — my readers.
I’m more grateful than you’ll ever know.
Only this week again another article has gone viral across the web, somehow.
During a time where very little boxing content is doing big numbers I managed to do an article that did bigger numbers for a single one that I ever penned to date.
Fighting is our business. Thanks for everything.
Sincerely,
Niall
