“Diagnosed November and beat cancer by September,” smiled a relieved Joe Gallagher.

The Manchester coach was last year diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in his liver and bowels. To make matters worse, the tumor in his bowels was so big it had broken a wall and spread inside him.

“From getting diagnosed in November last year, we’re now in October, it’s mad to think nearly a whole year’s gone,” he added. “From Lawrence [Okolie] at Wembley [on the Oleksandr Usyk-Daniel Dubois bill] to seven weeks later with Mikie [Tallon] in Vegas, I stepped out of Wembley with Lawrence on the Saturday night, [went] under the knife on the Tuesday, and then seven weeks on from the knife I’m with Mikie Tallon in Vegas. What went on in those seven weeks, the ups, the downs, everything. It was hard. I’d already gone through the cycles of chemo, and the operation, and I managed to get everyone [in his camp] a fight in May, June, July, Lawrence was the last one, then it was like, ‘I’m ready, let’s do this. Let’s go and beat cancer. Let’s take it head on.’   

“Had the operation, I was under the knife for like seven hours, and after that they said I’d be in hospital for 10 days. I was out after five. They said I’d be driving after four weeks, I was driving after four days, and my goal was to be on that plane September the 5th to be going to Vegas for Mikie Tallon. And I did everything that I could do.”

Consultants told Gallagher he would not be able to pick up from where he left off, and the first week or two he felt the doctors were right. Short walks were a struggle, and although he started pushing himself to try and get his energy levels back up his body shut down in reply and would make him drowsy and send him to sleep in defiance; telling him to slow down. 

He could feel his body strain when he was trying to shout or coach and tackled mental exhaustion while his trip to Vegas hung in the balance. The week before, Gallagher still wasn’t sure if he’d be okay to fly. Then he got permission at the last minute.

The latest is that doctors removed 25 lymph nodes and sent them off for testing, with just three coming back cancerous.
“So they’re very happy,” Joe added.

“So they said there’s no further treatment. All I have to do is every six months, just go in for scans and bloods, so I literally flew myself to Vegas on Saturday on Cloud Nine.

“I went in and saw the liver consultant yesterday, they’re very happy, [and said] go and live your life, everything in moderation and I’ll go and see the bowel consultant in two weeks’ time. But what they said was, ‘Everything’s good, all we need is you to come in every six months just to check up on your scans and your bloods.’”

Gallagher had obviously been concerned that he would need radiation or further chemotherapy.

But he has learned to look after himself more. He’s been having injections for Vitamin C and D, using oxygen chambers, and learning how to give himself the best chance of recovery, down to what are the best habits to have when he flies.

Vitamin C and D injections, oxygen chambers, how to fly better, started to look after himself.

There have been battles; stent migration, vomiting episodes, having a low residue diet and he said for weeks it had felt like he’d been walking around with a weighted vest on.

But being in Vegas meant everything to Gallagher. It was not just his goal and the date he had targeted, it was being there for Tallon, too.

“I’ve had stage four cancer at the time, bowel and liver and in an aggressive form as well,” he recalled. “At the time they’re on about possibly something on my throat and that as well. “Then we got an email through seven o’clock Saturday morning, our flights were Saturday midday. We were at Manchester airport for half nine, 10 o’clock. Flew out Saturday, trained Sunday. He [Tallon] did his medicals Monday, weighed in Tuesday and fought Wednesday.

“And there was a little moment I was there on Monday with Mikie in Vegas and he was getting his bloods done and I just sat on the curb outside with a bit of sunshine. And I just thought, ‘Wow, who would have thought seven weeks ago that we did it?’ ‘We got it, do you know what I mean?’ And then Mikie, he went and put on the performance he did as well.” Gallagher knows the next two years are important and knows there is a chance it comes back but he has been hugely grateful for the support of the sport and his team at Champ’s Camp.

“I want to personally thank them all,” he said. “I think everyone has said that to me, ‘You’ll come out of this different, you’ll be a different person, different this.’ I can’t say I've come out of being different because I’m still boxing, still training, still determined, but I am more aware of you can’t waste the day. I’ve been in boxing since the age of 10 years of age, 46 years, and it’s a relationship where you have good times, you have bad times, and when that’s in any relationship, whether it be work, marriage, or anything in life, and boxing has been very good to me. I’m not going to leave boxing. I will be involved in boxing. I haven’t got to still carry on in boxing and maybe trim things down a little bit, or not [do] as much. “I’ve got a good support team around me, but [he will] be available. Like today in the gymnasium, I was talking and instructing and showing, and I’m still losing breath very quickly, and the lads could see me, my energy levels still aren’t good. I’m almost at nine weeks since, 10 weeks, and they keep saying, ‘You’re still in this 10- to 12-week period of recovery, then you have a three to six months, and along this way, you’ve got your health and you’ve got your mental side of it coming through, your physical side of it.’
“There’s a whole stream of stuff that you’ve got to deal with and overcome, and some days it could be like physical today, other days it could be mental, but I’ve not really paid attention to it mental, or ‘why me,’ ‘pity me.’ 

“I’m just fully focused on boxing. Boxing’s given me a place to be [during the illness], a diary, a place where I have to be, where I have to show up, what I have to do, and a purpose to give these kids who put their faith and their loyalty into achieving what I feel they can achieve.”

And there has been suffering, some of it as much psychological as physical.

“I think that the hardest part on all of it, was really the beginning when it was announced, and having to read on socials, people say, ‘Oh, poor bastard, he’ll be gone in six months,’ or ‘he’s gone in 12 months,’ or ‘gone in two years.’ ‘Stage four, and he’s fucked,’ and all that. That was hard to read, but at the same time, it was like, ‘Right, I'll-show-you-mentality,’ and that was it.”

Gallagher has had countless champions at all levels and scooped just about every accolade going. He is still ambitious and still wants more – that is what makes him Joe Gallagher – but he is also content with what he’s achieved with his fighters.

He remembers thinking months ago: “Listen, if I was only to have got six months a year, I can't be, feel angry, annoyed, the life that I’ve had, the journey that I.ve had; the ups that I’ve had, and everything else. I’ve been very privileged, and there’s lots of people that live to 90 that don’t get half the life that I’ve had, and for the kids [in the gym], I just want them to carry on with work as normal, family to carry on, and if there was anything drastic to tell them, I would tell them, and that’s how it was. Then we had the operation, and the kids just carried on as normal, day-to-day, normal, and that was it.”

Gallagher maintained a stoic disposition. He was being strong for his family and fighters, but also for his own peace of mind.

Sometimes people would ask him if he was doing okay.

He’d roll out a standard response, but then they’d ask again with a clear nod to the cancer.

“And you’re like, ‘oh, please stop with that, please don’t.’ And there were times I was walking around and I thought, ‘Please don’t no one say to me, ‘[are you] okay, today?’ Because if they do, I’m gonna go, I’ll crack, I’ll burst. These days, I will admit, I’ll walk around like that, where it was not me about myself, but it was just how you’re emotionally feeling that day, maybe, the effort that you’re putting into it [the fight], the stubbornness, and because you’re being so single-minded, that when you did stop and allow yourself to breathe for a minute, you had a rise of emotions, of what could be, and what could happen, and then when all of a sudden, you’re doing your will, and doing all that type of stuff, and who will get this, and what, it’s like, you know, this is like, a bit serious now.”

With the good news, is Gallagher planning on slowing down in the immediate future?

“At the moment, now, we’re out this weekend with Macaulay [McGowan] and Kieran [McDaid] making his pro debut, that’s the 4th, then we’ve got Josh Holmes on the 18th of October, Jack Massey 25th of October, Billy Denniz the 1st of November, Joe Cooper the 14th of November, Mikie Tallon on Benn-Eubank 15th of November, and then we’re going in three weekends in December, and I’m just looking and waiting on Lawrence at the moment, but yeah, we’re busy.” 

Gallagher once again urged everyone to get checked out for illnesses, because it was only a chance decision that saw him go to the doctor.

Now all Gallagher wants to do is do what he’s used to doing and take it from there. No big decisions at present, while he’s in recovery. But the treadmill rolls on, fighters need to be trained and Joe Gallagher is there for them.