Trainer Sean O’Hagan isn't letting heart attack slow him down

Trainer Sean O’Hagan, who suffered a heart attack the day his fighter – Maxi Hughes – lost in Dubai on December 12, is speaking out following his health scare.

Hughes was well ahead in his contest against unbeaten Bakhdour Usmonov but lost his rhythm and lost a decision.

BoxingScene was talking to O’Hagan at the weigh-in and only a few hours later, he was in the hospital.

“Came back to the hotel, we all sat with all the rest of the fighters and some of the amateurs that were fighting in the IBAs,” O’Hagan recalled.

“And I just felt generally unwell. So I go to bed, and I couldn't put my finger on what it was really. I just didn't feel good, you know when you just don't feel yourself? So I go to bed about 10 o'clock at night, I woke up at 6[a.m.], but I had a bit of a dull ache, but it wasn't in my chest, it was like around my collarbone area. And I thought, ‘It feels like when I've been doing pads or when you've done a bit of weights or something,’ so it wasn't particularly painful. And then I had a bit of an ache in my arm. Now, I remember having this once before, a few years ago in my arm, and it turned out I had a horsefly bite, and it finished up infected, and I thought, ‘oh no, I hope it isn't something like that again.’”

By about 7 a.m., O’Hagan went downstairs and sat on a bench. He’s not quite managed to give up smoking, so he lit a cigarette and had a coffee.

Then he felt an ache in his upper chest and it got worse.

He thought he would go and have a shower and get ready for fight day, and take one last look at some Usmonov tape.

His body, however, had other ideas. 

He stood to go to the lift and felt a pain shoot from one shoulder to the other, down one arm and back up to his jaw and he knew it wasn’t good.

O’Hagan called one of the team members and said he was having a heart attack and that while he was okay, he needed to get to hospital.

Even though the nearest hospital was only around 100m away, O’Hagan knew he should get in a taxi and the car took them there.

In reception, O’Hagan said: “I think I'm having a heart attack, I've got pain in my jaw, across my chest now, and down my arm. And at that, they struck a wheelchair behind me, threw me in there, rushed me into a little theatre that were literally yards away. And I was very lucky that the surgeon was just starting work. He walked in behind me. He'd been doing his morning workout before he starts his shift and he walked in behind me.”

Within minutes of O’Hagan feeling something, he was in a hospital bed and in surgery. He had four stents fitted and was told he’d need another procedure when he got back to England, but that he had averted the worst-case scenario.

That procedure is scheduled for February 3.

“I'm very lucky,” said O’Hagan. “It's normally one of them that you find out when it's too late.”

And O’Hagan had wanted Hughes to go ahead with the fight, even though he knew it was far from ideal prep for his charge.

“He put a lot of time into it, a lot of training into camp,” said O’Hagan. “And Maxi had come [to the] hospital and said, ‘I'm going to pull [out].’ I said, ‘Well, we're here now, you're a matter of hours away.’

“He said, ‘My head won't be on it, Sean, I know it won't.’”

“Maxi wasn't on it,” O’Hagan admitted.

“You could tell he wasn't at his best. It had thrown him. The thing with Maxi is, he can so lose his shape or he can so lose his flow and then you've got to kind of keep him on track, you know? He's a tricky one is Maxi. You've got to coach him through.”

Hughes did start well, but Usmonov got a foothold in the fight and battled back to the final bell.

“A lot of people said that they thought Maxi might have edged it,” O’Hagan added. “He might have pinched it. It's one of them, there was an argument either way.”

And despite veteran southpaw Hughes being a box of tricks, O’Hagan said the phone hasn’t stopped ringing with potential fights. Hughes has been linked to bouts with Yorkshire rival Josh Padley, with new WBC champion Dalton Smith, with Sam Noakes and Canadian Lucas Badhi.

Although O’Hagan has another medical visit ahead of him next month, he said it’s not hampered his work with Josh Warrington, who has a crucial fight with Leigh Wood – a grudge rematch – on February 21.

“It's a simple procedure, I'll be back up and running in two or three days,” said O’Hagan said he’d rather Jamie Moore go in the corner for Warrington than have the bout postponed because Wood-Warrington II has been years in the making.

“He [Warrington]'s going to fight no matter what. He's got to do it, because it's one of them, he's not going to get that many opportunities now. If he pulls from this, then you might as well say he's done.”