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Seanie Monaghan Loves to Fight
By Thomas Hauser
Seanie Monaghan is a “throwback fighter.” In the 1940s, he would have been a neighborhood fight club headliner and local hero.
Seanie is the oldest of four children. His parents immigrated to the United States from Ireland and settled in Long Beach, a town of 33,000 located on a barrier island east of New York City. Long Beach faces the Atlantic Ocean. There was a time when it styled itself as “the Riviera of the East” and vied with Atlantic City as a tourist destination for New Yorkers during the hot summer months. That time is long gone. In recent decades, the town has gone through cycles of urban decay and renewal. Last October, it felt the full force of Hurricane Sandy.
Seanie grew up in Long Beach and still lives there. His father runs an upholstering business. His mother is a physical therapist. His paternal grandmother was one of 17 children so he has a large family, many of whom still live in Ireland. His wife, Beverly, earned a masters degree in special education from Hofstra University. Together, they have a 22-month-old son, Sammy.
But there’s a painful backstory.
“I was a lost teenager,” Seanie acknowledges. “I had no ambition or direction. Everything was short-term. I didn’t care where I was going. I smoked weed every day. I wrestled a bit in high school and played some sports like football and lacrosse but the other guys were better than me. And if I wasn’t good at something right away, instead of working to get better, I gave up on it.”
Seanie graduated from Long Beach High School in 1999. “Barely,” he says. But trouble was brewing.
“There was an unhealthy culture in Long Beach and I got caught up in it,” Seanie recalls. “I wasn’t a bad kid. My mother and father are good, hard-working people. I came from a decent home. I wasn’t a street guy. I never stole anything or sold drugs but a lot of people in my family have had drinking problems. I was drunk a lot and I tried just about every drug there was except heroin.
“Around the time I was 15,” Seanie continues, “I started getting into bar fights. I was working as a barback [a bartender’s assistant] and was surrounded by grown men who were drinking and I’d try to keep up with them. A fight would start, sometimes with me, or if it started with someone else, I’d jump in. People would crowd around and cheer. I’d always wanted to be really, really good at something. And there it was, knocking guys out. It felt so good. There were a lot of fights, 50 or 60 over the years. My nose got broken. I was constantly hurting my hands. I’d come home with a black eye or cuts and try to hide it from my mother. I look back on it all now and say, ‘Forget about everything else. Look at the stress I put my mother through.’ I wasn’t a bad kid. I got along with people, all kinds of people, when I wasn’t fighting. But it was like, if there was a problem, I was the Long Beach representative. One time in a bar fight, I got stabbed in the throat and needed 30 or 40 stitches. I was arrested a few times. The last time was for assaulting a police officer who was trying to break up one of the fights. I didn’t know he was a police officer. He grabbed me from behind and I threw him off. The judge gave me a break. He put me on probation and told me, ‘If I see you in my courtroom again, you’re doing five years hard time.’ That straightened me out. I stopped drinking and doing drugs. I don’t drink or smoke at all now. I haven’t had a drink in more than 10 years. Casual drinking is okay if you can do it, but I couldn’t.”
As part of Seanie’s probation, he was required to attend meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and also attend an anger management course.
“The anger management course really pissed me off,” Seanie says. “I didn’t think I needed to be there. But over time, I realized that little things were making me furious and I was getting mad for no reason. Even though I might not have been starting the fights, I was looking for them. It took me a while, but finally, I understood that I had to change. I learned to take a step back when there was a problem and how to control my emotions. I had relatives in Ireland who were telling me, ‘You’re on probation. Come back here before they throw you in jail.’ But the problem wasn’t that I was in Long Beach. The problem was me.
“Then I looked at my life as a whole. I hadn’t built anything. All I was doing was drifting from day to day. I was in danger of losing any chance I had for a good future. My whole personality is different now. I’ve learned discipline and how to dedicate myself to things that are important to me. I’m a much better husband and father than I could possibly have been back then. I’m much happier than I used to be. I’m not an aggressive person anymore except when I’m in the ring.”
After Seanie stopped drinking, a friend named Bobby Calabrese suggested he try his hand at boxing. That sounded like a good idea, so he went to the PAL gym in Freeport, which had a boxing club run by a now-retired firefighter named Joe Higgins.
“Two guys were in the ring, sparring,” Seanie remembers. “I liked what I saw. There was a trainer there. I told him, ‘I’m Seanie Monaghan from Long Beach. I want to be a boxer.’”
“He was a real character,” Higgins recalls, “a kid off the street with a chip on his shoulder. He told me he wanted to spar that day and I started laughing. He said, ‘I knock guys out on the street.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but this ain’t the street.’”
The next six weeks were about footwork, balance, head movement, and how to throw a jab.
“Finally, Joe said I could spar,” Seanie says with a smile, “and the first punch I got hit with, I went down on my butt.”
Seanie had 15 amateur fights starting at age 26 and turned pro on May 21, 2010. He’s now 31 years old and has had 18 pro fights in less than three years. His trainer is still Joe Higgins (who also trains junior middleweight prospect Patrick Day). His manager is P.J. Kavanagh.
“I’m usually the aggressor,” Seanie says of his fighting style. “I come at you, go to the body a lot, and don’t stop coming. Getting hit doesn’t bother me that much. I kind of zone out when I’m in a fight. The biggest problem I have is that I cut too easily. My biggest fear is that I’ll be in a fight I know I can win and it’s stopped on cuts. And I have to get past my natural instinct to try to just smash everybody.”
“Seanie works so freakin’ hard,” Higgins says. “He takes a week or two off from the gym after a fight, but even then, he runs. And outside of those breaks, he hasn’t missed a day in the gym since I started with him. He does everything I ask him to do. He’s in monster shape every time he fights. He makes my job easy. I tell the other guys in the gym, ‘Study this guy. Be like him.’”
The downside to it all is that Seanie started boxing late in life, has limited ring experience, and is relatively slow in a sport where speed kills.
Top Rank matchmaker Brad Goodman has taken a special interest in Seanie and notes, “The first time I saw him, he had no technical skills. But he had some natural ability and I’m impressed with how much he has improved since then. It’s our job as matchmakers to see that he isn’t in with an opponent who’s too advanced for him at this stage of his career because Seanie has a warrior mentality. He’ll fight anyone you put in front of him.”
In a similar vein, Steve Farhood (who has watched the evolution of Seanie’s career while behind the microphone for Lou DiBella’s “Broadway Boxing” series) observes, “Seanie is a good example of a fighter who started out with limited skills and has made something of himself through determination and hard work. He’s always in better shape than his opponent. There was, and still is, a lot of room for improvement. But Seanie has improved a lot. He’s now a competent fighter. He’s also one of those guys who’s easy to root for. He’s very likeable and unpretentious. You hope he succeeds.”
“Seanie will never be on a pound-for-pound list,” opines Lou DiBella. “He’ll probably never be a world champion. But he’s a guy who deserves to be seen. He’s a blood-and-guts warrior. His arsenal consists of heart and balls. And he’s also a good guy. If I’m going to war, he’s one of the guys I’d want in a foxhole with me. And I’d sure as hell rather watch Seanie in a good club fight than a lot of so-called world-class fighters.”
“Seanie is the quintessential club fighter,” adds Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler. “He’s the kind of guy you want to put on your show if you’re a promoter. He maximizes his talents. He gives you his best effort every time out. He energizes the crowd. And there aren’t many fighters who sell tickets like he does.”
There’s a buzz in the room when Seanie fights. And more important, there are asses in seats.
Seanie started out as a Long Beach attraction. His fights were like a high school reunion for a dozen classes at the same time. And his fan base has grown since then. That appeal has enabled him to remain a promotional free agent. Because he’s a ticket-seller, promoters like Top Rank, DiBella Entertainment, and Star Boxing are willing to use him on a fight-by-fight basis.
Seanie generally receives a fixed purse for each fight plus a percentage of the proceeds from each ticket Team Monaghan sells.
“When there are 400 people from your hometown watching you fight,” Seanie says, “you have to look good.”
Indeed, there’s a school of thought that Seanie would be more disappointed if he let his fans down than if he didn’t get paid.
By Thomas Hauser
Seanie Monaghan is a “throwback fighter.” In the 1940s, he would have been a neighborhood fight club headliner and local hero.
Seanie is the oldest of four children. His parents immigrated to the United States from Ireland and settled in Long Beach, a town of 33,000 located on a barrier island east of New York City. Long Beach faces the Atlantic Ocean. There was a time when it styled itself as “the Riviera of the East” and vied with Atlantic City as a tourist destination for New Yorkers during the hot summer months. That time is long gone. In recent decades, the town has gone through cycles of urban decay and renewal. Last October, it felt the full force of Hurricane Sandy.
Seanie grew up in Long Beach and still lives there. His father runs an upholstering business. His mother is a physical therapist. His paternal grandmother was one of 17 children so he has a large family, many of whom still live in Ireland. His wife, Beverly, earned a masters degree in special education from Hofstra University. Together, they have a 22-month-old son, Sammy.
But there’s a painful backstory.
“I was a lost teenager,” Seanie acknowledges. “I had no ambition or direction. Everything was short-term. I didn’t care where I was going. I smoked weed every day. I wrestled a bit in high school and played some sports like football and lacrosse but the other guys were better than me. And if I wasn’t good at something right away, instead of working to get better, I gave up on it.”
Seanie graduated from Long Beach High School in 1999. “Barely,” he says. But trouble was brewing.
“There was an unhealthy culture in Long Beach and I got caught up in it,” Seanie recalls. “I wasn’t a bad kid. My mother and father are good, hard-working people. I came from a decent home. I wasn’t a street guy. I never stole anything or sold drugs but a lot of people in my family have had drinking problems. I was drunk a lot and I tried just about every drug there was except heroin.
“Around the time I was 15,” Seanie continues, “I started getting into bar fights. I was working as a barback [a bartender’s assistant] and was surrounded by grown men who were drinking and I’d try to keep up with them. A fight would start, sometimes with me, or if it started with someone else, I’d jump in. People would crowd around and cheer. I’d always wanted to be really, really good at something. And there it was, knocking guys out. It felt so good. There were a lot of fights, 50 or 60 over the years. My nose got broken. I was constantly hurting my hands. I’d come home with a black eye or cuts and try to hide it from my mother. I look back on it all now and say, ‘Forget about everything else. Look at the stress I put my mother through.’ I wasn’t a bad kid. I got along with people, all kinds of people, when I wasn’t fighting. But it was like, if there was a problem, I was the Long Beach representative. One time in a bar fight, I got stabbed in the throat and needed 30 or 40 stitches. I was arrested a few times. The last time was for assaulting a police officer who was trying to break up one of the fights. I didn’t know he was a police officer. He grabbed me from behind and I threw him off. The judge gave me a break. He put me on probation and told me, ‘If I see you in my courtroom again, you’re doing five years hard time.’ That straightened me out. I stopped drinking and doing drugs. I don’t drink or smoke at all now. I haven’t had a drink in more than 10 years. Casual drinking is okay if you can do it, but I couldn’t.”
As part of Seanie’s probation, he was required to attend meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and also attend an anger management course.
“The anger management course really pissed me off,” Seanie says. “I didn’t think I needed to be there. But over time, I realized that little things were making me furious and I was getting mad for no reason. Even though I might not have been starting the fights, I was looking for them. It took me a while, but finally, I understood that I had to change. I learned to take a step back when there was a problem and how to control my emotions. I had relatives in Ireland who were telling me, ‘You’re on probation. Come back here before they throw you in jail.’ But the problem wasn’t that I was in Long Beach. The problem was me.
“Then I looked at my life as a whole. I hadn’t built anything. All I was doing was drifting from day to day. I was in danger of losing any chance I had for a good future. My whole personality is different now. I’ve learned discipline and how to dedicate myself to things that are important to me. I’m a much better husband and father than I could possibly have been back then. I’m much happier than I used to be. I’m not an aggressive person anymore except when I’m in the ring.”
After Seanie stopped drinking, a friend named Bobby Calabrese suggested he try his hand at boxing. That sounded like a good idea, so he went to the PAL gym in Freeport, which had a boxing club run by a now-retired firefighter named Joe Higgins.
“Two guys were in the ring, sparring,” Seanie remembers. “I liked what I saw. There was a trainer there. I told him, ‘I’m Seanie Monaghan from Long Beach. I want to be a boxer.’”
“He was a real character,” Higgins recalls, “a kid off the street with a chip on his shoulder. He told me he wanted to spar that day and I started laughing. He said, ‘I knock guys out on the street.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but this ain’t the street.’”
The next six weeks were about footwork, balance, head movement, and how to throw a jab.
“Finally, Joe said I could spar,” Seanie says with a smile, “and the first punch I got hit with, I went down on my butt.”
Seanie had 15 amateur fights starting at age 26 and turned pro on May 21, 2010. He’s now 31 years old and has had 18 pro fights in less than three years. His trainer is still Joe Higgins (who also trains junior middleweight prospect Patrick Day). His manager is P.J. Kavanagh.
“I’m usually the aggressor,” Seanie says of his fighting style. “I come at you, go to the body a lot, and don’t stop coming. Getting hit doesn’t bother me that much. I kind of zone out when I’m in a fight. The biggest problem I have is that I cut too easily. My biggest fear is that I’ll be in a fight I know I can win and it’s stopped on cuts. And I have to get past my natural instinct to try to just smash everybody.”
“Seanie works so freakin’ hard,” Higgins says. “He takes a week or two off from the gym after a fight, but even then, he runs. And outside of those breaks, he hasn’t missed a day in the gym since I started with him. He does everything I ask him to do. He’s in monster shape every time he fights. He makes my job easy. I tell the other guys in the gym, ‘Study this guy. Be like him.’”
The downside to it all is that Seanie started boxing late in life, has limited ring experience, and is relatively slow in a sport where speed kills.
Top Rank matchmaker Brad Goodman has taken a special interest in Seanie and notes, “The first time I saw him, he had no technical skills. But he had some natural ability and I’m impressed with how much he has improved since then. It’s our job as matchmakers to see that he isn’t in with an opponent who’s too advanced for him at this stage of his career because Seanie has a warrior mentality. He’ll fight anyone you put in front of him.”
In a similar vein, Steve Farhood (who has watched the evolution of Seanie’s career while behind the microphone for Lou DiBella’s “Broadway Boxing” series) observes, “Seanie is a good example of a fighter who started out with limited skills and has made something of himself through determination and hard work. He’s always in better shape than his opponent. There was, and still is, a lot of room for improvement. But Seanie has improved a lot. He’s now a competent fighter. He’s also one of those guys who’s easy to root for. He’s very likeable and unpretentious. You hope he succeeds.”
“Seanie will never be on a pound-for-pound list,” opines Lou DiBella. “He’ll probably never be a world champion. But he’s a guy who deserves to be seen. He’s a blood-and-guts warrior. His arsenal consists of heart and balls. And he’s also a good guy. If I’m going to war, he’s one of the guys I’d want in a foxhole with me. And I’d sure as hell rather watch Seanie in a good club fight than a lot of so-called world-class fighters.”
“Seanie is the quintessential club fighter,” adds Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler. “He’s the kind of guy you want to put on your show if you’re a promoter. He maximizes his talents. He gives you his best effort every time out. He energizes the crowd. And there aren’t many fighters who sell tickets like he does.”
There’s a buzz in the room when Seanie fights. And more important, there are asses in seats.
Seanie started out as a Long Beach attraction. His fights were like a high school reunion for a dozen classes at the same time. And his fan base has grown since then. That appeal has enabled him to remain a promotional free agent. Because he’s a ticket-seller, promoters like Top Rank, DiBella Entertainment, and Star Boxing are willing to use him on a fight-by-fight basis.
Seanie generally receives a fixed purse for each fight plus a percentage of the proceeds from each ticket Team Monaghan sells.
“When there are 400 people from your hometown watching you fight,” Seanie says, “you have to look good.”
Indeed, there’s a school of thought that Seanie would be more disappointed if he let his fans down than if he didn’t get paid.
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