With an unfiltered lens on the heart and soul of Irish boxing’s greatest era, Horslips’s Eamon Carr unveils narratives often left untold, in his new book- Showbusiness With Blood - A Golden Age Of Irish Boxing.

”I hadn’t written a book of this length before, this was sort of a new experience for me,” Carr said on his latest literary outing. “I had a pile of stories; the editing process was even more savage than a training session.

“I felt I’d witnessed some extraordinary things in boxing since the mid-‘90s, the resilience of boxers, the levels of endurance that they put themselves through. I’d have guys laughingly say, ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this, getting hit in the face every day for a living’. It was something I wanted to get under the skin of - the human stuff and the psychology.”

The pages of Showbusiness With Blood with detailed first-hand accounts of riveting slug fests, mind games and tales of triumph. The book also doesn’t shy away from the sport’s less-documented, darker aspects - the other heavyweight bouts boxers face - depression, life-threatening injuries, the gruelling shifts in weight they put themselves through when preparing for fights.

Another observation is the sheer amount of talent that this country has produced inside the ring. What is it about the Irish that makes them so good at embracing these deadly gauntlets? Are we simply hard as nails? Or mad? Perhaps it’s both.

”I don’t think that they even know the answers,” muses Carr. “They have this yearning to prove that they’re the best and to go to extreme lengths. Ireland has had about five world champions – that’s outrageous - as well as the Olympic Golds.”

Along with deep reservoirs of resilience, and pride, there’s also an underrated intellectual side of Irish boxing that perhaps sometimes gets dismissed.

“The intelligence and coaching has a lot to do with it,” notes Carr. “There’s been a very good network of coaching in Ireland. We have hundreds of amateur clubs around the country where kids can develop skills”.

I’m informed that the National Stadium, opened in Dublin in 1939, remains the first and only purpose-built boxing arena in the world. It seems that we as a nation have always had a penchant for pugilism.

This trailblazing appetite for boxing has extended to the women’s category too.

Before Katie Taylor, there was a palpable hesitation both in Ireland and abroad regarding women in the ring, but the Bray native’s indomitable spirit changed everything. Her fights were not just matches; they were spectacles. People were captivated by the ferocity and skill she brought into the ring.

Katie Taylor

”Katie showed them,” says Carr. “She was in some humdinger fights that were proper scraps, people were won over. Then she had the big fight with Amanda Serrano and it was just a huge box office event. People were saying that it was the fight of the year - it was as awe-inspiring and as brutal as anything from their male counterparts.”

Along with reminiscing about Irish boxing’s golden age, Eamon shines a light on some rising hot steppers.

“Paddy Donovan, who’s trained by Andy Lee, is very stylish,” he observes. “He looks like a real poster boy, but he’s a serious boxer as well.”

Gary Cully, despite facing a setback at Katie Taylor’s fight at the 02 in London, is also one to keep an eye-on.

”He’s a rangy lightweight and was knocking guys out for fun,” says Eamon. “He got stopped in his last fight, but I think he recovered from that. There’s an awful lot of variables in Ireland and there’s been a bit of chaos behind the amateur scene. But the talent is there, the coaching, the infrastructure. That’s the key.”