Not According to the Script Bernie McCoy
(APR 9) It was all set for the perfect Hollywood ending: Maureen Shea, as famous as the sparring partner for Hillary Swank during the actress' preparation for her starring role in "Million Dollar Baby" as she was as an up-and-coming amateur fighter, was in the finals of the New York Golden Gloves, one bout away from a title.
Not only that, Shea, in a wonderful "back story", was a Irish fighter in a featured fight at Madison Square Garden, or the Theater at the Garden, where the Golden Gloves have been held in recent years. An Irish fighter featured at the Garden is a tradition going back, at the very least, to the 1940s and Billy Graham, the Greenwich Village welterweight, not the preacher.
Hillary Swank, this year's Academy Award recipient for Best Actress, had jetted in for the fight Read more [...]