The real Fighting Irish in documentary ‘Knuckle’ - VIDEO

Forget the cliches from Guy Ritchie movies - these are real men

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CAHIR O'DOHERTY,

Irish Voice Arts Editor

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Documentary examines the brutal world of bare ‘Knuckle’ fighting

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Forget all those criminal Cockney cliches populating Guy Ritchie movies. If you want to see what a real life tough as nails subculture looks like take yourself along to the movies and see Knuckle, which opens in New York, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas on Friday.

A you-are-there portrait of a hardy Irish traveling community in Britain and Ireland, it’s a true to life picture of feuding Irish traveling clans and their long-standing history of violent bare-knuckle boxing.
First we meet James Quinn McDonagh and Paddy “The Lurcher” Joyce, two men who are related by blood but separated by a family feud that dates back generations and whose origins are mostly long forgotten. 

As the heads of rival families, they represent what they call their “breeds” through the brutal -- and illegal -- street fights they spend most of their adult lives training for.

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The film’s Irish director Ian Palmer was lucky enough to enjoy the opportunity of a lifetime to profile the community from the inside due to a lucky accident.

One day they needed a cameraman to film a wedding and they had his number. But Palmer had more on his mind than simply capturing the bride on film -- from the beginning the budding documentary filmmaker understood he was witnessing a remarkable and still untold story unfolding.

"I knew nothing about bare knuckle boxing growing up," Palmer tells the Irish Voice. "I hadn’t even seen travelers, I was brought up in south County Dublin.” In the nineties he had aspirations to become a scriptwriter, spending time in Los Angles pursuing his dreams. They didn't work out.

"I came back to Dublin when I had gotten tired of sleeping on someone’s couch. I had also been trying to raise funds in Ireland for a film but there was no funding, the Film Board was only really getting up and going then. It was difficult to get any money,” Palmer recalls.

Meanwhile, a friend of Palmer's had been doing community video work with Irish travelers, and so he went along one day to meet them out of curiosity. In the process he got to know the McDonagh traveler clan, who at the time were living on the outskirts of Navan, Co. Meath.

"I started going to the markets with them with a camera. One of the men at a fair day was pointed out to me. ‘Watch out for him,’ they said, ‘he’s a wide boy – and a fighter.’ The man turned out to be James Quinn McDonagh, the fighter I profile in Knuckle."

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