Irish boxer Henry Coyle back in action Saturday

By: Declan O'Kelly | Published Thursday, February 18, 2010, 3:40 PM | Updated Friday, September 9, 2011, 9:31 PM

Light middleweight Henry Coyle (10-2, 8 KOs) is scheduled to fight this Saturday at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana.

It will be the Mayo man’s first fight back after being tko’ed in round three by Neil Sinclair for the Irish light middleweight title on May 15.

Father Gerry was upbeat about the Geesala fighter’s Chicago preparations for his ring return.

“Henry is in great form and is ready for action. Physically and mentally he will be prepared to take off,” Coyle said of his son’s camp.

Though not confirmed, Coyle senior added that Henry will likely lace up his gloves against Marcus Luck (9-17, 3 KOs) in a fight scheduled for six rounds.

Coyle’s prolonged absence from the squared circle was due to an injury that he picked up not too long after his loss to Sinclair.

“Henry came home for a while and he had a bad injury in June. He broke his toe and was out for six months with it,” continued Gerry.

After fully recovering from the injury, Coyle headed back to Chicago to work with trainer Sam Colonna.

When asked if his son had recovered from the loss to Sinclair at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast last May, Coyle was philosophical about it all.

“It is no good looking back when you leave home to go to your office; if you did you would never arrive at work," he said.

Of the fight itself, Coyle feels that Henry cut the pounds too rapidly and it told on the night of the bout.

“My own feeling is that he lost the weight too quickly, and he lost the weight too soon,” he said.

Coyle went on to say that his son plans to fight regularly in 2010 and the goal was to fight for an Irish title at year’s end.

Though he would not say in what weight class his son was targeting, the Irish title seems very much the short-term goal for Coyle.

In the meantime, he will go to the Horseshoe Casino in an attempt to return to winning ways.

In other news, Barney Moore confirmed to the Irish Voice on Monday that light middleweight James Moore (17-2) would be headlining a card in Dublin on April 17 to be promoted by Tommy Egan. An opponent has yet to be confirmed. More on Moore next week.

Finally, it was a busy night for Irish pro boxing at the National Stadium in Dublin on Saturday night when Andy Murray (18-0, 9 KOs) stopped Oisin Fagan (25-8, 15 KOs) in their Irish lightweight title fight in the fifth round.

Fagan, the former Oklahoma-based physical education teacher, brought the fight to Murray aggressively in the early rounds and found his target with some overhand rights.

However, once Murray found his range with the jab and uppercut, he used his reach advantage and during the third and fourth rounds penetrated Fagan's defense.

Bleeding from the nose and with a mouse underneath the eye, Fagan continued to come forward, but a few stinging combinations from Murray saw referee David Irving stop the contest in the fifth stanza.

In a statement released on Monday, Fagan expressed his displeasure at the early stoppage.

“If you watch footage, you’ll see that I wasn’t hurt in the slightest at all during the fight and I was continuing to throw punches up until the very end. I wasn’t in trouble at any given time -- it’s plain and simple to see,” he said.

“In fact, our game plan was to up it a gear in the seventh round. And since I am typically a 12-round fighter, I’m disgusted I was not given the chance to implement my game plan.”

In other Irish title fights, Patrick Hyland (19-0) won the featherweight title, Coleman Barrett (11-1) took the heavyweight title and Anthony Fitzgerald (7-2) beat Ciaran Healy (10-14) to take the super middleweight title.