Lightweight Oisin Fagan (22-6) is on the slow road to recovery but is in no way down or depressed after breaking his leg in the first round of his fight against Amir Khan in December. Indeed, the whole experience seems to have lit a fire in the 34-year-old fighter to rebound an even better boxer. "The recovery is coming along well. Obviously, it was a tough Christmas. I'm just terribly disappointed about how the way things transpired. When you think that I played football (soccer) for 30 years and never broke any bones, but just seconds into the biggest opportunity of my career and my leg snaps in two. How do you make sense out of something like that?" Fagan told the Irish Voice by e-mail. "It's worse that I'm normally known for my toughness and fitness, but I wasn't given the chance to show either." Though fiancZe Alissa's visit from the U.S. brightened up his Christmas somewhat, fitness fanatic Fagan could not cope with being inactive. "A couple of days after surgery and after they put me in a cast, I got sick of doing nothing, so I bought myself a little 'office chair' on wheels and was able to shadowbox for an hour a day and get up a good sweat to keep me ticking over," said Fagan. "Then I started going out for runs on my crutches. Everyone thinks I'm nuts when they see me passing by, crutching at high speed, but that's how bad I want to get back into it and want to show the world what I can really do." What burns in Fagan is the desire to show the public what he is capable of. "I don't want the last memory of me, slumped in a corner with a broken leg, after losing a fight, which would have changed my life. Instead, I want to get back stronger than ever before and win some really big fights and show the critics the real Gael Force Oisin Fagan. The sooner, the better. "Hopefully, when this cast comes off at the end of the month, I'll make a speedy recovery and be back with a bang in 2009!" Matthew Macklin will have his own St. Patrick's bash in Birmingham when he takes fellow Brummie Wayne Elcock on March 14 for the British Middleweight Title at the Aston Events Center. Macklin has changed trainer again, and the man responsible for directing him in this fight will be Joe Gallagher. Macklin has changed trainer three times since leaving Billy Graham, and the bout on March 14 will be the biggest since his loss to Jamie Moore for the British Light Middleweight title in September 2006. Elcock, who stopped Howard Eastman to win the British title, was himself stopped by IBF Champion Arthur Abraham in December 2007 in his world title tilt. Finally, super middleweight Darren Sutherland (1-0) is slated to fight next on March 6 in Wigan on the same card as light middleweight Jamie Moore (who won the Irish Light middleweight title last July), who fights Michele Piccirillo for the vacant European light middleweight title.
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