Death mourned of Peter O’Donnell, Donegal’s ‘Mr Boxing’

The death has taken place of Peter O’Donnell, widely known and loved as Donegal’s ‘Mr Boxing’.

Late of Demesne, Raphoe, he passed away peacefully surrounded by his family in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Aged 75, he died following a short illness which he fought with courage in recent weeks.

A talented builder and hard worker all his life, it was sport - but particularly boxing - for which he was known across the world. Indeed, at Saturday night’s Rumble In The Hills, Rising Stars pro boxing show at the Aura Leisure Complex in Letterkenny, a reserved seat bearing his name sat poignantly at ringside.

A keen sportsman and sports fan, boxing was the big pull from an early age and he has served as the President of the County Donegal Boxing Board since 2012.

In his teenage years, he boxed for the Lombard club in his native Derry city. It was under the tutelage of Mickey Toland and Freddy Walsh at their York Street base where he honed his own skills in the squared circle.

During the years when he worked in London, where he spent the months from May to September in what was a hotbed for bricklayers, boxing kept its hold and he would read the pages of the Derry Journal, religiously purchased from a newsagents in Shepherd’s Bush.

Inside the back page he read about the exploits of Charlie Nash, Damien McDermott and Neil McLaughlin - some of the Maiden City’s finest exponents of the sweet science and when back at home, he attended the many amateur shows in Derry and Donegal.

He settled in Raphoe with his beloved wife Pauline and the couple toasted their 53rd wedding anniversary back in August. He is also survived by sons Rory and Paul, daughter Edel, grandchildren, great-grandchild and a wide family circle as well as his vast and countless colleagues in boxing.

The walls of his beloved Raphoe Boxing Club - which he helped to form in 1987 - are a mosaic and a museum of boxing articles and artefacts. 

His own shed is a further treasure chest and the O’Donnell house at Demesne actually stands on the site of one of the early clubs in Raphoe. Bingo Farm Boxing Club operated from what served for decades as the nerve centre of the sport in Donegal.

He was a driving force in the continued development of the Raphoe Boxing Club, which moved to its current location at the Pound Field, at the rear of St Eunan’s Terrace, in the 1990s. 

Peter took the microphone from Jack Greene as the ring announcer for the local shows in the 90s and it was a role he has also filled on big nights at the National Stadium and the Ulster Hall. At the mic, he had the nervous pause at the end of a fight down to a fine art.

There was not a boxer from Boy 1 to Elite that he didn’t know and his close connections spanned clubs all around the world. 

In January, he was honoured for his services to the sport by the Ulster Boxing Council and had served as Ireland team manager for major championships on occasion - a role he filled with real pride.

Last year, he was the manager of the Ireland team for the 2024 EUBC Junior Boys and Girls European Boxing Championships in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Irish won seven medals - two gold and five bronze.

He also managed Ireland at the 2021 AIBA Men’s World Boxing Championships in Belgrade and was previously team manager at the 2015 European Elite Championships in Bulgaria, where Joe Ward and Michael Conlan won gold and Dean Walsh took a bronze medal.

In 1988, he went to represent Raphoe at a meeting of the County Donegal Boxing Board. There, he was given the role of PRO - a job he filled ever since and even throughout a phase of his recent illness he was still driving out the message.

The coverage of Donegal boxing and its many tales in the years since were almost solely down to his endeavours at times and he had almost-weekly jaunts to various media outlets.

In March 1993, O’Donnell was at ringside for a standout moment for his club - Danny Ryan’s KO of Denis Galvin in the Irish middleweight final at the National Stadium.

“To see a man from our own club - and we were only going five years at the time - winning an elite title was amazing,” he recalled in the 2021 book ‘Boxing In Donegal: A History” which he tirelessly helped to piece together. “There was a great finals night and people were almost storming the Stadium from outside there was that big a crowd. It was just a great night for the Raphoe club.”

He attended some of boxing’s biggest nights as a supporter, from Dave ‘Boy’ McAuley’s meeting with Fidel Bassa for the WBA world flyweight title at a heaving Kings Hall in Belfast in 1987 to Steve Collins’ pair of WBO world super middleweight title wing over Chris Eubank in Cork in 1995.

It was, however, the locals who lit the fire more than any and he was a dedicated and loyal follower of his great friend Jason Quigley, who fought for the WBO world middleweight title in 2021.

Back in 2010, Peter was in Quigley’s corner alongside Conor Quigley when he lost to Darren O’Neill in his first Irish Elite final.

He was there to see Quigley become the Irish middleweight kingpin in 2013 and was at ringside for the majority of his professional bouts.

“As long as Jason is boxing and I’m healthy, I’ll be there to support him,” he once said, noting that Quigley’s rise was one of his fondest experiences.