Down at Gleason’s Gym, under the foreboding shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York fight crowd is congregating expectantly. No fighter apart from Sugar Shane Mosley, twice a conqueror of Oscar De La Hoya, had ever sold out the 5,600-capacity Theatre at Madison Square Garden before John Duddy, a 26-year-old Derry man, signed to meet Shelby Pudwill, from a fighting family in North Dakota, on the night before St Patrick’s Day.

“We sold out last Sunday,” announces Eddie McLoughlin, who handles Duddy under the banner of Irish Ropes Promotions, to the assembled, with obvious delight. “Once you sell 95% of the tickets, it’s officially a sellout. But don’t worry, there’s a few remaining tickets at Jack Dempsey’s.”

As Duddy prepares to work — today he will spar six rounds — a former world featherweight champion holds court in the far corner. Juan Laporte, a Puerto Rican who lives in Brooklyn, once went 10 rounds with Barry McGuigan at the King’s Hall in Belfast.

In his whole career he fought a dozen world champions, from Eusebio Pedroza, Azumah Nelson and Salvador Sanchez to Kostya Tszyu, the great Australian who lost his title last year to Ricky Hatton. He is a good judge and he likes Duddy.

“He fought in the main arena at Madison Square Garden last year (against Patrick Thompson). It took place on the eve of the Puerto Rican Day parade and Miguel Cotto, who’s a hero back in San Juan, boxed in the main event,” Laporte recalls. “The place was packed with Puerto Ricans and there were Irish fans as well. But when Duddy fought, all the Puerto Rican fans got behind him. The way he fights is exciting. They were calling him ‘Juan’ Duddy by the end of the night and I think he got an invitation or two to come down the next day to the parade. They loved him.”

After 15 successive victories, 13 within the distance, Duddy is the talk of New York, his fight posters pinned up in all the Irish bars and clubs in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, all the way out to McLean Avenue in Yonkers.

“I think it will be a night to remember for a very long time,” he says. “It’s the night before St Patrick’s Day and it’s my first chance to fight for a title (the spurious WBC Intercontinental Americas middleweight title). I feel I’m in great shape and I’m really looking forward to it, ready to put on a great show. Lots of people will be travelling over for the parade the next day. So, if anybody’s coming to New York, I hope they come to see the fight as well.”

McLoughlin laughs heartily as Duddy starts to hit one of the heavy bags. “They can come, of course, John,” he declares. “But by Thursday morning, there’ll be no bloody tickets left.”

THREE years ago he thought he had given up boxing for good. A former Irish senior champion, he felt he had gone as far as he could and took whatever work he could find as a lifeguard and a bouncer in and around Dublin.

“All my life I’d dreamt of being a boxer,” says Duddy, whose father, Micky, fought professionally in the early 1980s, frequently sparring with Barry McGuigan in Barney Eastwood’s gym in Belfast’s Castle Street.

“But I was done with the amateurs. I boxed 130 amateur bouts in 13 years, won 100 and lost 30 and I just didn’t want to go on. There was really no pro scene in Ireland and I didn’t think there was anyone around to foster my career. It never even crossed my mind to head for America.”

But McLoughlin and his brothers, Tony and Martin, who run the Irish Ropes Gym in Far Rockaway, New York, got to hear about Duddy’s reputation and contacted him, convincing him to cross the Atlantic to give it a shot. He had some reservations but he decided to go.

“I’d been to America a few times as an amateur and I knew this was the place to be,” he says. “The best trainers, the best sparring, the best of everything in boxing is here. I just didn’t know how to go about it. Then Eddie opened the door for me and he’s looked after me ever since.”