I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here's Barry McGuigan
(Image: ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

ITV I'm A Celebrity Barry McGuigan's boxing career and was he ever world champion?

by · Manchester Evening News

Barry McGuigan is among the famous faces who are in the Australian jungle for this year's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.

The 63-year-old has so far proved to be a hit with viewers and his fellow campmates after the ITV programme got underway last weekend.

Before entering the jungle Barry was known for being a former professional boxer. Originally from County Monaghan in Ireland, Barry was known throughout his career as The Clones Cyclone.

READ MORE: I'm A Celebrity Barry McGuigan's heartbreak over daughter's shock death he'll 'never recover from'

As an amateur, Barry represented Northern Ireland in the Commonwealth Games in 1978 and Ireland at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He then turned professional in the early 1980s and gained a huge following across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

He became world featherweight world champion after beating Eusebio Pedroza on points in 1985. Following his historic victory he was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in the same year.

Barry lost the title to Steve Cruz in Nevada the following year.

He was credited with uniting both Catholic and Protestant fans in support at the height of the Troubles. Barry last fought in May 1989, losing to Jim McDonnell at Manchester's G-Mex Centre.

In total Barry fought professional 35 times - winning 32 (with 28 KOs) and losing three times (with one KO). After retirement from the sport, he went on to become a successful boxing trainer and TV pundit.

Barry McGuigan is a former world champion
(Image: Getty Images)

This week Barry has already had an extremely emotional moment in camp having opened up to his campmates about the death of his daughter, who died five weeks after being diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2019.

Actress Danika 'Nika' McGuigan died on July 23 2019 at the age of 33, after her second bout of cancer. The Dublin-based star, who played Danielle in BBC Three comedy Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope, originally overcame leukaemia after two years of treatment when she was diagnosed at the age of 11.

Barry told his jungle campmates: "She had leukaemia, when I was making the movie The Boxer with Daniel Day Lewis, three weeks from the end I had to leave because she’d been diagnosed with leukaemia, they thought she wasn’t going to get better but she fought back and she won it. She had two years of chemo, she was good, she came back."