Brian McIntyre On English Gun Arrest- “I Forgot It Was In There”

Saturday night in Rosenberg, Texas at the site of the Top Rank Boxing / ESPN fight card featuring a middleweight world title unification fight, one of the premier trainers in the United States, Brian Mcintyre, explained for the first time publicly what led to his gun arrest and incarceration in England back in September.

Talking with ESPN’s Mark Kriegel, McIntyre detailed how he was taken into custody Sunday morning September 3rd after Manchester, England Airport authorities discovered a handgun unloaded and ammunition in his checked luggage. The Greater Manchester Police were summoned and MacIntyre spent the next month awaiting a hearing before a Manchester magistrate on the charge.

“Man, I’m gonna be honest with you. I got caught with a firearm at the airport in my luggage going underneath,” McIntyre said. “Obviously, it was a mistake. I forgot that it was in there, it had been in there a couple of months, since May, since we got into camp with Terence (Crawford).

“It’s a licensed firearm,” McIntyre continued. When asked what he was thinking during his five week’s in the Manchester jail? McIntyre replied, “With the grace of God and a lot of prayers from the fans and my family, I was just at peace, Man. You konw, I wouldn’t try to do anything wrong. I did break the law over there, but it’s common for us Americans to carry guns.”

How did the gun get to the U.K.?

Interestingly even though Kriegel did not ask McIntyre directly, he implied with his answers that McIntyre had obviously traveled from the United States with the licensed handgun to England in the first place. It’s still unclear, and he wasn’t asked Saturday night if McIntyre flew commercially or privately, to Manchester to be in the corner of Chris Eubank Jr for his rematch fight with Liam Smith? Eubank Jr. eventually won that bout by technical knockout and that’s when the trouble occurred the next morning.

McIntyre went on to confirm that he owns several handguns legally and at times, carries as many as three of them either on his person and/or in his vehicle for protection. And, he further said that he had lawyers in the U.S. and England working for the past five weeks for his release. Crawford even appeared at Mcintyre’s hearing in person to give character witness testimony for his trainer/friend.

The Manchester judge eventually decided to give McIntyre a suspended jail sentence (he could have received as much as a five year sentence) and release him after the five weeks he had been locked up.

McIntyre was in Texas to work the corner of former U.S. Olympian and unbeaten lightweight Keyshawn Davis, who was in an action on the undercard of the Janifek Alimkhanuly and Vincenzo Gualtieri WBO/IBF world middleweight title clash.