Thursday, April 20, 2000 | 9:18 a.m.
Ireland was tugging at Wayne McCullough this week.
The Las Vegas resident, a former world champion, has spent the past few days entertaining a group of seven youngsters who were visiting from McCullough's hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland. The lads, ages 12 to 16, are budding fighters in a gym that McCullough helped open a year ago.
"They want me to come back and run their gym," McCullough said after escorting the youngsters into the Center Ring gym in North Las Vegas, where they went through an informal workout. The group also worked with McCullough in the gym he has in his garage, and they watched him spar during his own workout at Nevada Partners.
"He's a role model," Ian McSorley, one of three adults traveling with the youngsters, said of McCullough. "This has been an experience these young people will never forget."
McCullough, who hopes to fight in Belfast and Dublin this summer and who is named the fighter with the "Best Chin In Boxing" according to an article in the May issue of Ring Magazine, enjoyed playing the host.
"I've spent every day with them," he said. "I brought (noted trainer) Eddie Futch over to my gym to work with them one day, and we've done a few other things together. Most of them had never been on an airplane, and some of them thought Vegas was a one-street town. They've been amazed."
He said the youngsters are from a poor area of Belfast and that they don't receive much diversification in their boxing training over there.
"Their gym is worse than this one," he said, referring to Center Ring and its serviceable, if frill-less, condition. "I know it doesn't have any heat."
He made an effort to expand the youngsters' knowledge of the sport and to help them with some new techniques.
"In the gyms in Ireland, it doesn't matter if you're short or tall or whatever, every fighter in a gym will use the same style," McCullough said. "You can tell the gym they're from by how they fight."
The kids, who stayed at Circus Circus before departing today, represent the Sandy Row gym in Belfast.
"They're all stand-up, European styled fighters," McCullough said. "As a result, all their punches are wide. I'm trying to get them to throw shorter punches and they seem to be coming around.
"We've been working on mistakes that can be fixed."
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