On May 1, 1987, City Council Speaker and all-but-officially announced candidate in next year’s mayoral race Christine Quinn found herself in a makeshift boxing ring set up in the backyard of a fraternity at her school, Trinity College. As part of Trinity’s annual spring weekend festivities, Ms. Quinn was to face off against her friend and classmate Sean McHugh in “Bantam Bouts,” a charity boxing exhibition named after the school’s mascot. Ms. Quinn’s matchup against Mr. McHugh, a lineman on the school football team, was billed as the “Battle of the Big Mouths.”
Posters for the fight dubbed the Speaker “Christine ‘Maddog’ Quinn,” a moniker she said also came from her outsized reputation.
“It was just one of those nicknames that went along with being loud and pushy,” Ms. Quinn told Politicker. “Some people are just born loud and I was one of them,”
Though Ms. Quinn and Mr. McHugh described the event as “fake” and a “goof” to raise money for a local daycare, there was no doubt about the winner.
“I lost. She won,” Mr. McHugh remembered. “She knocked me out.”
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