Nine years ago this week, Michael Conlan turned pro with incredible fanfare in New York on St Patrick’s Day.
Ireland’s great amateur star was nailed on for a world title, but 23 fights later, it has so far eluded him.
There were tries against Leigh Wood and Luis Alberto Lopez, and while both ended in spectacular defeat, the 34-year-old has not given up on his world championship dreams.
On Friday, he faces Kevin Walsh, of Brockton, Massachusetts, at the SSE Arena in Belfast.
“My focus is Kevin Walsh, but the champion with the WBC is Bruce Carrington, and I like that fight as well,” Conlan, No. 9 with the WBC, told BoxingScene.
“That’s a fight where I would happily go to New York and it’s a big sell in New York. He’s from New York. I sell well in New York.”
Conlan was actually due to be fighting in New York tonight but “things out of his control” happened although promoter Kalle Sauerland said there is a hold on Madison Square Garden in October should Conlan come through.
For now, Conlan’s back in Belfast and he insists his future lies at featherweight.
He also says one more loss and the journey and dream of being world champion is over.
He will, by that point, admit defeat.
“I’ve always been a natural featherweight,” he explains. “I tried to get in the 122 [division] and I could make it, but could I perform it? That was the question. And then obviously I had the fight and it was lacklustre, I suppose. And when I was doing the cut, it was the lowest I’d been to do a cut and the least weight I had to do to take off and I still fucking fainted. I’ve never fainted, but I fainted doing that one. It was only a few kilos.”
That was ahead of the fight with Ionut Baluta and it was then when Conlan said to himself “no, I’m not doing this.”
He says he’s comfortable enough at 126lbs without having to entertain a move to junior lightweight. He still has to drop weight, of course, but it’s not as arduous for the constantly in shape Conlan as it is for those who balloon up between fights.
“It doesn’t kill me to make featherweight,” he explains. “It isn’t as tough, 100 per cent. No matter if I was fighting super featherweight, it would still be tough, but featherweight is where I’m natural at so I'll stay there to get a world title. And if bigger fights come at super featherweight, there’s an option to look at it, but featherweight’s where I am.”
Asked to consider the landscape at 126lbs, Conlan continues: “There’s never really a time where featherweight is a quiet division. So it’s a tough division to win a championship in and you've got good guys there, good champions there. And in Carrington, [Brandon] Figueroa, Angelo Leo, and Raphael Espinosa… Espinosa is huge. He’s probably been quiet because obviously with Top Rank and them not having had a TV deal, that’s probably why he's been a bit more quiet, but he’s a nightmare for anybody. He’s near six foot, or probably is six foot and throws loads of punches. They’re all good champions and I respect all of them. I think they’re very, very tough opponents to face.”
But, on his day, Conlan still feels he can be a nightmare for any of them.
While Conlan clearly has ambitions, he is also a realist.
There are only so many times he will pick himself back up and dust himself back off and go again.
“Fight by fight,” he says.
“If I was to lose, that’s me [done]. I’m not doing it no more. I’m retiring because I would like to leave boxing with my health intact. That’s why I always say you can’t love boxing because boxing will never love you back. That’s one of the reasons, with the damages which happened in boxing. I’m not stupid about that stuff. And I would say, if I was looking at a timeline, 18 months to a year, maybe, who knows? If it takes a little bit longer and I’m still winning, still winning, still winning, then great. That’s okay. I’ll go on if I keep winning, keep winning, keep winning. I’ll go ‘til I have to lose.”
If every fight is must-win, does that not put more pressure on him?
On the contrary, Conlan contends.
“No, actually, if I’m honest, I think it would put a lot of pressure on people, but it makes me more free,” he says. “It takes pressure off. I’ve been boxing 27 years. It’s a lifetime. And I’m just making sure that in this last stage of my career, I enjoy every moment of it. And it makes it so much easier when you’re not thinking, ‘Oh, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this, I’m out of this fight, I have to go into this next fight, I have to go straight back in the training camp.’ And that’s where the weight stuff starts to balloon, because you know you want to eat, make sure you eat as much as you can before you go back and have to cut it all out again. But now I’m just like, just enjoy it.
“I think a lot of my career, I probably didn’t enjoy it. I always enjoy training, so I would never really say [I didn’t enjoy it] to camps, but they’re tough, yes, but I enjoy it. The only hard part about camps is being away from my family. And that, as I’ve got older, has got harder. When you’re in training camp you’re not seeing your kids, you’re not seeing your missus, it’s very tough. [The problem] was never stopping to enjoy any moments; any of the big moments, because there was some unbelievable nights, some fantastic nights. And I probably looked over them an awful lot because I had to worry about what was next. ‘Right, we’re back out here in 12 weeks.’ ‘We got you back in training camp here.’
“’Okay, enjoy your two weeks off and then straight back to it.’ But now I’m just like, just take it as it comes.”
It was his former trainer Adam Booth who always said the life of a boxer is often more about the journey rather than the destination.
“Exactly,” Conlan agrees. “I didn’t enjoy the journey enough. So that’s why I'm making sure in this last run toward the world title, I enjoy the whole trip.”
Conlan has been around a lot of success in his time as a pro. Since joining Grant Smith at Sheffield, Dalton Smith has won the WBC’s junior welterweight title while former stablemate with Booth, Josh Kelly, snared the IBF’s junior middleweight belt.
Conlan and Booth were exceptionally close as fighter and trainer, and he was thrilled to see Booth’s success with Kelly come to fruition.
“I was delighted for him [Booth],” Conlan says. “I was so happy for him. And knowing everything Josh has been going through in his own life personally, and then everything Adam has probably went through with talking so much about Josh and saying he was a guaranteed world champion for a long time, for that to come to fruition, it was a beautiful sight to see because he proved himself right more than anybody else. And the work the two have put in together, they’ve stuck together in the highs and lows.
“And I know sometimes it’s been a headache for Adam and sometimes it’s been a headache for Josh, but the fact that they grinded it out and got the win against a very dangerous opponent was great.”
With Smith also getting over the line, it is now Conlan’s turn.
“I've had an awful lot of friends who became world champions and I’m delighted for them,” he adds. “There’s no envy. There’s no bitterness. And maybe when I was younger, I probably would have been, but at this stage, no. Anybody who achieves their dream and goal, I’m proud of them. I’m happy for them; like when I was with Dalton [in New York for the Subriel Matias win], seeing him and his dad achieve something they’ve worked their whole lives for was unbelievable. It was one of the highlight moments of my own sporting career because of that.”
Conlan radiates professionalism and realism in an interview. He is to the point and candid.
But there are many who do not think he will achieve his world title dream, and in large part because they contend his punch resistance has gone.
“I was never stopped in the amateurs,” he says of some 300 bouts. “Chinny? No. Listen, susceptible to being hurt? Yes, everybody is. Everybody is. But if I look at the last loss [against Jordan Gill], the preparation for that wasn’t there and my head wasn’t there. It was an awful lot of shit going on in my life over the last two years, actually. And I see people going, ‘Oh, he's been knocked out cold.’ Once, yes. Once. Once I got my hands up [to defend himself and carry on], but both times it was on my feet.
“The Lopez one, Adam threw the towel on, but I was back on my feet. It’s not something that really bothers me. It’s not something to look into. I know that I can be hurt, which is a good thing because it makes you be more aware and more smart of the things you’ve got to do instead of being reckless and trying to take people’s head off and not worrying what’s coming back. I think that people can have their opinions and say what they want. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Conlan knows that if he can string two good performances together, he could win a world title. In that respect, he’s 72 minutes of boxing from achieving his dream.
That is how he sees it, too.
And he knows, against one of the champions, he’d have to be perfect.
“I’d agree 100 per cent with that,” he concludes. “The best me can beat anybody on the day.”
