Sport

Jamie Conlan says self belief got him through in Waterfront war

JAMIE Conlan had to delve deep into his reserves of self-belief to pick himself up off the canvas and beat Nicaraguan Yader Cardoza on Friday night.

Conlan battled back from an eighth round knockdown to win the vacant WBC International Silver super flyweight title on split decision. There were those at ringside who felt the decision could have gone the other way but Belfast man Conlan deserves enormous credit for hanging in the latest in a series of bruising encounters for him.

‘The Mexican’ was dropped twice by Junior Granados in Dublin in 2015 and again by Anthony Nelson last year but he has a heart as big as a house and extended his record to 19-0 at the Waterfront Hall.

“I said to myself (after he had been put down in the eighth) ‘come on, don’t lose self belief and start feeling sorry for yourself’,” he explained.

“Sometimes you can go into your shell and start feeling sorry for yourself and that’s when you can get stopped. I knew I had my wits about me – it was just a bang, it wasn’t like a thud and I’m thinking ‘woah, I’m gone here’.

“I knew when the going got tough I could go 12 rounds but I don’t get hit like that in sparring – no-one hits me at all in sparring and I come into a fight and get hit…

“When he hit me I knew I had to show guts because if you go back against a south American they know they have you.”

Conlan certainly did show guts but one of these nights guts will not be enough. Once again he ended a fight bloodied and bruised after his defensive strategy went out the window.

He often came off second best when he looked to trade with the hard-hitting Cardoza and it was only when he settled down to patient boxing that his superior class told.

Cardoza was very unhappy with a decision that saw his record slip to 22-11-1 and Conlan admitted he had been worried when he realized there was a split-decision verdict.

“You always are,” he said.

“I’m not a cocky kind of guy, I don’t think ‘I won every round there’.

“I asked the corner what they thought and they all said ‘yeah, you’ve got it’.

“He did have good momentum at times but my shots were more crisp and it was my own fault that I didn’t follow up on them.