DEE Walsh won’t have any problem getting Conor Quinn fired up for his long-awaited comeback fight on September 24.
Flyweight Quinn has all the natural ability required to carve out a successful career as a prizefighter but, after the former Clonard ABC star launched his professional journey with wins in Australia and Bangkok, issues with a routine brain-scan threatened to end it long before we saw anything close to the best of him.
On dark days, he feared he wouldn’t box again but thankfully the issues have been put to bed. Quinn has a clean bill of health now and he’ll duck through the ropes at the Europa Hotel against Angel Gabriel Chavez chomping at the bit to start the next chapter.
“I’ll be eager,” he says with a smile.
“Dee in my corner will be telling me to relax and stick to my boxing at the start. I’ll need to ease myself back in but it’ll only take one or two punches and I’ll remember what’s going on. I’ll soon realise that I’m right back in there and I’ll get to work then.
“I can’t wait for it. I’m back sparring full-time now as well and it’s brilliant because for a year or so I wasn’t even sparring, I was just training – hitting the pads and bags, but no sparring. So it feels unreal to get back in and, people will think this is crazy, but I can’t wait to get in there and even feel a couple of punches on my gloves.
“Give a few, take a few… It’s a brilliant feeling either way. You have to get hit to make it real and in the pro game, even when you’ve got your gloves up, you feel it. I’ll take a few on the gloves – I’d rather take them on the gloves than on my face – but I can’t wait to get that feeling back and once I get in there and get this one out of the way we’ll kick on.”
When he started out at Clonard ABC as a six-year-old his coach Paddy Graham senior used to tell him: “You’ll be a world champion one day”. Maybe Paddy said that to all the youngsters but his words could be prophetic. Quinn is a gifted flyweight who can move and box and hits hard and he hopes to follow in the famous footsteps of Belfast greats like ‘Rinty’ Monaghan and Hugh Russell and, more recently, Paddy Barnes.
“They used to tell me at Clonard to come one night but I was there every night,” he says.
“From a young age it has been my dream to be world champion and I don’t just say it for the craic, I genuinely believe I can get to the top in the flyweight division. I’m big, I’m strong and I’ve a great amateur background – I’ve developed my boxing ability throughout my amateur time and I’ve got the power to match it as a pro.
“There’s a great tradition of flyweights from Belfast and I want to add my name to that. I want to go British, Commonwealth, European and then world titles. The division isn’t overly-stacked so if I get the right fights at the right time which Mark (Dunlop, his manager) will do for me, it’s definitely an achievable route to go.”
BOXING is in Owen O’Neill’s blood. His grandfather boxed out of the Immaculata Club in west Belfast and his great-uncle ‘Bunion’ O’Neill was a talented prospect who came through under the expert eye of the great Gerry Storey.
‘Bunion’ turned pro but a scrap outside the ring finished his career before it started. He got caught-up in a bar fight in England in which he punched a policeman and so he lost his licence and never made the progress many predicted he would.
Owen, a talented sportsman who played football for Newington FC and Cliftonville, has avoided those pitfalls and progressed to 8-0 as a pro. Victory against Dublin’s Martin Quinn on September 24 could push him to the verge of the title fights he craves.
“Boxing has always been in the family,” Owen explains.
“I started boxing in the Dockers. I went with my two cousins but they were actually boxers, I played football, I was always a football man.”
It wasn’t until he was in his early 20s that he started taking boxing seriously. He says he discovered that he was better with his hands than he was with his feet and so he knuckled down and entered the Ulster intermediate championships.
He began with a bang, knocking out his first opponent inside 20 seconds of the contest, went all the way to the final and forced his way into Antrim and Ulster teams, learning all the time.
“Since the first time I ever went into a boxing club I had a dream of being a pro,” he says.
“But the penny didn’t really drop with me until I started fighting for Antrim and going away on trips and beating people – I went to Belgium and beat one of the top guys on the Belgian team and I went: ‘Flip, I could make a career out of this!’”
He worked as an upholsterer with his uncle but after making his pro debut in May 2019, he decided to throw everything he had into boxing and so he gave up full-time work and is now 8-0. He works part-time driving a taxi for sponsor B-Cabs but is able to devote his time to the noble art.
He trains with the astute Dee Walsh and sparred Pody McCrory in the build-up to McCrory’s WBC international super-middleweight title defence at the SSE Arena last month. He’s been sparring with featherweight Colm Murphy too and trains alongside Conor Quinn, a fighter he rates as “one of the most talented boxers in Ireland”.
“It’s a big stage for me,” he said, looking ahead to the Europa Hotel bill.
“Hopefully this is a coming-out fight for me and I can do well, put in a great performance and start fighting for titles.
“Things are starting to pay off here. I’ve got a domestic dust-up with Martin Quinn and it’s my first all-Irish fight and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s brilliant that I’m fighting someone from Ireland and Marty is game as a badger, he’ll come forward and he’ll throw loads of punches.
“It’ll be cracking scrap for the fans and it’s one to really look forward to and I definitely think I’ll come out the winner.
“I’ll shake his hand after it but, for now, we’re going in to take the head off each other.”
