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MICHAEL CONLAN WAS training for his first marathon last year when, like almost every aspiring runner, he found himself wondering, “Why the fuck am I doing this?”
But Conlan’s issue lay not with the race itself, per se — he ran it in two hours and 55 minutes in the end. What rankled instead during his umpteen “5am runs in the pissing rain” was that all of this training could have been put to better use had he not weaned himself off his own sport at a low point.
The relative ease with which he ran a sub-three marathon only reiterated to Conlan what he had come to realise months earlier on the hills of County Antrim: he had one last run in him, alright. It was time to dust off the gloves.
“I know I still have enough in the tank, I know what I have to do, I know the dedication I have to give — which I always give anyway,” Conlan tells The 42. “But I can’t give up on a dream and think in five years, 10 years, 20 years’ time, ‘What if?’
The former Olympic bronze medallist and amateur world champion returns to the professional ring in Brighton tonight having last boxed in December 2023.
That night in Belfast, he looked completely off-colour as he was stopped in the seventh round by Jordan Gill, a more-than-decent boxer but one who wouldn’t have gotten within an ass’s roar of Conlan at his best.
Conlan, though, had been shy of his best for a while: a fight earlier, he had challenged Alberto Lopez for the IBF featherweight world title. Conlan, arguably the superior technician, curiously decided to hook with a hooker and was promptly short-circuited by the Mexican.
Given he had also been dramatically stopped by the world-level Leigh Wood within the same two-year timeframe (albeit after producing a masterclass for 11 and a half rounds of their fight of the year), the step-down defeat to Gill effectively meant curtains for Conlan’s world-title aspirations and, for all intents and purposes, for his career.
And on paper, this comeback effort — which begins live on Channel 5 tonight against a rudimentary opponent, India’s Asad Asif Khan (19-5-1, 5KOs) — bears the hallmarks of a misjudgement made by countless prizefighters before him.
Conlan, now 33, knows exactly how it looks to those of us on the outside. But only he can read between the lines of his performances against Gill and Lopez. Whereas we observed those combined 12 rounds, he lived the punishing months around them.
Having reflected on those defeats for well over a year, Conlan is now of the belief that he shouldn’t have been in the ring with anybody in 2023. He was in the wrong frame of mind, scrambling to make sense of familial complications which will remain his business.
But he now recognises the degree to which this “interference” in his personal life affected business-business.
Conlan carried a weight which didn’t show up on the scales but bogged him down between the ropes. He believes he has sufficiently trimmed that fat since.
Conlan, now self-managed and promoted by the Sauerland brothers’ Wasserman Boxing, has always been a realist behind the veneer of bravado that has contributed towards his becoming a millionaire in the most costly of occupations.
He’s acutely aware that to win some proper hardware in the featherweight division at his age, and given his most recent fare, would be almost miraculous.
But rather than eff around, he’d prefer to just find out: is he good enough to pull it off?
“I don’t want the what-if,” Conlan says. “I want to think, ‘Okay, well done, I’ve done it’, or else, ‘OK, at least I tried.’
If I make it, unbelievable. Fantastic. If I don’t make it, then so be it.
“Now, I have a clear vision, a clear goal. No fucking noise in the background: everything gone, everything blocked out. It’s not even sitting there: it’s all just done.
“I’m colder now. More stubborn, more focused on myself and what I need to do, not worrying about anybody else, not paying attention to what the outside noise is. That’s none of my business. Why the fuck would I care?
“I don’t have to listen to anybody or keep anybody happy. It’s on me, and it’s a good place to be.
I’ve got my wife and my kids around me and they’re the most important people to me. I’ve made money in boxing. I’ve made more money than a lot of people in boxing. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.
“So why do this at all?” he parrots a question put to him. “One reason: to become world champion.”
Conlan’s wife, Shona, didn’t need convincing to let her husband scratch this last remaining itch. On the contrary, she was one of the few who implored him to do so, understanding better than anyone else the underlying subtext to his back-to-back defeats to Gill and Lopez.
Indeed, the person who initially required the most persuasion that this comeback would prove feasible was Conlan himself.
Boxing is not like running, nor is it like riding a bike as the former Olympian discovered when first sparred in front of his new Sheffield-based trainer, Grant Smith, after almost a full year out of the ring.
“The first 10 spars, I was going, ‘Have I forgotten how to box? What’s going on?’,” Conlan recalls. “No timing, no distance, even my punch selection and stuff; ‘What the…?’
“I had to keep saying to Grant: ‘Grant, listen, I’m much better than this. This isn’t…’ And Grant’s going, ‘I know! You’ve been out of the ring for a year. Don’t worry: it’ll come, it’ll come, it’ll come.’
“But there were times where I was like, ‘Is it gonna fucking come back here?’ And then it came back and it’s like, ‘Yeah, no, I’m still here.’
“There’s still things to do, and I know I can still do them,” Conlan smiles.
“So… One more roll of ‘em.”
A boxer gambles on some level each time they step into the ring, of course. It’s not yet a month since poor John Cooney succumbed to a brain injury suffered in a bout staged in Conlan’s hometown, and one which wasn’t even especially violent.
Nobody whose workday involves absorbing punches to the head can get lucky, but any of them can get extremely unlucky.
Conlan has always articulated this reality with a kind of jarring pragmatism, although he consciously blocks it out when preparing for a fight of his own.
In his 19th pro outing tonight against a middling foe, the Falls Road fighter should learn instinctively and definitively whether or not a 20th bout — possibly against former world champion Josh Warrington — would be worth the hassle.
The winner of that theoretical meeting could easily be slid into situ for a title tilt given the boxers’ respective name recognition and resumés, but Conlan will first need to look sprightly against the unheralded Asad Asif Khan.
The beauty in the Irishman’s search for an Indian summer, though, is that he has never before been under less external pressure to impress.
Conlan, long removed from his Top Rank deal, is no longer being marketed as a transatlantic star destined to take over the world. He’s now a 33-year-old former challenger on a two-fight losing streak who hasn’t thrown a competitive punch in 15 months. Indeed, if he was less well off, he’d be exactly the kind of opponent that a promoter would feed to The Next Michael Conlan.
The Current Michael Conlan is unburdened by any of these conditions. He no longer has to build his profile. He has earned for his children a massive headstart in their own lives.
The ‘job’ is done. Tonight begins his passion project.
“There’s no expectation on me,” Conlan says. “I enjoy expectation, I’m not gonna lie. I do enjoy it. But now I can go and not even think about it. And I don’t know why I ever did really think of it, to be honest. Maybe just because there was so much of it there, and put on me.
“People can say what they want to say — and people will say an awful lot because you know how the world is and how social media is.
“I don’t read anything. Well, I read books! But I don’t read any of the shit online. I’m sure you’ll have people saying they want to see me getting done in again,” Conlan laughs. “That’s the world, isn’t it?
“I’m ready just to relish this last go at it, this last roll of the dice.”
It’ll be nine years this summer since Conlan flipped the double bird to the Olympic judges who stole his original dream. It’s been a wild ride since: he’s turned professional under Bob Arum’s Top Rank banner. He’s headlined St Patrick’s Day shows downstairs at Madison Square Garden (featuring one obligatory ‘Celtic Symphony’ controversy). He’s gained revenge in the professional ring over Olympic nemesis Vladimir Nikitin. He’s been literally knocked out of the ring after otherwise dominating the consensus fight of the year. He’s challenged for the world title in his beloved Belfast. He’s even managed the careers of several up-and-comers while still trying to reach the top of the ladder himself.
So, as Conlan now nears the end of his own career one way or the other, what does the man who once famously declared amateur boxing rotten to its core now think of the pro game into which he defected?
Not much, actually.
“It would never be a career path I’d try to guide my kids towards because it’s a horrible game,” Conlan says.
“To be fair, it’s not like I’ve learned that while I’ve been in it. I’ve known that for a lifetime.
“But you see it from the outside, and then when you’re in it, you see it even more clearly: this is a dirty, dirty game.
“Even being a manager and seeing how people behave, and how fighters are at the bottom of the barrel — and they’re the ones who are putting their lives on the line every time.
“It’s horrible,” Conlan reiterates.
So, y’know, do I love professional boxing or do I love boxing in general? No. You can’t love boxing because boxing will never love you back, as we’ve seen recently. People lose their lives. It’s a terrible, terrible sport for your kids.
“But…” Conlan smiles, “it’s something I’m very good at, something I enjoy doing.
“So, I don’t love it but I do enjoy it, if that makes sense. And I’m gonna make the most of the rest of it.”
Written by Gavan Casey and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.
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