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Boxing

01st Mar 2017

WATCH: Michael Conlan’s gritty Belfast tour will leave you wishing tomorrow was St Patrick’s Day

"It's a tough area"

Ben Kiely

There’s not long left to wait until Michael Conlan’s highly-anticipated professional debut.

The Irish Olympic hero will kick off his life as a pro pugilist in New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden on March 17, where he takes on Tim Ibarra.

With Conlan’s staggering success in the amateur ranks, big things are expected of the Belfast brawler in the net chapter of his career, To ensure the hype train keeps motoring full steam ahead, Top Rank promotions have released a fascinating mini documentary that follows Conlan around his local area before taking that cross-Atlantic flight for a press conference in New York.

Some of the most intriguing parts of the documentary involve Conlan walking around his hometown and dropping nuggets of information about how growing up in the city shaped him both as a fighter and a person.

“I think around these areas, you are always fighting because there are so many kids and there’s so many confrontations… it’s a tough area.”

“People are always trying to take things off you and you always have to stand up for yourself. For me, I was small so people were always trying to take stuff off me, but I was a fighter. I would always beat the shit out of them.”

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