“It was Monday morning, maybe even the Sunday morning,” said manager Jamie Conlan, recalling when his fighter, Lewis Crocker, rang him to say he wanted to fight Paddy Donovan again.
Donovan had won their first fight by disqualification last March at the SSE Arena in Belfast, but he had been thoroughly outboxed and had absorbed some real punishment from Crocker.
“He was very emotional, and we went through in-depth rights and wrongs and what happened,” Conlan recalled, “and we talked openly about it, and he said, ‘If you believe in me, just believe in me. I’ll knock him out. Just get me the fight back.’”
With emotions running high on fight night, Conlan had met with Matchroom to discuss a possible rematch. Conlan did what most managers would do, and angled for a world title fight and to “look forward.”
“But then Lewis told me to change my mind and told me he wanted the fight,” Conlan added.
“We spoke [with Matchroom] that week and said, ‘Let’s try and make the fight.’”
Once Team Donovan appealed with the IBF and the sanctioning body made the Irishmen its two leading welterweights, and after Jaron Ennis relinquished his belt, the final pieces for the rematch fell into place.
Going into the second fight, despite what happened the first time, Conlan is confident in his man.
“He was nowhere near what he is,” Conlan said of Crocker’s progress since March. “He just needs to be Lewis Crocker. I think he needs to jab more. I think the pace of the fight in the first three to four rounds will dictate how the fight will be. He needs to establish dominance early, general ring position, jab and distance, being able to accept what’s coming and being able to counter it.
“I still believe he will be world champion. I know the performance last time was bad, and you can judge on the last fight, but the 20 performances before that there – 20 to one – it rules in his favor. I’ve seen him progress and get better every time. That was the worst performance of his career on the biggest night of his career. He was bad, Paddy was exceptional, but if you flip the script, that was the best I’ve ever seen Paddy Donovan in all of his previous fights. He’d never looked that good, so it’s as good as you could be and the worst you could be. If we can get Lewis back up to the best of his abilities, he can definitely beat Paddy.”
Donovan was impressive in the first fight, but Conlan also knew they were up against a capable fighter.
“Yeah, I’ve seen him since he was a kid,” Conlan explained. “I thought he lacked motivation in certain fights, lacked dedication or motivation. He tailed off in the Lewis Ritson fight and in the fight before, where he would go quiet for a few rounds and get hurt a bit. But he was right up for it, and I think maybe ‘Crock’ played into the mind games at the start. But he hasn’t this time. He’s been quiet, coy and shy.
“If you look at British and Irish boxing as a whole, the heavyweights and then [Chris] Eubank and [Conor] Benn are the only ones doing the numbers these are able to do, and both fights together [in Ireland] back-to-back. The guy who sold 90 per cent of the tickets was the man who, in many people’s eyes, was supposed to lose the first fight and is the massive underdog coming into this fight. So the trajectory of his career has been rapid.
“If you compare it to [Carl] Frampton, Frampton had the SSE in a gradual stage, European titles and all the fights to get to Kiko [Martinez]. Crocker had one headline fight against Paddy Donovan, and the next fight he’s fighting in front of 16,000 at Windsor Park. And even to get to Windsor Park, Frampton had been champion and then some. So it’s a rapid rise that could really set the next conveyor belt of Irish talent in boxing on, because without the headline act the rest can’t grow. [Crocker] has to win for everyone to feed and learn and bring the TV and bring the money and bring the major promoters in, so it’s a pivotal night. If Paddy wins, I don’t think the same opportunities will be there for Irish boxing, because they won’t go to Dublin or Limerick, or Dublin’s more expensive and it’s a harder sell, whereas they know this is a surefire winner here.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
