By Thomas Gerbasi
There’s no place like home. Jason Quigley, an Irishman now making his home in Los Angeles to pursue his professional boxing dreams, knows this better than most. But if you are a native of the Emerald Isle competing in the United States, fighting in Massachusetts may be as close as you can get to a home game.
“Without a doubt, and I think nobody knows it more than myself,” Quigley, who faces Thomas Gifford tonight at Memorial Hall in Plymouth (40 miles south of Boston), said. “The feedback that I’ve been getting from people that I know in Boston has been unbelievable, and I’m a long way from home over here in America and I know when I’m fighting in Boston it will be just like fighting back in my hometown.”
County Donegal is home for the 23-year-old middleweight, a stellar amateur who tossed aside a run at the 2016 Olympics to pursue a world title in the pro ranks, and to begin that journey, he and his father / coach Conor made the trip to sunny California, a place somewhat familiar to the duo.
“I think after my time with the Los Angeles Matadors in the World Series (of Boxing), I had a big of a connection already out here in L.A., and to be honest, the place is pretty amazing,” Quigley said. “You can’t beat the weather and there are a lot of pull factors to L.A., especially the sparring over here. Every gym you go into, there’s top quality sparring, and this is where I need to be if I want to improve myself and keep stepping up the ladder and make my dreams come true. These are the sacrifices I need to make to become the best.”
It doesn’t hurt to have his promoter in the same city either, as Quigley was signed out of the amateurs by Golden Boy Promotions. That’s a big deal with any fighter, but for a European fighter to be picked up by the promotional juggernaut, that’s even bigger.
“To be involved with the likes of Golden Boy is a great confidence booster for me,” he said. “And Oscar De La Hoya – the man’s a legend in boxing and he knows what it’s like to get into that ring, and he also knows what it’s like outside the ring, working with promoters and working with managers, and you can’t buy that experience. And to have that man behind you is another great confidence booster for me and I’m really blessed and delighted with it.”
That’s a good thing for Quigley, as it means television dates, fighting on the undercard of major fights, and then eventually moving into his own main events. Yet along the way, Quigley will be the target of every opponent who knows that a win over an unbeaten Golden Boy fighter is a ticket to better paydays and better fights. Quigley doesn’t see himself as a young man with a target on his back, but he does know everyone he fights from here on out will fight a little bit harder to take the “0” from his record.
“When I get into that ring, I look across and I see somebody that’s trying to stop my dreams of becoming a world champion and I take every fight as a world title fight because the more fights I win the closer I get to that big fight,” he said. “I take it a fight at a time and I never look over any opponents and never look beyond my next fight because I gotta get in there, I gotta look good and put on a great performance, and I gotta get out of there with a W. That’s my plan, that’s my focus, and my aim in training is to keep learning and keep improving all the time because professional boxing is a different sport than amateur boxing and you need time to learn the ropes, learn the tricks of the trade, and I’m working my ass off in the gym and I’m really looking forward to my future as a professional boxer.
“But I don’t really feel as if I have a target on my back,” Quigley continues. “I know when I get into the ring, guys are gonna be looking at me as a great amateur boxer that turned professional, and of course people can get their own name out there by (pauses) doing well against me, so it just gives me another incentive to stop them because I know they’re going to be trying harder with me.”
That pause spoke volumes. It’s as if Quigley couldn’t find it in him to say that an opponent could beat him. When asked if this was intentional or just subliminal, he laughed.
“You read me well,” he said. “That’s a mindset that I have and that’s the way I’ve been brought up as a kid and trained by my father. Any man that gets into the ring with me, I look at him with bad intentions, without a doubt.”
That one sentence says a lot about Quigley and makes you put a mark on him as a fighter to watch. Sure, he’s only 2-0 (2 KOs) and will likely end up as 3-0 when he faces 3-3-1 Greg McCoy tonight, but a fighter’s attitude is the first thing you should look at, and when it comes to having the right one, Quigley has it. Whether that one day leads him to a world title remains to be seen, but for now, he’s happy to be fighting and representing his country here in the States.
“We’re not called the Fighting Irish for nothing,” he said of Ireland. “Through the years, we always had to fight for everything we got. We were never much of a wealthy country and we never got things handed to us in life. We’re a very proud nation, so when we get into that ring, we know our country’s behind us, and to fly the flag for the country is a massive honor.”
