In his preparation for his September return in Dublin, Ireland’s Mick Conlan said he felt it was crucial to have bagged eight rounds when he made his comeback earlier in the year.
Conlan, following back-to-back losses to Luis Lopez and Jordan Gill, respectively, retreated for more than a year before aligning with a new promoter in Wasserman and a new coach in Grant Smith.
Now 33, Conlan went eight rounds with Asad Asif Khan in March, picking up slight hand damage, but he believes the rounds will stand him in good stead.
“I’m a realist and I know that this is my last run, so it’s not like I’m going, ‘OK, this could be the last one,’ It’s nothing like that,” Conlan said. “I’m here to do everything I can to achieve my goal, but it’s very new and it’s nice. I feel good. I feel comfortable. Training with Grant has been fantastic. The partnership with Wasserman, the fact that they’re bringing me back to Dublin [to face Jack Bateson at the 3Arena on September 5] is massive, and I have a kind of real buzz at the minute and real excitement at the minute for the next fight. So the fact that we went in there and got the job done, you could see there was ring rust – plenty of ring rust. I’d been out 14 or 15 months. But the thing was, I wasn't training at all for boxing.”
Conlan instead thrust himself into running, a relentless regime as he worked out his next steps. And when he finally returned to boxing, the two-time Olympian felt like he had “forgotten how to box.
“I was doing running, but I didn’t do no boxing, no sparring. Really, I felt like I forgot how to box before. In the training and then when I got in there [against Khan], it was just the job, you know: Go in and get it done the best you possibly can. It’s not going to be great, it’s not going to be amazing, but you’ll go in and get it done. That’s how it went.”
But Conlan believes the eight rounds with India’s veteran Khan were valuable.
“It would be pointless if I could have blasted him out in a few rounds, or even go life and death, because that would be a question: ‘What am I doing? Why am I doing this? if I can’t beat these guys easy, there’s no point.’ But it was comfortable,” said Belfast’s Conlan. “In fairness to Asad Asif Khan, he was a tough cookie, and I think Josh Warrington found out when he fought him after me [when Warrington defeated him over 10 rounds]. He’s got a very tough head; I hurt my hands on his head. He was game and coming to win, winning record, and he was actually trying to do something – but it was good. I needed to get the rust off. Although I didn't look a million dollars, I didn't need to look a million dollars. It was the first one back, so I just got in and get the job done – a workmanlike performance, go in and get it done, come out, no injuries, got a slight injury on my right hand because his head was so hard, and obviously a black eye, because he caught me with his head on the eye. But other than that, I was happy.”
While everything feels fresh again for the 19-3 (9 KOs) Conlan, he said it was not a matter of rebuilding confidence, more a way of trying to figure out a route back to big fights.
“It was more getting back on the horse,” he said. “The confidence side of things, there’s nothing to do with confidence. Boxing is boxing. Someone has to win, someone has to lose. So when you do lose, it’s never nice, but that’s the way it’s got to be. Someone’s going to win, someone’s going to lose, or it’s going to be a draw. The two fights before, so be it. You live, learn and learn to live with them, and look where you need to get back to and figure out your path to get back to there.”
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.
