Egan weighs up his options
Egan and Tommy McCarthy are set to touch gloves this evening in a bout to decide who will have the seat on the plane for Baku.
The Olympic silver medallist, who won 10 national senior titles at middleweight (three) and at light heavy (seven), was sensationally beaten by 17-year-old Joe Ward this year.
The move up to heavyweight could mean that Billy Walsh will have both men on his team for the world championships as heavyweight champion Con Sheehan from Clonmel has moved up to super heavyweight and can book his place if he beats Cathal McMonagle tonight.
Egan dismissed speculation that he moved up to heavyweight to avoid another confrontation with the explosive young Moate man. Following that loss he returned to the World Series of Boxing (WSB) where he was tipping the scales at 85kgs.
But he will have his hands full with McCarthy, a former world junior bronze medallist who lost two senior finals to Egan at light heavyweight and drew the short straw for his heavyweight debut.
“John Cleary our strength and conditioning coach has been with us since the start of the high performance and he is very good,” Egan said yesterday.
“He knows us all individually. We spoke before about moving up and he said it was possible to move up and put the weight on fairly quickly.”
Now he is ready for Tommy McCarthy and insisted he is looking forward to it. “It should be a good fight with Tommy. He has learned a lot and he has improved as well. We boxed in two finals and we sparred a lot in high performance but this is the first time we have met at heavyweight so it will be interesting.”
McAllister insists Egan might have made the wrong decision moving up.
“Tommy is in really good form right now — the best since moving up to heavyweight,” he said. “He has developed and matured a lot. He is much bigger and harder and he knows Kenny very well because they have sparred a lot in high performance. This is Kenny Egan’s first fight at heavyweight while Tommy has a few wins under his belt. Kenny made a mistake moving up.”
David Oliver Joyce (St Michael’s, Athy), who has won 14 national titles — four of them at senior level — considered hanging up his gloves after he was disqualified in the finals of this year’s senior championships.
“After the senior championships I was packing it in all together,” he said.
“It left me devastated. But Dom [O’Rourke] kept on to me on the phone and my father. I took a few weeks off then decided I’d get back and see what happened.
“Dom told me there was a box-off in August for the world championships and that got me back into it.”
And he heralded O’Rourke’s presence yesterday with an emphatic 13-5 victory over Jason Conroy (Crumlin).
“I’m happy with the win and it will get me going for tomorrow against my clubmate, Eric [Donovan],” said Joyce.
Donovan earned his place in the semi-finals by blitzing Gavin Keating (St Saviours OBA) 24-10 yesterday.
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