MICHAEL Conlan will not fight for the WBO super-bantamweight title after the organisation excluded him from their rankings because he fought for the WBA interim featherweight title against TJ Doheny.
Conlan, who won the WBO inter-continental title against Ionut Baluta in April and was number one in the organisation’s July rankings, was expected to meet the winner of WBO champion Stephen Fulton’s September 11 unification rumble with Brandon Figueroa.
But after he fought, and beat, TJ Doheny to win the WBA interim title at featherweight at Falls Park, Puerto Rico-based WBO dropped Conlan from their rankings.
“Under our rules and policies, when a ranked fighter fights for a world title – Michael fought for the WBA’s interim featherweight championship – he is automatically excluded from the rankings,” WBO in-house lawyer Gustavo Olivieri told The Irish News.
“There was never any official ruling by the WBO committee that he would be facing the winner of the Fulton-Figueroa unification championship bout. The WBO had not designated a mandatory challenger at 122lbs.
“Regardless of whether a fighter is ranked at number one that does not mean he will automatically fight for the title. That is a misconception.
“Conlan’s team were advised that he was fighting for a title from another sanctioning body and if he pursued that route he would be excluded from the rankings. That’s the WBO policy.”
Conlan was originally scheduled to meet Doheny at super-bantamweight but the fight was then switched to featherweight. Conlan produced the performance of his career at Falls Park and may already have decided that his future lies in the featherweight division.
AFTER three postponements, Anthony Cacace and Leon Woodstock will (fingers crossed) finally get it on this Saturday night when Belfast’s ‘Apache’ defends his British super-featherweight belt against the confident Englishman in Birmingham.
On paper, Cacace goes into the fight as favourite and although he hasn’t seen action since he won the belt from Sam Bowen in November 2019, Woodstock has been out of the ring even longer. The London-born scrapper hasn’t had a fight in two years since losing a Commonwealth title challenge to Zelfa Barrett. All three judges had Barrett winning by a wide margin that night but, given that he has gone on to knock out Eric Donovan and out-point Kiko Martinez, going the distance was a good effort from Woodstock.
He pulled out of their February rumble after testing positive for Covid but the Leicester-based fighter sees no issues going into Saturday night’s scrap at Arena Birmingham
“This is everything,” he said.
“No fight that I have had or will have is going to mean as much as this fight because of what it stands for and what I’ve put into it and how I’ve gone from where I started to this level. So this is my world title, this is my coming of age moment.”
Cacace’s stop-start career has been disrupted by regular periods of inactivity. The stylish west Belfast fighter began his time as a pro boxing in the USA before hooking up with Shane McGuigan. That arrangement didn’t pay off and he didn’t box at all in 2018 before bouncing back brilliantly to dethrone Bowen.
He needs a victory on Saturday night to kick on to the next level which is likely to be a world title eliminator before the end of the year. Woodstock wants the same and says he will have an answer to anything Cacace brings on Saturday night.
“I know what I have to do and what I will do when I get in the ring,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter too much what he does or what he decides to do, it’s all about what I do. I’ve spent too much of my career focussing on the exterior and the opponent and not enough on myself.
“This lockdown has allowed me to spend more time on myself and I’ve learned to focus on me so it doesn’t matter what he does. All that matters is what I do and what I’ve trained to do. I’m 100 per cent confident that my hand gets raised on Saturday night.”
COMMONWEALTH Games 2018 silver medallist Kristina O’Hara is expected to make her professional debut in mid-October.
The St John Bosco ABC-based fighter (25) has signed with women’s boxing focussed Unified Promotions and intends to campaign at minimum weight (47.5kg). She had other offers but decided to go with the all-female organisation headed by Susanna Schofield which she says is “all about empowering women”.
“I wanted to go for the Olympics and whenever that door got shut I was devastated,” he says.
“But you have to take the bad with the good and when that was shot down something else came to me. I trust where I’m at, I trust my coach (husband Gerard McCafferty) and I trust my manager to take me where I need to go and I want to go all the way to the top, I want to be world champion.”
O’Hara won 14 Irish titles as an amateur as well as the Celtic Cup, the European Union Junior Championships in Hungary in 2013 and silver at the European Youths in Italy a year later. In 2018 she reached the Commonwealth Games final at light-fly.
Son Kiefer was born in January 2020 and, with the youngster now 18 months old, she is ready to embark on a new chapter of her career.
“I’m excited,” she added.
“The only time I was inactive was when I was pregnant and I was still active until I was eight or nine months’ pregnant. I was back in the gym eight weeks’ after having Kiefer – with an emergency C-section!”
The word she uses to describe that experience is “excruciating” and, having come through it, boxing must seem like a relatively painless hobby in comparison. Of course, she knows that serious challenges lie ahead.
“It’s a big step and I’m looking forward to it,” she said.
“I wanted the Olympics, it didn’t work out but now I’m ready to take on something new and I’ve never had the love for boxing like I have it now!
“Before I wanted to box but I’m older now, more mature and I’ve got my son and my husband and this is a new golden opportunity. I’ve got the love back for the sport again and I have a new desire to be world champion.
“I’ve taken my time out, we’ve started a family and now we want to take over the world. I have a good background, I have great experience and I’ve travelled the world with boxing and been in with the best.
“There’s nobody who is going to shock me in the pros, so we’re good to go.”
