“You ain’t getting my garlic chip off me!” – Graham McCormack O’Shea overcomes debut scare

Graham McCormack O’Shea [1(0)-0] weathered an early storm to claim a debut win at the weekend.

The Limerick light middle brought a massive crowd up to Dublin for the ‘Celtic Clash 4’ bill at National Stadium, however, amidst all the noise and the airhorns, McCormack O’Shea found himself hurt in the opening round.

Hungarian Richard Baba caught the debutant early, but McCormack O’Shea managed to recover, revert to his boxing, and dominated the remainder of the bout to claim a 39-37 win.

Elated, McCormack O’Shea would describe his entry into the paid game in a fairly unique way.

The 30 year old told Irish-Boxing.com afterwards that “Your man was trying to take my head off! It was like being outside Supermac’s at 3 o’clock in the morning, fellas coming up to you, looking for your garlic chip and you’re standing there going ‘you ain’t getting my garlic chip off me!'”

“It was good, it was really enjoyable. I didn’t settle down in the first round, it took me two rounds to settle down and listen to my coach. Then I tried to stick to my boxing and not get drawn into a fight, this guy came to throw big bombs. I thought I could mix it with him, but I stuck to my gameplan and kept boxing.”

“It’s hard to get a guy to come into you when all he’s doing is backing up and running away from you. He tried to blow out in the first round, and when it didn’t work for him he just went on the back foot and ran.”

The first round scare can be attributed in part to an over-eagerness to please.

McCormack O’Shea brought a massive crowd up from Limerick, packing out a large section of the Dublin venue.

Unsurprisingly, ‘G-Train’ got somewhat caught up in the occassion.

“It was hard,” admitted McCormack O’Shea.

“My team told me before we went out ‘don’t listen to the crowd,’ I was like ‘fine,’ but they went ‘ah, but you haven’t been out there yet.’ The minute I went out there I thought ‘oh yeah, now I know what they meant!'”

A fighter who just loves fighting, McCormack O’Shea is keen to get back in the ring as soon as possible, and will be back in the gym almost immediately looking to build.

The Eddie Hyland-trained fighter noted how “I made a lot of mistakes in there, but this is what it’s about, it’s learning. I know I have to learn in this game, and that is what I’ll do.”

“I’ll go back to the gym now and re-evaluate, and work on what I didn’t do there, back to the drawing board.”

Photo Credit: Ricardo Guglielminotti – The Fighting Irish (@ThefIrish)