No Arms, No Problem: Jay Byrne ready to go again following Belfast battle
Did you hear the one about the no-armed boxer?
It might sound ridiculous but, by the end of the fourth and final round of his fight in Belfast last night, Jay Byrne was essentially an arm-less fighter
A mishap in the pre-fight warm-up meant Byrne could not throw his left for most of the fight – and then his resultant over-reliance on the right meant that arm eventually went as well.
Despite all this, the Dubliner showed huge guts and plenty of adaptability to manouever his way to a win over strong Hungarian Sandor Jozsa at the Europa Hotel on the MHD Promotions ‘Inquisition’ dinner show for his third successive win.
Looking back at the fight afterwards, Byrne told Irish-Boxing.com that “it was my own fault, I missed a pad and I overextended. Tommy [McCormack] rubbed it out, iced it, the whole lot, and I felt alright getting into the ring, it felt loose. But when that went, I panicked, and I was using just the right arm for a lot of it, and then at the end my right arm just went. it wasn’t sore or anything, I was just overusing it, it was just bollocked!”
It certainly was not the fight that ‘The Negotiator’ was expecting, and he was left somewhat frustrated. He explained that “at the end of the day, it wasn’t a great performance. I got out of the ring disgusted. I wasn’t disgusted with the performance, more I had been working on things, and everything I had been working on was based on my left hand, finishing on hooks, going to the body with the left etc.”
Byrne did take positives from the fight, and described how “I felt fit, I felt great all week. I hurt him, he was holding I caught him with a right hand and then the ref called break, but his legs were gone. It’s a win, and I did hurt a fella who is a middleweight. So when I do start hitting people at welterweight I do feel that I’m going to hurt them.”
“To be fair to him, he was tough. People give out about these Hungarians coming in and falling on the floor. He was a middleweight. They said I came in at 11 stone 5, I didn’t, I came in at 11 stone 1 I think it was 155. He was four pounds heavier than me. I’m not going to be fighting at middleweight, welterweight is my weight. But I hurt him, a middleweight, a couple of times.”
The Loughlinstown 30 year old is hungry to get back in the ring, and is already eyeing his next fight date which comes on February 25th at the National Stadium against tough Spaniard Sergio Abad. Eager to build and improve, he outlined how “I’ll be back in the gym at ten in the morning, I’m going to be driving home, and I will be starting to train for three weeks time.”
Photo Credit: Ricardo Guglielminotti – The Fighting Irish (@ThefIrish)
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Eric Donovan joins Gavan Casey and Joe O’Neill on Episode 2 of the Irish Boxing Show:
