No Homework, No Problem –Senan Kelly Confident He’ll Get Top Marks in Marksby Test
Senan Kelly hasn’t done any study but is still confident he’ll pass the toughest test of his career.
The Kildare native is on the verge of the biggest fight of his career in terms of platform and challenge.
The Irish welterweight champion faces England’s Ben Marksby and makes his 3Arena debut on the Michael Conlan undercard.
The JB Promotions operator admits the undefeated Marksby represents a test and his hardest fight to date, although Kelly isn’t one for study regardless. He reveals he has done very little Marksby homework.
“I don’t really go looking into opponents,” Kelly says when asked about Marksby. “I just don’t feel like studying them. You can spend hours looking into what they do, then all of a sudden they don’t box the way they boxed before and everything you worked on is thrown off. So to be honest, I haven’t watched much. I’ve seen one or two fights, and yeah, he’s a very good boxer. I think he’s going to be the hardest fight yet. But again, it’s just another day in the life, you know?,” the ever laid back Irish champion continues.
It’s an approach that has served him well to date and a tactic that didn’t prevent him from becoming the star of the domestic scene over the last 18 months. Now having reaced an arena stage and with the chance to progress past Irish level, the Kildare fighter is determined not to take a backward step.
“I approach every fight as if it’s the toughest fight of my life,” he explains. “I’m at the stage now where you don’t really get easy fights. Every fight matters. If you lose now, you’re right back to the start—rebuilding. And I don’t want to go backwards. I want to keep pushing on, keep moving forward, get bigger fights, make more money, and keep progressing.”
That mindset carried him through his Irish title victory over Declan Geraghty back in April, even though he entered that fight far from one hundred percent. He was seriously ill during fight week.
“Everything that could have gone wrong in that camp, went wrong,” he recalls. “I was on antibiotics, I couldn’t hold food down from the Sunday right up until Thursday. I wasn’t sleeping; I was drained. But I don’t pull out of fights. Injured or not, sick or not, I’m going to be there on the night. So I got in, I dealt with the adversity as a professional, and I came out the other side with the win.”
Despite winning, Kelly admits it wasn’t his best performance. “I don’t think I boxed that well at all. I still think I won, but I was only at 50 or 60 percent of what I can do. That’s the positive I took from it though—the fact that even under those circumstances, I still got the win. That gave me huge confidence.”
It’s confidence he carries into the Marksby fight. He knows victory at the 3Arena could open big doors, whether that’s lucrative domestic dust-ups or even European level opportunities.
But for now, Kelly isn’t looking beyond September 5 and victory.
“I don’t think about losing. If you start thinking ‘what if I lose this fight?’, then doubt creeps in. That’s not the right approach in this game. You need to focus on how you’re going to win, focus on the positives, and keep pushing on. I know I’m going to win. That’s all that’s going through my head. It’s been the same with every other fight—why would it be different now?”
