‘Even more confident’ – Frampton’s Irish boxing history belief strengthened

Carl Frampton is more confident than ever he has what it takes to beat Jamel Herring to make Irish boxing history.

Having seen the American successfully defended his WBO super-featherweight world title in Las Vegas on Sunday night Frampton’s belief has grown.

‘The Jackal’ wasn’t overly impressed by the former Marine’s display against Puerto Rican challenger Jonathan Oquendo, who was eventually disqualified for use of the head.

The Jamie Moore trained three weight world title hopeful admits he wasn’t at his best when he returned against Darren Traynor last month – and as a result can’t overly judge his potential Christmas foe.

He also suggests two failed COVID 19 tests and prolonged camp were not conducive to Herring hitting peak form, but still he saw enough in the display to convince him he has the beating of his fellow Top Rank super feather.

“I wasn’t overly impressed to be honest but I suppose he could probably say the same about my last performance,” he said when speaking to the Irish News.

“Oquendo is a better fighter than Darren Traynor is, but he was able to get inside (Herring’s defence) in literally the first 20 seconds of the fight and it looked to me that everything had just caught up with Herring overnight.

“But you have to remember that he had back-to-back pull-outs because of Covid so there’s a chance that he may have been over-trained so I won’t be going into the fight thinking that Herring’s done when it eventually gets made.

“It wasn’t a good performance but the circumstances weren’t ideal for him. He seemed to be in a training camp forever for that fight so he may have been over-cooked so we’ll say. Hopefully the fight gets made but I was confident before the Oquendo fight that I would beat him and I’m even more confident now.”

The pair were meant to trade leather in Belfast in June but for the pandemic. November and Las Vegas were most recent dates mentioned by Bob Arum, but the fact Herring suffered a cut on Saturday gone, means a delay is likely.

Frampton,who begins court proceedings with former manger Barry McGuigan this week, doesn’t mind, but would prefer it to happen before Christmas.

Herring was cut and that might push it back to December,” he said.

“As long as we get it in before the end of this year I’ll be very happy and I think we can. The cut was nasty-enough but I’ve seen worse, it wasn’t horrible.

“I think he’ll be out before the end of the year no problem. People talk about my age but Herring’s got a year and-a-half on me so he’s no spring chicken either.

“It doesn’t suit either of us to be hanging around. I’ve just fought, he’s just fought and at this stage of our careers it’s better to keep a bit of momentum.”