Never in doubt – Eddie Treacy doesn’t fight for fighting sake
It was never in doubt, according to Eddie Treacy.
The Bray light middleweight wiped out Owen Duffy in the final fight of the big ‘Leeside Revolution’ in Cork on Saturday night.
Treacy scored a second-round stoppage at the Neptune Stadium amid delirious scenes.
It was just the third professional fight and first since November for ‘The Honey Badger’ – whose biggest amateur achievement was the Irish Novice title.
On top of that, it was an all-Irish affair and one that he was, perhaps, a slight underdog for.
The refreshingly honest Treacy has always spoken of his desire for big domestics and his disinterest in regular journeymen fights but he claims that he was always confident he would defeat Duffy.
Speaking to Irish-Boxing.com in the immediate aftermath, Treacy noted how “people thought I was just taking any fight.”
“I don’t know how many times I got asked the question ‘would you not rather win?’ Of course I wanted to win and if I didn’t think I would win the fight I wouldn’t have accepted it.”
“I knew I could beat Owen Duffy. I’ll always be honest and straight.”
“What happened was, the fight got offered to me. I had just gotten back from holiday and signed with Boxing Ireland, the fight got offered to me and I had six weeks. I said ‘fuck it, it will be enough’. I had a chat with Mark [Buckley, coach] and he thought the same.”
“Who am I to refuse a fight? These are the sort of fights I’ve wanted from the start, good, competitive fights,” he added before cheekily referencing some of his opponent’s pre-fight talk.
“Owen Duffy came to fight. He said the fight wasn’t going to go the distance in an interview with you and he was right,” Treacy smirked.
“But, respect to him and his team, he came to fight and we gave a good scrap for two rounds.”
Treacy tore out of the blocks in the opening round on Sturday, driving Duffy to the ropes.
His first six-rounder, the popular Wicklow did not intend to ambush his Cavan foe.
“It absolutely was not [the plan]. We came out and went at it but Mark was screaming in the corner: ‘Stay relaxed! Stay relaved!’ You know yourself, every time you go looking for a knockout it turns into a brawl and in the first round there was a bit of holding.”
“When I got back after the first round Mark just told me to relax, pick the shots, and it will come.”
And when it came it was violent. It wasn’t an accumulation stoppage but a perfect left hook that sent Duffy down hard – and the product of weeks of work in St Teresa’s.
“I’d been working on it on the pads with Mark, countless hours, just getting the timing right,” explained Treacy.
“I know the power’s there and he told me that I don’t need to rely on it, to work on my timing and it will come – and it came tonight.”
“I was drawing him in, drawing him in, and I landed it. It was a cracking shot, a short left hook that caught him clean.”
“Fair balls to him for getting up, he was wobbly and you could have probably stopped it there and I think it should have been, he didn’t need to go down again.”
And now we have a situation where Treacy has stepped up to six rounds and gotten a notable all-Irish win under his belt.
However, he is still only just 3(2)-0 and will admit that he is as raw as a bloody steak.
So, where next? Dial it back and build or push on, go for the BUI Celtic title immediately?
In truth, it will probably be somewhere in the middle.
Reflecting on Treacy’s progression, manager Stephen Sharpe explained how “we felt it was a really winnable fight but we’re in no rush, we could do a four-rounder next time out.”
“But look at the crowd out there. He’ll be back out in October and we’ll see.”
Treacy himself, still on Cloud Nine, notes how “I train hard for every fight, but when you’re fighting a journeyman you know they’re coming to get paid, not to give you a fight.”
“People are coming to watch you, you want a good fight to give them their money’s worth.”
Photo Credit: Ricardo Guglielminotti – The Fighting Irish (@ThefIrish)