Paddy Donovan sets interesting world title time limit

Paddy Donovan [4(3)-0] has his sights set on becoming Ireland’s youngest world champion of the modern era.

The Limerick prodigy has set himself a three year world title deadline and has aspirations of buckling a world title around his waist in just his 24th year – featherweight Ike Wier is the youngest having claimed the world title at 20-years-of-age thanks to a 36th round knockout back in 1887.

Donovan has looked superb since making his debut in October 2019, and the 21-year-old has some big ambitions in mind prior to his first major step up.

“My aim is to win a world title by the age of 24, which is in 3 years time, so I want to move nice and fast and build my record.”

Donovan has already started to put his foot on the accelerator having agreed to fight former Southern Area champion Jumanne Camero [10(3)-6] on November 11.

Camero has suffered defeats, but has never been stopped, has taken rounds in each reverse, has put in impressive performances against domestic level opposition at very short notice and by all accounts comes into this clash much improved and with a fresh mindset.

With all that in mind he is a massive step for a relatively novice pro. Yet it’s the kind of step up the slick southpaw craves and one he believes will help with that world title goal.

“I don’t want to go up against guys I’m supposed to knock out, I want to do so against good fighters that will bring the very best Paddy Donovan out of me,” the Andy Lee trained fighter adds before stressing his performances in the pro spotlight have raised his profile and decreased his sparring options.

“I’m starting to get a lot of people talking about me. Coming up to my last fight there was nobody in Ireland that wanted to to spar me at my weight class, and then I was very pleased with the win I got over Des Newton and the fashion I did it in.”

Elsewhere on next month’s card, British and Commonwealth bantamweight champion Lee McGregor challenges Karim Guerfi for the EBU bantamweight title, Tursynbay Kulakhmet goes up against Macaulay McGowan for the vacant WBC International super-welterweight title, Sultan Zaurbek returns, Hassan Azim makes his professional debut, and Jack Martin faces Inder Bassi.