Under the Knife to Fix the Hammer – Hand Surgery for Padraig McCrory

Padraig McCrory will go under the knife to fix his famous hammer.

The Feile bill topper has been fighting with a damaged right hand for over a year now and wants to fix the issue before he moves into potentially massive fights.

The hand injury, which happened during his IBO light heavyweight world title win over Leon Bunn in Germany, hasn’t stopped ‘The Hammer’ from fighting.

However, it has hampered his preparation and thus his most recent performance. The Irish Boxing Awards Irish Fighter of the Year wasn’t able to spar regularly during the lead-up to his fights with Dmytro Fedas, Deigo Ramirez and Steed Woodall and believes that may have played a part in the end of a six-fight knockout run.

It’s become apparent rest won’t be enough to restore McCrory to full power so he will have surgery.

Speaking to the Irish News he explained: “I hurt it in October last year and I’ve been saying it’s okay and telling everybody it’s okay, but it’s come to the point where in my last camp I only sparred twice at the very end of camp to get the rounds in.

“I’ve had to heavily wrap my hands for every session. The last fight it was insane, I had to get the padding nearly doubled but I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to headline at the Feile,” he adds before suggesting it has hampered his displays.

“It has become a major issue that I need to get sorted. The last four weeks with no punching has definitely helped it, but it hasn’t cured it. There’s a lot of scar tissue in my hand and the doctor thinks something has ruptured.”

“I was on a great streak of knocking people out and then I got this injury,” he said.

“I haven’t been able to prepare anywhere near how I wanted to but I’ve kept winning. It was maybe me over-thinking my age and thinking I couldn’t take a couple of weeks off and get it fixed. Looking back on my last couple of performances, the lack of preparation has affected me and, if I move to the next level, I will be caught out if I don’t get it sorted.”

Jamie Conlan told Irish-boxing.com he has big December plans for Conlan Boxing star, meaning the surgery doesn’t look like it will prevent McCrory from fighting later this year.