Wayne McCullough wants to develop an Irish stable – predicts Hogan will be ‘unstoppable’

Wayne McCullough is hoping Dennis Hogan [28(7)-3(1)-1] is just the first.

‘The Pocket Rocket’ was last week confirmed as the Kildare light middleweights new coach and trainer.

The 50-year-old had previously revealed it was his dream to coach an Irish fighter to world title success, but speaking after the link was made, the Irish fight legend explained he didn’t want that success to be singular.

The Olympic silver medal winner and former world champion has for a long time wanted to develop an Irish stable and train them from his Las Vegas base.

Speaking on the Endswell Podcast to Al Rich, who interestingly enough suggested the link up, McCullough couldn’t hide his excitement.

“I am thinking is this real because I have reached out to so many Irish fighters in the past. I have trained a few guys for a couple of days and then they’d have to leave the country.

“Dennis is the first guy that is actually going to come and train with me. I don’t think it’s real until he is actually going to be in front of me.

“It’s been a dream of mine since I came over here and learnt from Eddie Fuch. It’s an honour for me to do it. I would love to train a bunch of Irish guys, but it never happened.”

Pondering why American feather Julian Ramirez is the only fighter on his coaching resume, the former Eddie Fuch trained entertainer suggested fighters may have been wary of being asked to adopt his style.

“I will give everything to it. As a trainer I am going to try and make the best of my fighters. I think that was part of the problem. Irish fighters thought ‘Wayne McCullough he just walks forward and throws punchers’,” surmised the Belfast man.

“They thought I was going to train them to be like me. But if you look at my amateur days I had to go backwards as well.

“When I was thought by Eddie, he said you don’t train people the way you fought. He said everybody is different.”

Having proved himself a world level operator and having fought for world titles at two different weights, there isn’t much change needed.

However, the tweaks McCullough has in mind will make ‘The Hurricane’ ‘unstoppable’ according to his new trainer.

“With Dennis he is aggressive, he is elusive and he is fit – and all those things together make a hard fighter to beat. Defense he could tidy up a bit, sit down his punches more and the guy is going to be unstoppable. I’ll work on things like that.”