THAT LAST SATURDAY’S super-middleweight meeting of Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Terence Crawford in Las Vegas was billed as a battle to determine ‘The GOAT of this Era’ was an annoying misnomer: GOAT used to mean Greatest of All Time, feck your eras.
In any case, Callum Walsh is more preoccupied with the here and now and, most pressingly, the goats out the back of his gaff.
Days after earning his career-biggest victory as chief support to the biggest boxing fight of the decade, Cork light-middleweight Walsh takes a video call while hopping between his kitchen and his back garden in Ventura, California.
“I’ve actually been in the process of moving house while preparing for the fight,” says Walsh [15-0, 11KOs], who soundly defeated fellow unbeaten prospect and son-of-legend Fernando Vargas Jr [17-1, 15KOs] in front of 70-odd-thousand fans at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium — and in front of several million more live on Netflix — last Saturday night.
Walsh and his partner, Brazilian UFC strawweight Tabatha ‘Baby Shark’ Ricci, have together purchased a large farmhouse to support their growing stable of animals: Dogs, chickens and goats so far, with cows destined to follow. They’re all going to need their own pens in the new place, and the goats — they’re of the particularly springy, Nigerian dwarf breed — are proving harder to fence in than a pack of velociraptors.
The closest Walsh ever came to farming back home in Cobh was when he worked on the sea: in his late teens, the former amateur standout hauled lobster pots in Cork Harbour to pay for petrol and sustain his boxing career at the Riverstown club in Glanmire.
Now 24, halfway across the world, Walsh is about to become not only a small farmer but one of the few Irish people his age to own their own home.
“I could have never imagined it, y’know, and thank God it all worked out,” Walsh says.
“It’ll definitely make me stick around here for another five, six years. I suppose I always knew that I’d be here for my career, until I finished fighting.
“But the best thing about owning a house is you can always sell it, you know what I mean?” the boxer laughs.
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“My end-goal, really… I want to get to Spain. And even if it was in seven or eight years’ time, with the house prices in California, I could sell the house here and I could probably buy 10 of them in Spain, so…”
Walsh got home from Vegas, where he earned his 15th professional win, at around midnight on Sunday. By seven o’clock on Monday morning, he was outside the new farmhouse, building fences. Much to his chagrin, the goats leapt clean over their new boundary within seconds of its first field test.
As such, by the time of his midweek Zoom call with The 42, the Freddie Roach-trained southpaw hasn’t yet had a chance to watch back his unanimous-decision victory over Vargas Jr.
But whatever about what he sees when he eventually gets the chance to sit down and pick the bones of it, Walsh may not especially enjoy what he hears.
Perhaps partly as a result of having just witnessed a true epic between super-middleweights Christian Mbilli and Lester Martinez, the Netflix broadcast team sounded underwhelmed by Walsh and Vargas’ long-awaited showdown.
Analyst Max Kellerman, in particular, was politely critical of Walsh’s performance. The former HBO Boxing favourite seemed flabbergasted when the Cork man was awarded a near-whitewash unanimous decision.
Kellerman was surely in the minority, though. Walsh out-gunned Vargas virtually from pillar to post, and yet it was a competitive, decent scrap. That it didn’t excite those who called it for the millions of English-language viewers was a pity.
But commentary teams can have off nights wherein one dissenting voice — and particularly one which pretends to be as authoritative as Kellerman’s — can colour the impressions of those around him.
And based on what he could feel in the ring, Walsh is willing to accept the reproval of Netflix’s shot-callers — at least to a point.
“I knew I wasn’t performing to my best”, he says. “But I still won every round — bar one round on two of the judges’ scorecards — so, like, if that’s not good enough against a 17-0 fighter…” Walsh shrugs. “You know what I mean?”
“It was just one of those things where I didn’t feel nervous on the night, I didn’t feel any pressure when I was going in there, but then after the first round, I came back and I was like, ‘Ah, I’m not really performing,’” Walsh expands. “That’s when I started putting a lot of pressure on myself: ‘C’mon. C’mon. Do it. Go out and throw the combinations, be fast, get the knockout.’
“I think I put too much pressure on myself in the corner instead of just, like, trying to relax and trying to just go through it, y’know? I tried to force it too much once I felt like I wasn’t really performing.”
In other words, Walsh felt exactly as one would expect a 15-fight prospect to feel while competing for the first time on a card of such magnitude.
That is, in fact, the very point of fights like his against Vargas Jr: to experience those inner doubts and learn how to navigate them before eventually moving onto even higher stakes.
“Well, exactly, yeah,” Walsh laughs.
Like, it was my first fight at that level. Seventy thousand people, a heavy Mexican crowd and I’m fighting against a Mexican with a legendary father in the fight game (Fernando Vargas Sr, who trains his son, was a two-time light-middleweight world champion).
“They (the Vargases) have a lot of experience in that kind of environment, they had a good plan, and it was tough. There were times where I felt like he didn’t really want to engage as much as I would have liked to.
“But I do think people also forget that I’m 24 years old,” Walsh smiles.
And for Walsh, the former Irish Senior finalist who sneaked into America and doorstepped Freddie Roach when Ireland was effectively shut down during the pandemic, last Saturday’s adventure had a taste of more off it.
Walsh was in good hands not only with his Hall-of-Fame coach but with the UFC, whose president Dana White co-promoted the entire Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford bill alongside Saudi Arabian boxing tycoon Turki Alalshikh. White has also effectively co-promoted Walsh since first being introduced to the Cork man by his contracted promoter, the highly regarded Tom Loeffler, in 2022.
“The overall experience, the whole week, was unbelievable,” Walsh says. “It was run exactly like a UFC show: they provided meals for me, they gave me rehydration drinks.
“I went to the UFC PI (Performance Institute). They did the whole weight cut with me the night before. The UFC staff and the staff at the PI — that was the best thing ever, honestly. I was very grateful for them. They did basically everything for me, helping me as much as they could.
“And my overall take from the whole week was that it was probably the best fight week I ever had because it was so well organised, it was so well put together.
“The crowd, even if it was a Mexican-heavy crowd, I enjoyed it at the end of the day.
I was sitting in my corner, I’d look up, and directly in front of me, you had Dana White, Turki, Mr Beast and Jason Statham. I kept kinda looking up to see them, just like, ‘That is the most random front row I’ve ever seen.’ Mark Wahlberg was over to my right then.
“It was mad, y’know? But it was a lot of fun. I was very grateful for the opportunity, grateful just to have been there.”
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Walsh is already world-ranked and after 10 rounds in which he took a few thumps but dished out plenty more, the temptation might be to leave him on ice until the new year.
He’ll almost certainly fight on St Patrick’s Weekend, where this year he headlined at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, picking up where Michael Conlan left off.
That he has settled down with an active UFC fighter dictates that he tends to eat right and train away during his downtime in any case. Plus, he’s bound to develop ‘farm strength’ over the coming months.
But there are no holidays planned after his career-biggest victory to date. The phone will be set to loud out the back of the new farmhouse.
“I’m gonna see what happens,” Walsh says. “Turki asked me if I’d be ready in November and I said, ‘Yeah, just give me a call.’
“But obviously it’s not just my decision. I need to talk to the team and talk to everyone, see what their thoughts are. Dana might have a different plan or Tom might have a different plan for me. But yeah, if they want me to fight in November, no problem.
“I’ll get back in the gym next week, I suppose,” Walsh smiles.
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Callum Walsh open to ring return in November after Vegas success, but first he must build fences
THAT LAST SATURDAY’S super-middleweight meeting of Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Terence Crawford in Las Vegas was billed as a battle to determine ‘The GOAT of this Era’ was an annoying misnomer: GOAT used to mean Greatest of All Time, feck your eras.
In any case, Callum Walsh is more preoccupied with the here and now and, most pressingly, the goats out the back of his gaff.
Days after earning his career-biggest victory as chief support to the biggest boxing fight of the decade, Cork light-middleweight Walsh takes a video call while hopping between his kitchen and his back garden in Ventura, California.
“I’ve actually been in the process of moving house while preparing for the fight,” says Walsh [15-0, 11KOs], who soundly defeated fellow unbeaten prospect and son-of-legend Fernando Vargas Jr [17-1, 15KOs] in front of 70-odd-thousand fans at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium — and in front of several million more live on Netflix — last Saturday night.
Walsh and his partner, Brazilian UFC strawweight Tabatha ‘Baby Shark’ Ricci, have together purchased a large farmhouse to support their growing stable of animals: Dogs, chickens and goats so far, with cows destined to follow. They’re all going to need their own pens in the new place, and the goats — they’re of the particularly springy, Nigerian dwarf breed — are proving harder to fence in than a pack of velociraptors.
The closest Walsh ever came to farming back home in Cobh was when he worked on the sea: in his late teens, the former amateur standout hauled lobster pots in Cork Harbour to pay for petrol and sustain his boxing career at the Riverstown club in Glanmire.
Now 24, halfway across the world, Walsh is about to become not only a small farmer but one of the few Irish people his age to own their own home.
“I could have never imagined it, y’know, and thank God it all worked out,” Walsh says.
“It’ll definitely make me stick around here for another five, six years. I suppose I always knew that I’d be here for my career, until I finished fighting.
“But the best thing about owning a house is you can always sell it, you know what I mean?” the boxer laughs.
“My end-goal, really… I want to get to Spain. And even if it was in seven or eight years’ time, with the house prices in California, I could sell the house here and I could probably buy 10 of them in Spain, so…”
Walsh got home from Vegas, where he earned his 15th professional win, at around midnight on Sunday. By seven o’clock on Monday morning, he was outside the new farmhouse, building fences. Much to his chagrin, the goats leapt clean over their new boundary within seconds of its first field test.
As such, by the time of his midweek Zoom call with The 42, the Freddie Roach-trained southpaw hasn’t yet had a chance to watch back his unanimous-decision victory over Vargas Jr.
But whatever about what he sees when he eventually gets the chance to sit down and pick the bones of it, Walsh may not especially enjoy what he hears.
Perhaps partly as a result of having just witnessed a true epic between super-middleweights Christian Mbilli and Lester Martinez, the Netflix broadcast team sounded underwhelmed by Walsh and Vargas’ long-awaited showdown.
Analyst Max Kellerman, in particular, was politely critical of Walsh’s performance. The former HBO Boxing favourite seemed flabbergasted when the Cork man was awarded a near-whitewash unanimous decision.
Kellerman was surely in the minority, though. Walsh out-gunned Vargas virtually from pillar to post, and yet it was a competitive, decent scrap. That it didn’t excite those who called it for the millions of English-language viewers was a pity.
But commentary teams can have off nights wherein one dissenting voice — and particularly one which pretends to be as authoritative as Kellerman’s — can colour the impressions of those around him.
And based on what he could feel in the ring, Walsh is willing to accept the reproval of Netflix’s shot-callers — at least to a point.
“I knew I wasn’t performing to my best”, he says. “But I still won every round — bar one round on two of the judges’ scorecards — so, like, if that’s not good enough against a 17-0 fighter…” Walsh shrugs. “You know what I mean?”
“It was just one of those things where I didn’t feel nervous on the night, I didn’t feel any pressure when I was going in there, but then after the first round, I came back and I was like, ‘Ah, I’m not really performing,’” Walsh expands. “That’s when I started putting a lot of pressure on myself: ‘C’mon. C’mon. Do it. Go out and throw the combinations, be fast, get the knockout.’
“I think I put too much pressure on myself in the corner instead of just, like, trying to relax and trying to just go through it, y’know? I tried to force it too much once I felt like I wasn’t really performing.”
In other words, Walsh felt exactly as one would expect a 15-fight prospect to feel while competing for the first time on a card of such magnitude.
That is, in fact, the very point of fights like his against Vargas Jr: to experience those inner doubts and learn how to navigate them before eventually moving onto even higher stakes.
“Well, exactly, yeah,” Walsh laughs.
“They (the Vargases) have a lot of experience in that kind of environment, they had a good plan, and it was tough. There were times where I felt like he didn’t really want to engage as much as I would have liked to.
“But I do think people also forget that I’m 24 years old,” Walsh smiles.
And for Walsh, the former Irish Senior finalist who sneaked into America and doorstepped Freddie Roach when Ireland was effectively shut down during the pandemic, last Saturday’s adventure had a taste of more off it.
Walsh was in good hands not only with his Hall-of-Fame coach but with the UFC, whose president Dana White co-promoted the entire Canelo Alvarez-Terence Crawford bill alongside Saudi Arabian boxing tycoon Turki Alalshikh. White has also effectively co-promoted Walsh since first being introduced to the Cork man by his contracted promoter, the highly regarded Tom Loeffler, in 2022.
“The overall experience, the whole week, was unbelievable,” Walsh says. “It was run exactly like a UFC show: they provided meals for me, they gave me rehydration drinks.
“I went to the UFC PI (Performance Institute). They did the whole weight cut with me the night before. The UFC staff and the staff at the PI — that was the best thing ever, honestly. I was very grateful for them. They did basically everything for me, helping me as much as they could.
“And my overall take from the whole week was that it was probably the best fight week I ever had because it was so well organised, it was so well put together.
“The crowd, even if it was a Mexican-heavy crowd, I enjoyed it at the end of the day.
“It was mad, y’know? But it was a lot of fun. I was very grateful for the opportunity, grateful just to have been there.”
Walsh is already world-ranked and after 10 rounds in which he took a few thumps but dished out plenty more, the temptation might be to leave him on ice until the new year.
He’ll almost certainly fight on St Patrick’s Weekend, where this year he headlined at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, picking up where Michael Conlan left off.
That he has settled down with an active UFC fighter dictates that he tends to eat right and train away during his downtime in any case. Plus, he’s bound to develop ‘farm strength’ over the coming months.
But there are no holidays planned after his career-biggest victory to date. The phone will be set to loud out the back of the new farmhouse.
“I’m gonna see what happens,” Walsh says. “Turki asked me if I’d be ready in November and I said, ‘Yeah, just give me a call.’
“But obviously it’s not just my decision. I need to talk to the team and talk to everyone, see what their thoughts are. Dana might have a different plan or Tom might have a different plan for me. But yeah, if they want me to fight in November, no problem.
“I’ll get back in the gym next week, I suppose,” Walsh smiles.
But first, that bloody fence.
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Boxing Callum Walsh farm strength