ADAM OLANIYAN’S FAMILY home sits just a stone’s throw from Jobstown Boxing Club, the gym from which he became a world champion and two-time European gold medallist in the underage amateur ranks.
A self-professed introvert, Olaniyan typically spends the afterglow of victory with his pals, his parents, his younger brother Josh — at least when he’s not away winning amateur medals in his own right — and the family’s beloved dog, Rick, so named for Josh’s love of the animated sitcom Rick and Morty (Josh’s initial proposition that the Olaniyans christen their Cane Corso ‘Morty’ suffered a unanimous-decision defeat).
In an ideal world, Adam would still be at home now, stretching his six-foot-six frame across the couch and adding a feed of grub to his 260-odd pounds’ weight after earning a third professional victory at the 3Arena earlier this month.
For the moment, however, the 20-year-old exists instead in some kind of dream world. After improving his record in the paid ranks to 3-0 (3KOs), Ireland’s hottest heavyweight prospect in decades spent just three days in Tallaght before heading back to his training base in Liverpool. In a fortnight’s time, Olaniyan’s name will echo around Croke Park as he makes the fourth ring-walk of his fledgling professional career. He and his eventual opponent will become the first heavies to box at the home of Gaelic games since Muhammad Ali defeated Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at the same venue 54 years ago.
Adam Olaniyan. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
“I don’t really know how to make sense of it, to be completely honest,” Olaniyan tells The 42.
“When I found out, it was a bit of a ‘woah’ moment type of thing.
“It was like, this got sprung upon me: ‘Yeah, you’re fighting at Croke Park, and guess what? The last person to fight there was Muhammad Ali.’
“I hadn’t even thought about that aspect to it initially. I was more just like, ‘Aw, yeah, yup Croke Park!’ Olaniyan laughs.
“And then they brought the Muhammad Ali thing into the picture”, he adds, puffing his cheeks, “and then I was a bit more like, ‘Right…’”
“This was obviously before my third fight on 1 August, too, so I didn’t want to get too ahead of myself; I did have a job to do before any of this could even happen.
“But now I’m kind of… I’m sitting on it a bit,” Olaniyan smiles.
Adam Olaniyan in action at the 3Arena. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
He proceeds to stress that his upcoming bout, on the undercard of Katie Taylor’s sold-out swansong against Flora Pili, is “just a fight”; that he can’t concern himself with the magnitude of the event when there will ultimately stand across from him another man whose sole intent will be to punch him in the face.
It’s business, Olaniyan insists. It’s heavyweight boxing. You’re only ever one punch away from the arse falling out of your career.
“I can look back on it in years to come and think, ‘Wow, that was unbelievable’,” he adds.
It’s a highly professional attitude, certainly. It might even sound good in a dressing-room interview with RTÉ or DAZN a few minutes before first bell in a couple of weeks. But at the same time, come off it.
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A 20-year-old heavyweight prospect from Dublin following in the footsteps of The Greatest, and equally propping up a farewell to Ireland’s greatest, in front of tens of thousands of fans at the spiritual home of Irish sport? Just another fight, but there might not be another fight like it.
It would be a shame, surely, for Olaniyan to deny the tummy butterflies their dance; to allow himself to only retrospectively embrace a moment so profoundly vivid, so seminal, while being one of the rare few who live and breathe it from its epicentre.
“Well, yeah,” he laughs.
“I’m like… It’s like anything in life, isn’t it? You just want to be as present as possible in every single moment of every single situation.
“So, I have been working on that: just being present, being myself in the moment, soaking everything up, but also not getting carried away.
I am looking forward to experiencing the moment, almost being stood still in time, just being there. Because, like, when I tell my kids about that one day, hopefully I’ll be able to say, ‘That’s what I was feeling then, this was what was going through my head then… But I wasn’t getting carried away, I had business to take care of,’ y’know that kind of way?
“Being able to show them what sport — sport full stop — means to Irish people…” Olaniyan continues. “I can’t wait for that day, one day, when I have the feet up on the coffee table, and I’m an old man reading the newspaper, and I’m telling all the little kids, ‘This is what I did. That’s what it’s like to fight at Croke Park.’
“But to be able to do that, I have to just be as focused and switched-on as possible on the night. And yeah, I’ll be present at the same time.”
Like many of us, Olaniyan will burn the ears off his future children, and their kids in turn, about the woman who intends to retire as a three-time, two-weight undisputed champion on 5 September.
Katie Taylor and the Frank Warren-promoted youngster share a manager in Brian Peters. Taylor has equally become a key figure in guiding Olaniyan’s young career, lending an ear to his curiosities and complaints as he dips his fingers in the punch-for-pay ranks.
Katie Taylor applauds Adam Olaniyan's debut victory. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Olaniyan gushes that Taylor is available to him “all the time”. He saves his bigger questions for when they chew the fat in person, conscious of not annoying Taylor with lengthy text messages while she herself is immersed in her final training camp across the Atlantic.
The 2012 Olympic gold medallist, he explains, has already advised him to block out the innumerable irritations of the industry in which he now works.
“Whenever I have any queries, whenever I have any questions, whenever anything pops up that I think of, [Taylor will provide advice]. Like, we share the same faith, we’re both Christians,” Olaniyan says, “and the first thing I ever asked Katie was, like, ‘How do you stay so grounded in such a horrible, backstabbing, malicious game like boxing, where people can just turn their backs on you in the blink of an eye? How do you stay so focused and so just humble and nice? How have you not been changed by it?’
“And she just said, ‘Look, I don’t pay attention to any of that stuff. The only thing I pay attention to is God.’
“And like, for me, her way of putting it into just such a simple form, that was like, ‘Wow.’ I’d never thought about it in such simple terms. I’d always thought, like, ‘I have to do this, this and this if I want to stay away from these people who are going to take my money…’ Y’know, the old boxing stories, like.
“Katie’s a great person to know, to be associated with in a sense, and just to have her wisdom.
“Because, look, she’s at the end. She’s where I’m trying to get to way down the line. She has experienced everything in boxing. I said it to her the last time we were speaking, ‘Katie, you know you’ve actually completed boxing — like, three or four times.’ Like, even just as an amateur, she won more major gold medals than I have fingers… literally!
“And she just laughed.
“Even before my professional debut, I told her I was probably going to be making my debut at the 3Arena on 14 March, and she just goes, ‘I’ll be there.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m gonna make it my priority to be there.’
She flew all the way from America to come and be there for my debut, y’know what I mean? That’s who Katie Taylor is.
Olaniyan’s talent, combined with market demands, may take him the other way across the Atlantic one day. The future of heavyweight boxing, however, might well unfold more locally, to either side of the Irish Sea.
It’s still an abstract prospect given their respective career junctures, but there exists the potential for a Steve Collins-Chris Eubank-Nigel Benn-style round robin between the 20-year-old Irishman Olaniyan [3-0, 3KOs], the 19-year-old Englishman Leo Atang [8-0, 7KOs], and the 21-year-old Moses Itauma [14-0, 12KOs], also of England, who faces Filip Hrgovic on 29 August for the vacant IBF world title.
Where the young heavyweights’ three-way rivalry may differ from the 1990s’ super-middleweight scene, however, is that there is no obvious Roy Jones type to profess his superiority from Stateside. Olaniyan, Atang and Itauma, the latter of whom is operating in a different league for now, are considered blue-chip prospects even in America, where there are few notable equivalents.
Still, Frank Warren, who promotes Olaniyan and Itauma, and Eddie Hearn who steers the career of Atang, will likely keep their up-and-comers apart until there are world-title belts, stadium events, and millions of quid at stake. The absolute hames they’ve conspired to make of the Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua rivalry should be considered a cautionary tale, as should the sudden career demise of Liverpool’s David Price who, until he was stopped by American veteran Tony Thompson in 2013, belonged to the same feverish chatter as the up-and-coming ‘Gypsy King’ and ‘AJ’.
Olaniyan celebrates. Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
Olaniyan these days winces at being asked about Itauma and Atang, with the latter of whom he has a cordial relationship. He feels certain that they’ll all meet somewhere down the line, but warns that “the picture can change very quickly”.
Introverted or not, Olaniyan’s demonstrable charisma, conviviality and eloquence would certainly appeal to general publics in lands far beyond Ireland. But only if he can marry those qualities to the fulfilment of his potential will he reach the masses to begin with.
For all its fistic pedigree as a small nation, Ireland has never had a heavyweight boxing world champion. But it has also never boasted a boxer of Olaniyan’s frame, power and technical talent.
The road ahead will be treacherous, certainly: through three early stoppage wins against lowly opposition, he has yet to be asked the kind of question that would put him on the back foot. But Adam Olaniyan’s mission is straightforward in writing.
“Yeah, listen, I wanna carry Irish boxing on my back,” he says. “Katie Taylor’s been doing it for however long she’s been boxing, y’know? She’s kind of been the one to hold it up.
“But now, look, we have a couple of world champions: Aaron McKenna the other week and Anthony Cacace. We’ve just never had that figure at heavyweight. Kevin McBride, obviously, beat a version of Mike Tyson that wasn’t really Mike Tyson, and it wasn’t for a title.
“You know, when people look back in years to come and they’re like, ‘Remember that Irish heavyweight?’ I want to be that Irish heavyweight!
“I want to be a household name, the Irish heavyweight; the guy that’s brought Irish heavyweight boxing from nowhere to world-championship level.
“And I look forward to doing that because the Irish supporters have been so good to me throughout the amateur system, winning Europeans, winning the Worlds. The ovation that I got for my walkout in the 3Arena a couple of weeks ago was unbelievable, and I didn’t expect it.
“So, it just goes to show, the people are starting to get behind me and I do appreciate it. It really means a lot.
“I’d love to be the one that they get behind in future even more. I’ll bring them with me.”
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'I want to be the guy that's brought Irish heavyweight boxing from nowhere to world-championship level'
ADAM OLANIYAN’S FAMILY home sits just a stone’s throw from Jobstown Boxing Club, the gym from which he became a world champion and two-time European gold medallist in the underage amateur ranks.
A self-professed introvert, Olaniyan typically spends the afterglow of victory with his pals, his parents, his younger brother Josh — at least when he’s not away winning amateur medals in his own right — and the family’s beloved dog, Rick, so named for Josh’s love of the animated sitcom Rick and Morty (Josh’s initial proposition that the Olaniyans christen their Cane Corso ‘Morty’ suffered a unanimous-decision defeat).
In an ideal world, Adam would still be at home now, stretching his six-foot-six frame across the couch and adding a feed of grub to his 260-odd pounds’ weight after earning a third professional victory at the 3Arena earlier this month.
For the moment, however, the 20-year-old exists instead in some kind of dream world. After improving his record in the paid ranks to 3-0 (3KOs), Ireland’s hottest heavyweight prospect in decades spent just three days in Tallaght before heading back to his training base in Liverpool. In a fortnight’s time, Olaniyan’s name will echo around Croke Park as he makes the fourth ring-walk of his fledgling professional career. He and his eventual opponent will become the first heavies to box at the home of Gaelic games since Muhammad Ali defeated Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at the same venue 54 years ago.
“I don’t really know how to make sense of it, to be completely honest,” Olaniyan tells The 42.
“When I found out, it was a bit of a ‘woah’ moment type of thing.
“It was like, this got sprung upon me: ‘Yeah, you’re fighting at Croke Park, and guess what? The last person to fight there was Muhammad Ali.’
“I hadn’t even thought about that aspect to it initially. I was more just like, ‘Aw, yeah, yup Croke Park!’ Olaniyan laughs.
“And then they brought the Muhammad Ali thing into the picture”, he adds, puffing his cheeks, “and then I was a bit more like, ‘Right…’”
“This was obviously before my third fight on 1 August, too, so I didn’t want to get too ahead of myself; I did have a job to do before any of this could even happen.
“But now I’m kind of… I’m sitting on it a bit,” Olaniyan smiles.
He proceeds to stress that his upcoming bout, on the undercard of Katie Taylor’s sold-out swansong against Flora Pili, is “just a fight”; that he can’t concern himself with the magnitude of the event when there will ultimately stand across from him another man whose sole intent will be to punch him in the face.
It’s business, Olaniyan insists. It’s heavyweight boxing. You’re only ever one punch away from the arse falling out of your career.
“I can look back on it in years to come and think, ‘Wow, that was unbelievable’,” he adds.
It’s a highly professional attitude, certainly. It might even sound good in a dressing-room interview with RTÉ or DAZN a few minutes before first bell in a couple of weeks. But at the same time, come off it.
A 20-year-old heavyweight prospect from Dublin following in the footsteps of The Greatest, and equally propping up a farewell to Ireland’s greatest, in front of tens of thousands of fans at the spiritual home of Irish sport? Just another fight, but there might not be another fight like it.
It would be a shame, surely, for Olaniyan to deny the tummy butterflies their dance; to allow himself to only retrospectively embrace a moment so profoundly vivid, so seminal, while being one of the rare few who live and breathe it from its epicentre.
“Well, yeah,” he laughs.
“I’m like… It’s like anything in life, isn’t it? You just want to be as present as possible in every single moment of every single situation.
“So, I have been working on that: just being present, being myself in the moment, soaking everything up, but also not getting carried away.
“Being able to show them what sport — sport full stop — means to Irish people…” Olaniyan continues. “I can’t wait for that day, one day, when I have the feet up on the coffee table, and I’m an old man reading the newspaper, and I’m telling all the little kids, ‘This is what I did. That’s what it’s like to fight at Croke Park.’
“But to be able to do that, I have to just be as focused and switched-on as possible on the night. And yeah, I’ll be present at the same time.”
Like many of us, Olaniyan will burn the ears off his future children, and their kids in turn, about the woman who intends to retire as a three-time, two-weight undisputed champion on 5 September.
Katie Taylor and the Frank Warren-promoted youngster share a manager in Brian Peters. Taylor has equally become a key figure in guiding Olaniyan’s young career, lending an ear to his curiosities and complaints as he dips his fingers in the punch-for-pay ranks.
Olaniyan gushes that Taylor is available to him “all the time”. He saves his bigger questions for when they chew the fat in person, conscious of not annoying Taylor with lengthy text messages while she herself is immersed in her final training camp across the Atlantic.
The 2012 Olympic gold medallist, he explains, has already advised him to block out the innumerable irritations of the industry in which he now works.
“Whenever I have any queries, whenever I have any questions, whenever anything pops up that I think of, [Taylor will provide advice]. Like, we share the same faith, we’re both Christians,” Olaniyan says, “and the first thing I ever asked Katie was, like, ‘How do you stay so grounded in such a horrible, backstabbing, malicious game like boxing, where people can just turn their backs on you in the blink of an eye? How do you stay so focused and so just humble and nice? How have you not been changed by it?’
“And she just said, ‘Look, I don’t pay attention to any of that stuff. The only thing I pay attention to is God.’
“And like, for me, her way of putting it into just such a simple form, that was like, ‘Wow.’ I’d never thought about it in such simple terms. I’d always thought, like, ‘I have to do this, this and this if I want to stay away from these people who are going to take my money…’ Y’know, the old boxing stories, like.
“Katie’s a great person to know, to be associated with in a sense, and just to have her wisdom.
“Because, look, she’s at the end. She’s where I’m trying to get to way down the line. She has experienced everything in boxing. I said it to her the last time we were speaking, ‘Katie, you know you’ve actually completed boxing — like, three or four times.’ Like, even just as an amateur, she won more major gold medals than I have fingers… literally!
“And she just laughed.
“Even before my professional debut, I told her I was probably going to be making my debut at the 3Arena on 14 March, and she just goes, ‘I’ll be there.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m gonna make it my priority to be there.’
Olaniyan’s talent, combined with market demands, may take him the other way across the Atlantic one day. The future of heavyweight boxing, however, might well unfold more locally, to either side of the Irish Sea.
It’s still an abstract prospect given their respective career junctures, but there exists the potential for a Steve Collins-Chris Eubank-Nigel Benn-style round robin between the 20-year-old Irishman Olaniyan [3-0, 3KOs], the 19-year-old Englishman Leo Atang [8-0, 7KOs], and the 21-year-old Moses Itauma [14-0, 12KOs], also of England, who faces Filip Hrgovic on 29 August for the vacant IBF world title.
Where the young heavyweights’ three-way rivalry may differ from the 1990s’ super-middleweight scene, however, is that there is no obvious Roy Jones type to profess his superiority from Stateside. Olaniyan, Atang and Itauma, the latter of whom is operating in a different league for now, are considered blue-chip prospects even in America, where there are few notable equivalents.
Still, Frank Warren, who promotes Olaniyan and Itauma, and Eddie Hearn who steers the career of Atang, will likely keep their up-and-comers apart until there are world-title belts, stadium events, and millions of quid at stake. The absolute hames they’ve conspired to make of the Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua rivalry should be considered a cautionary tale, as should the sudden career demise of Liverpool’s David Price who, until he was stopped by American veteran Tony Thompson in 2013, belonged to the same feverish chatter as the up-and-coming ‘Gypsy King’ and ‘AJ’.
Olaniyan these days winces at being asked about Itauma and Atang, with the latter of whom he has a cordial relationship. He feels certain that they’ll all meet somewhere down the line, but warns that “the picture can change very quickly”.
Introverted or not, Olaniyan’s demonstrable charisma, conviviality and eloquence would certainly appeal to general publics in lands far beyond Ireland. But only if he can marry those qualities to the fulfilment of his potential will he reach the masses to begin with.
For all its fistic pedigree as a small nation, Ireland has never had a heavyweight boxing world champion. But it has also never boasted a boxer of Olaniyan’s frame, power and technical talent.
The road ahead will be treacherous, certainly: through three early stoppage wins against lowly opposition, he has yet to be asked the kind of question that would put him on the back foot. But Adam Olaniyan’s mission is straightforward in writing.
“Yeah, listen, I wanna carry Irish boxing on my back,” he says. “Katie Taylor’s been doing it for however long she’s been boxing, y’know? She’s kind of been the one to hold it up.
“But now, look, we have a couple of world champions: Aaron McKenna the other week and Anthony Cacace. We’ve just never had that figure at heavyweight. Kevin McBride, obviously, beat a version of Mike Tyson that wasn’t really Mike Tyson, and it wasn’t for a title.
“You know, when people look back in years to come and they’re like, ‘Remember that Irish heavyweight?’ I want to be that Irish heavyweight!
“I want to be a household name, the Irish heavyweight; the guy that’s brought Irish heavyweight boxing from nowhere to world-championship level.
“And I look forward to doing that because the Irish supporters have been so good to me throughout the amateur system, winning Europeans, winning the Worlds. The ovation that I got for my walkout in the 3Arena a couple of weeks ago was unbelievable, and I didn’t expect it.
“So, it just goes to show, the people are starting to get behind me and I do appreciate it. It really means a lot.
“I’d love to be the one that they get behind in future even more. I’ll bring them with me.”
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