LAST UPDATE | 21 Jul 2022
ONE OF THE parts of a prizefighter’s profession which those of us who pursue an easier means of living will never experience is having people dedicate their weekend to watching you perform your job.
For boxers, like entertainers, it can become an occupational certainty to the point of being taken for granted. Few examine the honour in any great detail; they ‘appreciate the fans’ in post-fight interviews, sure, but so necessarily insular is their existence, they’re rarely in the frame of mind to fully appreciate the efforts made by the fans to roar them on in faraway arenas.
But Caoimhín Agyarko, an Irishman who has thus far boxed exclusively in England as a professional, is acutely aware that his boxing journey is composed of thousands of other journeys.
The unbeaten Belfast switch-hitter (12-0, 7KOs), who recently won his 12th fight at London’s O2 Arena — a fun but convincing unanimous-decision win over the never-stopped Pole Lukasz Maciec (now 28-5-1, 5KOs) — is keen to give back to his supporters in glory what they have already invested in him in time and money.
“D’you know what? It’s overwhelming at times,” he tells The42. “And it’s not even just people coming over to support me from Ireland; I’ve got friends and fans in England, Scotland and stuff as well and they’re coming to watch me especially. That’s a privilege.
“But to be honest, especially with fans flying over from Ireland… That’s why I want to push so hard to get a big fight back home: to repay them by bringing a night back to Belfast or back to Ireland in general.
I’d love to repay them for always travelling to come to see me because I know it’s not cheap! It’s expensive to be buying flights, hotels, tickets for the fight, the whole night… Like, that could work out at around a thousand or fifteen-hundred quid, d’you know what I mean? I don’t take it for granted that people are spending that kind of money just to come and support me. That’s a real honour and I just hope to be able to repay that support not only with success in the ring, but by being able to bring big fights back to Belfast or to Ireland.
Agyarko has already earned a luxury that not many professional boxers his age get to enjoy as a result of their ringcraft alone: he’s financially sound, at least for a 25-year-old with no dependents. He intends to soon purchase his first home in Belfast.
‘Black Thunder’ is a homebird. While he trains in London, at the iBox Gym in Bromley which has become a hive of high-level prospects (including most recently his compatriot, Dublin’s Pierce ‘Big Bang’ O’Leary [10-0, 6KOs]), he has no aspirations to ever permanently relocate to the English capital. Indeed, he only trains there for 12 weeks at a time to entirely remove himself from home comforts.
Camps with trainer Eddie Lam are hardly a luxury but in pro boxing terms, to be able to up sticks for months at a time in order to further your training absolutely is one: Agyarko is a full-time athlete, his freedom from the 9-to-5 furrow ploughed by most of his peers made possible by a combination of sponsors and the fact that his career is being steered by a management team in Paul Ready’s Second to None (STN) who know what they’re doing: again, a rarity in their own line of work.
Ready and STN negotiate on Agyarko’s behalf with the company that promotes him, Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom, to ensure the former Irish amateur champion receives commensurate buck for his bang, even at this formative stage of his career.
A man that in a very short period of time has done more for me than most I’ve known forever. Thankful & blessed to have this man guiding my career 🙏🏾 only the start 😎 pic.twitter.com/y3kgZQBNsh
— Caoimhín Agyarko (@caoimhinagyarko) March 16, 2022
Agyarko is plainly grateful for the people with which he has surrounded himself since he left Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions following a period of career stagnation in the second half of 2020/first half of 2021. But while his first three fights under STN and Hearn’s banner, the latest at his new weight of 154 pounds, have been about reacquainting himself with the British boxing public, Agyarko will be beating the bodhrán for a maiden outing on home soil as one of his next three.
“I want to be the first black Irish world champion and I want to do that in Ireland,” he says.
I feel like I have a small portion of the Irish population behind me right now, and I feel like to fill somebody like Carl Frampton’s boots in Belfast or to become the big-name Irish professional boxer across the country the way Katie [Taylor] is now, you have to fight back home regularly. It can’t just be once a year or once every two years.
“I’m often asked when I’m going to fight in America or when I’m going to fight here or there — and the thing is, I have no real aspirations to be fighting in America or even fighting in England. My ideal situation would be to fight back home three or four times a year; fight in my home city and give fans historic nights. I’m going to be pushing Eddie [Hearn] harder than ever to make that happen, and try to fight at home firstly if not at the end of the year, the start of next year.
I want to become an icon for Irish fight fans and for Irish people generally. And that starts at home.
In keeping with that theme, one of the prospective opponents most loudly linked to Agyarko for the next stage of his progression has been that of Cork’s ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan (31-5, 21KOs). Promoter Eddie Hearn has been banging his own drum for that one, originally for a potential Katie Taylor Croke Park date which has been pushed back into pipedream territory for next year, but again following Agyarko’s win over Maciec in London earlier this month.
It would be a dictionary-definition crossroads bout between a hungry up-and-comer in Agyarko and an admired war horse in O’Sullivan whose well could conceivably be running dry at 38.
The moustached Mahon man again gave a good account of himself at world level albeit in defeat to Erislandy Lara at middleweight last time out. It would have marked the end of the road for a lot of boxers of his vintage but O’Sullivan is one who only ever seems to be one victory away from another crack at the bigtime such is his marketability as a game challenger.
In theory, Agyarko could be the victory that would once again open the door for Spike. But Agyarko himself knows well that there are also easier paths back to the fringes of title contention for a fighter whom he sincerely respects, regardless of whether or not they ever meet in the middle.
“Without doubt, I’d fight Spike,” says the Belfast man.
I really rate Spike and respect what he’s done in his career: he’s been in with some top, top names and he punches very hard. I’d love to test myself against him in an all-Irish dust-up. It’d create some talk, wouldn’t it?
“And listen, the fights with the likes of Jason Quigley, Luke Keeler, Spike — if any of them can make light-middleweight, I’m open to any of them. I’m not calling anyone out — that’s not the way I go about my business — but I do want to be in big, exciting fights.
“But just on the Spike fight, there,” Agyarko adds. “If I beat Spike O’Sullivan, it’s a good name on my record, fair enough. Spike beats me? He’s not really much better off in his career, beating a prospect coming up.
“And the way I always explain this stage of my career is: ‘Who needs Caoimhín Agyarko?’
“Until I’ve got something to offer, none of these big names are going to want to fight me. I’m an up-and-coming prospect who’s a genuine threat to them but unless I have a European title or a major belt which is going to really help their career, it’s probably too big a risk for them.
People mention me fighting the likes of Spike, JJ Metcalf (WBA #5, 23-2, 14KOs), but from their point of view it’s ‘Why would I fight Caoimhín Agyarko?’ D’you know what I mean? Where does Spike go if I beat him? He’s more or less retired. If I beat JJ Metcalf, where does he go? He’s just off a big win [an upset v Kerman Lejarraga in Bilbao], he wants to fight for a world title or maybe get a big-money fight. He’s not going to want to fight me with less on the table at the moment.
“‘Who needs Caoimhín Agyarko?’ the man himself reiterates. “And that’s a downside of boxing because I’m a fighting man, I’ll fight anyone and I don’t really care; I’m not into all of the politics and stuff like that. But I do understand the game as much as anybody else, I understand that it’s a business and it’s got to make sense for everybody. It’s not like the olden days where everybody fights everybody and who cares if you take a loss.
And I do understand, as well, a fighter gets beat and suddenly social media is saying, ‘Aw, he’s shit,’ or ‘he took an ‘L.” So, you can’t win! You protect the ‘O’ in your record? You’re fighting nobodies. You don’t protect your ‘O’, you take a 50-50 and you lose? You’re useless.
Agyarko, active online as are most 25-year-olds, has consumed enough of ‘Boxing Twitter’ to know that in the eyes of many armchair fans, a fighter is either a has-been or a never-gonna-be.
“Like… How can people call ‘AJ’ (Anthony Joshua) shit?” he asks, fully aghast.
“I understand there are certain aspects of his game which maybe aren’t great, but a two-time unified champion of the world, an Olympic gold medalist and World Championship silver medalist: how can you call him shit? It makes no sense.
“Listen, hate him as a person if you want, or whatever else, but don’t knock his career!
“How can you knock a guy for losing to Oleksandr Usyk? Usyk is a once-in-a-lifetime fighter. He’s an absolute technician. People can say he’s a cruiserweight but I seem to recall Evander Holyfield moved up to heavyweight from cruiserweight and did fairly well for himself. David Haye came up and won a world title. And arguably, Usyk is a better technical fighter than both of them!
“Everyone says about boxing, ‘Oh, it should be more like the UFC: they just fight each other, no one cares about protecting records, blah blah blah.’ Look at Joshua’s CV, who he’s fought. But once people start taking losses, everyone writes them off. So, apparently it can’t be like the UFC.
“Records are for DJs. The greatest fighters of all time have been beat.
“I never want to get beat and I hope I never get beat, but you are going to have defeats — not only in the ring but in life,” adds Agyarko, who for the last five years has used the worst moment of his own life as fuel for his boxing dream. “It’s the way you bounce back from them.
“Too many fighters try to protect the ‘O’ and don’t wind up fighting against the best. I don’t really care because I believe in myself — I’ll fight the best and still protect my ‘O’.
“And if the day comes that I get beat, the goal will stay the same. I’m going to become the first black Irish world champion. I’m going to climb that ladder regardless.”
