Flip-flops-and-shorts life - Seconds out for the new Michael Conlan era

Sweeping down the Falls Road, Riddell's field, now Beechmount Leisure Centre, curves around the bend past where the Broadway cinema used to stand. The Royal Victoria Hospital, Dunville Park, the Springfield Road and Clonard: this is Michael Conlan territory.

Conlan won’t remember how the Broadway burned during the Troubles or how smouldering wreckage at almost every junction pock-marked road.

Conlan was born in 1991. The troubled city is not part of his baggage. But it is a tough area to grow up in and Beechmount and around the Springfield Road where he thrived has survived the demolition cranes that reconfigured the red-bricked terraces of the lower Falls some years ago.

Clonard, which has seen its fair share of death and violence, is the area where his mother, Teresa, was brought up. The violence has stopped, but there are other problems for the community to deal with.

A few months ago, the 24-year-old amateur world champion spoke of his early years of drug-taking, drinking and vandalism.

But Conlan made boxing his life when he won the Ulster senior title and realised that he was actually very good. Many of the kids he kicked around with ended up taking their own lives.

He now lives to the north of the city, in Mallusk, but the harum-scarum streets of his childhood are scarred by suicide. A report in July showed the extent of the blight.

Self-inflicted

The deaths of 318 people in the province last year were registered as self-inflicted. That was the highest annual figure since records began in 1970 and also a 19 per cent increase on the number recorded the previous year.

Conlan has that west Belfast boldness about him. Maybe that too is the heritage that comes with the city, one that largely governed itself for many decades and one where authorities are still trying to gain lost ground after years of mistrust.

Belfast’s natural default setting is to be anti-authoritarian and boy did Conlan express that side of him in Rio de Janeiro.

Belfast is home, and from his gym off the Springfield Road to the narrow terraces around Cavendish Street, the city has shaped him. It has made him who he is.

But in January he will leave it all behind, the gun metal skies for the blue skies of California. Another continent, another life, another career. Conlan is now a professional boxer and a debut on St Patrick's Day in the iconic Madison Square Garden next March has done for Conlan what it is doing for Katie Taylor. It is providing a fresh beginning.

“We’ll be going in January. Luisne [his daughter] and Shauna [his partner] are coming too,” he says. “I’m excited about it. I just wouldn’t be able to do it without them coming with me.

“Where I grew up is part of my mentality and to have seen where I could have gone, what direction I might have taken and then to come through that, I wouldn’t change that. Where I come from and where I grew up is part of what I am. I had good parents.

“Now there are a lot of big changes for me to make, change of lifestyle, moving away. I know I’ve got to go in and get settled, get things in place, get my fitness right. I’m going to be 25 for my debut, top bill on St Patrick’s Day. I’m not nervous about that. I’m excited.”

Son’s anger

Conlan's father John, who comes from Drimnagh in Dublin, shared his son's anger in Rio, when the judges called his bantamweight quarter-final bout in favour Vladimir Nikitin.

The Russian was so badly beaten by Conlan that he withdrew from the competition before his next fight.

It was a defining moment for Olympic boxing and a firm slamming of the shutters on Conlan’s amateur career.

He was always going to join his brother Jamie as a professional but the way it happened still rankles. Two months have passed, though, and he says he would deal with it differently if something similar ever happened again.

“Rio, that’s gone already,” he says. “But I look back proudly at my amateur career. I mean I was a European champion. I was a world champion. I have won every medal in boxing you can win.

“Had I gone professional after London I think it would have been a big mistake because I’ve got the experience of those years and you get confidence out of it too, which I wouldn’t have got if I turned pro back in 2012.

“If that ever happened to me again [being the victim of a hugely unjust decision] I suppose I would react differently to it.

“You know if I reacted the same way, it would look like I was a sore loser and I’m not a sore loser.

“What happened in Rio happened. What happened to me and for the reasons it happened – we know that now because of what happened afterwards, I feel I was justified.”

Conlan’s condemnation of Olympic boxing and the IOC as corrupt prompted the International Boxing Federation to send home six unnamed judges from Rio.

“If it ever happened again, I think I would be a lot more reserved, quiet and more confident in myself.”

He has had enough indirect experience of professional boxing to know exactly what it is he’s getting into. With Jamie fighting as a professional, he has grown with them pros and sparred with them almost as much as he has done with amateurs. His lateral movement is a professional trait, as is his strong upper body.

He hasn’t spoken to Taylor yet but knows she is on a similar sort of voyage, although there are qualitative differences. Katie is 30 years old, Michael is 24.

He comments that she is making the transition from Olympic boxing to the professional game quickly. Her debut is in November.

Conlan does not mean it as a criticism of his one-time sparring partner. It’s merely an observation, with Conlan’s first outing pencilled in for five months from now.

“I’m delighted for Katie,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to her about it but I have read about it. I thought maybe she would have taken a little bit more time before she jumps into her debut. It is a different sport and it takes a bit of time. But I’m delighted for what she is doing.

“I’ve been training with pros since I was 12 or 13 years old and sparring pros with Jamie and stuff. I’ve always had a bit of a pro style in me. A lot of the amateurs are upright and stiff but I’d always got that upper body strength and basic stuff because I’ve trained with them.

“Yeah, there are a few differences. First of all you’ve got the smaller gloves, which means you get hit really hard. That’s one difference. You got to work from side to side. You’ve got to be able to pace it differently. It’s a slower pace to the amateurs. You’ve got to be more precise, more power shots.

“When you’re fighting against opponents, because they hit harder, the defence has to be good too. You don’t want to get hit. Longer fights too, it’s all about longevity.”

Winning streak

He has spoken to Jason Quigley, the Irish middleweight who reached a world final in Almaty before signing up with Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions.

De La Hoya picked up Quigley after an eye-catching winning streak. When the Kazakh fighter Zhanibek Alimkhanuly beat the Donegal man in the world championship final, it was his first loss in an 18-month run of 33 fights.

Quigley relocated from Ballybofey to Los Angeles, where he is working his way up the rankings. Just a few months older than Conlan, he’s now 11 wins from 11 bouts. “Yeah, I’ve spoke to Jason about LA. Why the west coast? Because of sparring partners. There is great sparring there and I believe good sparring is what makes boxers what they are. It’s part of their success.”

A new career with an almost new family in a new country and the warm, flip-flops-and-shorts life of southern California replaces the cold breeze of Divis Mountain. Belfast will soon be in his rearview mirror but as Conlan understands, it will never go away, it will always be there.