Pierce O’ Leary W10 Kane Gardner ... Irish junior welterweight Pierce O’ Leary (13-0) defeated British boxer Kane Gardner (16-3) under the bright lights of Wembley Stadium in London over the weekend. The fight took place on the undercard of the Zhilei Zhang-Joe Joyce II event presented by Queensbury Promotions. Despite Wembley being down the road from the Ibox gym in which he trains and a quick hop over the sea from his hometown of Dublin – the British Kane Gardner did his best to make O’ Leary feel like the outsider and remind him whose country he was in.

 

O’ Leary registered a first round knockdown of his opponent. As he grew more confident, O’Leary began to unleash his arsenal in the fourth round. Despite O’ Leary winning the round, Gardner landed accurate left hooks and a right hand. These led to a cut opening up on O’ Leary’s left eye. The Dublin native stayed on his opponent and made him answer for the cut, landing a big left hook to Gardner’s temple in the sixth round – visibly hurting him.

 

Gardner managed to stay in the fight through the later rounds, with both men showing a commendable account of themselves. O’ Leary was able to land the heavier shots and more of them – leading to his unanimous decision victory from the judges. The contest gave the 23 year old O’ Leary a good test  whilst further preparing him for more big-time boxing events in the near-future. He commented: “It was a tough old fight; I had to dig deep in there. He’s 28 years of age, a lot of people ducked him – bundles of experience over me. It just goes to show that tonight I digged in deep, pulled the win out of the bag and we move on to the next stage. It was amazing -the atmosphere was like home. On the ringwalk with my team around me, I was like “this is home from home”. I knew I got a big fan base with me and a bigger fan base after a performance like that.

 

I really, really enjoyed it; I loved every minute of it. If I can bring 100 -150 people over every time; imagine what we can do back in Dublin; sell arenas out all day long. I’m only gonna keep climbing the ranks and getting tough opponents. I keep showing that we levelled every time; level upon level. Listen, got the win, me and my team are happy; we done what we had to do – we nailed the gameplan. We want to chase European titles next year, we keep on pushing on. keep getting up in those rankings. Hopefully at 24 years old, I’ll be ready for them world titles.”