Mick Conlan expecting to KO “a lot” of his pro opponents

Mick Conlan believes that he will have knockout power once he laces up a pair of 8oz horse-hair gloves.

The 2015 World Amateur champion this week signed with US giant Top Rank Promotions and is expected to debut at Madison Square Garden on St Patrick’s Weekend next March.

As with most amateurs, aside from the notable exceptions, the amount of power that Conlan will bring with him to the pro game is something of an unknown quantity.

In his 81 senior amateur fights across both the traditional 3×3 minute format and the World Series of Boxing, Conlan scored just two stoppages. However, with rehydration, smaller gloves, and a focus on ‘sitting down on shots,’ Conlan feels he will become known as a heavy puncher in the pros.

When asked by Irish-Boxing.com whether he will be a big puncher, Conlan replied “yeah definitely. Definitely at super bantamweight and definitely at featherweight.”

“I’m strongest when I’m around 58-59kilo.”

“With the smaller gloves, hitting people on chins, or even on the top of the head, with them tiny gloves on, clean – it’s not like getting hit with those big spongy gloves that you get hit with in the amateurs.”

“I’m going to be hitting a lot of people clean and I expect to put a lot of people away.”

Conlan is one boxer who prospered with the reversion to the ‘old,’ more pro-styled, scoring system in the amateurs in 2013, and the Clonard fighter believes this will serve him well in future. The 2015 WSB runner-up described how “I feel that my style is kind of suited to the pros.”

“It’s just a wee bit of adjustment, I don’t think it’ll take me as long as usually does most amateurs.”

“I think that if you look at my WSB fights, I had changed my style a bit I had slowed my pace down, I wasn’t fighting at as high a pace, although it still was a high enough pace.”

“I just controlled distance a lot more and the timing of shots.”