Frustrating Frenois Draw a “real blessing” for Jono Carroll
It’s the fight that has some around the world questioning Jono Carroll’s credentials ahead of his world title challenge, but the fighter himself looks at his final eliminator draw with Guillaume Frenois as a ‘real blessing’ and the best thing that could have happened to him.
After his impressive rematch win over Declan Geraghty, ‘King Kong’ became known as one of Irish boxing’s best chance takers. A determined, self confident operator who consistently rose to the occasion.
READ: What a Chancer – Jono Carroll keeps rising to the occasion
However, a major step up versus experienced French fighter Frenois saw the Dublin-born Dunshaughlin-raised bearded warrior, for the first time, fail to pull out a win.
The southpaw did enough to secure a draw against the former European champion and keep his world title dream alive. However, he admits didn’t perform on the night and failed to secure outright mandatory status.
A deal was struck with Frenois and the 26-year-old will challenge Farmer [28(6)-4(2)-1] for his IBF super featherweight world title in Philadelphia on March 15th but his last display has enabled some to question where his forthright confidence comes from ahead of another major jump in levels.
However, in typical Carroll [16(3)-0-1] fashion, what others see as a negative he claims is a positive.
Indeed, the Prizefighter winner believes his draw in Sheffield last December has proved a ‘real blessing’.
The Matchroom fighter, who will look to join stablemates Katie Taylor and TJ Doheny as reigning Irish world champions on St Patrick’s Weekend, claims he has relegated the fight to the past and learnt a lot from it.
“I am not one to make excuses so I’ll never say I had this injury or that injury. There were a few things that went wrong things with sparring partners and all, but it just wasn’t my night,” Carroll told Fightview360.
“I am not going to blame that on anything. I had an off night on the night and there were one or two things in the background, but I don’t want to make excuses. For me that [fight] doesn’t matter, that is in the past,” he added before stressing that he now sees the Frenios fight was the best thing that could have happened.
The Albert Airapetian-trained fighter outlined that “the way I look at the fight, it was a blessing. There were some things that have changed now in training camp, even in my life. I will give this 110 percent to this. I am going to do everything it takes. I look at that last fight as a real blessing.”
“I am a real believer in law of attraction and I believed that happened for a reason. It gave me a little beast in me to say ‘wake up, you can’t walk over people at world level’. So, for me, it’s the best thing that could have happened.”
