Introducing: Aaron ‘The Kid’ Gethins
“C’mere, c’mere, you’ve got to see this kid,” Tony Davitt says excitedly.
The veteran Irish boxing manager, promoter, and coach is bouncing about like he rarely does, eyes lit up.
A man who has seen it all, it takes a lot to impress Davitt but Sligo welterweight Aaron Gethins has done just that in recent weeks.
Davitt has snapped the Ballincarrow 18-year-old up and sees ‘The Kid’ as a potential future star.
Scratch that, he sees the rangy southpaw as a definite future star.
“Once he gets his fitness and grows into himself no-one will be able to touch him,” boasts Davitt.
Gethins is striking and, from talking to and looking at him, it’s hard to believe he won’t turn 19 until next month.
A three-time Irish underage champion and Irish international, Gethins has made an extremely early move into the pros.
It’s a switch that makes sense, though, for the talented teenager who told Irish-Boxing.com that “I’m prepared for it, here’s nothing in the amateurs for me any more.”
“You could be six or seven years chasing a Senior title and you get nothing out of it.”
“In the pro game, if you do well in your first half of your fights you’ve a chance of getting somewhere.”
Inside the ring, Gethins believes the different style of the pros will suit him too.
The Yeats County boxer noted how “I prefer the pro game, it more slowed down, it’s more relaxed, it gives you the chance to ‘see’ your opponent. I think it will suit me when it starts to get into the longer rounds, the six and the eight rounders.”
“The 3×3 was very intense. It was straight into it whereas the pro game is slowed down and you get to show your skill and how good you are rather than just getting in and throwing like feck and hoping to get the decision at the end of it.”
“I’m tall for the weight and I’m a long sort of boxer, it suits me. That’s what I’ll be doing, keeping it long, but I’ve got a bit of sting in the punches.”
“When lads start getting tired, and you start really having to dig deep, that’s when you start seeing who the proper boxers are.”
Gethins will split his time in the pros between Ballinacarrow BC and Paschal Collins’s Celtic Warriors Gym in Dublin. He will remain close to brothers Stephen and Alan Reynolds at home while linking up with Davitt midweek fo.
Such is his age, Gethins is in no rush but is keen to be kept busy.
The Connacht puncher outlined how “I’m hoping to have my first fight in December and my plan is to stick with Tony as long as I can, fight as much as I can, and get as much experience as I can.”
“Over the next year I am hoping to be fighting every two months and when I have had ten fights I hope to be fighting for my first pro Irish title.”
“I don’t need to be jumping in. There are lads going over to America and England after only six or seven fights, that’s too soon. I’d be of the belief that I have to learn as much as I can as quick as I can but take my time doing it.”
“[TDP stablemate] John Joyce is a great inspiration, he has seven fights and seven wins, that’s the path I want to be going. You need proper tough fights like he has, you get lads that you drop as soon as you go in and you don’t learn anything from them. You won’t know if you’re ready for a six rounder or an eight rounder if you’re knocking guys out in two or three.”
