The pound-for-pound best Irish Boxing Lookalikes

Last night the Chelsea Ladies football team confirmed the signing of Swiss striker Ramona Bachmann from VfL Wolfsburg.

Normally the coverage on Irish-Boxing.com does not extend to English football, however Mick Conlan alerted his followers that Bachmann bears a striking resemblance to Bray boxing legend Katie Taylor.

This is @KatieTaylor stunt double 😂 https://t.co/sDTonCDIxB

— Michael Conlan (@mickconlan11) December 6, 2016

The Wicklow super featherweight, of course, had a successful football career, winning 11 caps and scoring two goals for the Irish national team.

While it was rumoured a few years ago that Arsenal were interested in the signature of Taylor, we are fairly sure that the 2012 Olympic gold medalist is not moonlighting as a Swiss footballer – especially considering that she has an important fight v Viviane Obenauf on Saturday night.

However, Conlan’s observations did get us thinking, what other lookalikes are there in the world of Irish boxing.

A day of brainstorming led to the drawing up of this list. Please let us know who else you think should be added.

Carl Frampton and Chris Algieri
Possibly the best likeness in all of boxing. Belfast’s two weight world champion looks frighteningly like the New Yorker who held WBO light welterweight honours in 2014 before moving up to face Manny Pacquiao. The boxing doppelgängers have been commented upon numerous times since Frampton began his move onto the American scene in 2015, however, such is the ever-growing stature of ‘The Jackal,’ Chris Algieri now looks like Carl Frampton rather than vice-versa.

Barry McGuigan and Brendan O’Carroll
We should stress that the similarity for the former WBA featherweight champion McGuigan is only while O’Carroll is in his everyday appearance, and that the likeness ends when he moves into his famous Mrs Brown alter-ego. We’re not the only ones to have noticed either, with The Guardian once describing O’Carroll as “a moustachioed Barry McGuigan lookalike.” The Dubliner, who incidentally is a member of MENSA, did have a brief foray into boxing in the late 1990s. O’Carroll wrote a screenplay for a boxing movie called Sparrow’s Trap, however the feature ran into financial difficulties and was abandoned before midway through the shoot.

John Duddy and Ken Buchanan
A likeness approved by Hollywood. The recent biopic of Roberto Duran, ‘Hands of Stone,’ featured Scottish legend Ken Buchanan as the two shared a hot-tempered World title bout in 1972. The man to play the Edinburgh lightweight? None other than The Derry Destroyer John Duddy who, following the conclusion of his boxing career, has moved into the acting world.

Andy Lee and Will Young
The former WBO middleweight champion is known as a bit of a Renaissance man in boxing circles, and the Limerick man certainly enjoys artistically high-quality entertainment. However, his lookalike is of a slightly more mainstream background, with some saying that Lee is a dead ringer for Pop Idol winner Will Young. Jamie Kavanagh brought our attention to the similarity, but people have seemingly been noticing it for years. 

Anyone else thing @willyoung looks like @AndyLeeBoxing 😂😂😂 spitting image I think @TheSun @Irishboxingcom pic.twitter.com/3LZrU1mHk7

— Jamie Kavanagh (@JamieKavanagh90) October 12, 2016

Spike O’Sullivan and Charles Bronson
This comparison is often made by Mr Irish-Boxing.com Jonny Stapleton. It might be just the tasche, but the eccentric Cork middleweight certainly does have a similarity to infamous British bare-knuckle boxer and criminal-turned-artist Charles Bronson. In what is probably good news for Spike, the similarity only increases when you put him side-by-side with Tom Hardy, who portrayed Bronson in a 2008 film biopic of his life.

…and finally

Paddy Barnes and Dustin The Turkey
Over the years an unfortunate name has been given to the double Olympic bronze medalist by his team mates. We’re sure they mean it affectionately and/or are just jealous of the Irish boxing legend.