JJ McDonagh aiming for big fights at new weight

JJ McDonagh [14(7)-3(1)] is feeling fit, strong, and is ready to wreak havoc in the Irish middleweight division.

The Mullingar man is the reigning Irish super middleweight champion and rose to light heavy for his last fight to shock Matchroom prospect Jake Ball and win the WBA International title.

However McDonagh is now set to box at the 160lbs middleweight limit, starting in his next fight at the York Hall on Sunday July 23rd.

This bout will be a keep-busy rust-shaker of a fight following nine months out, but McDonagh has a list of names he would like to start ticking off.

The 31 year old southpaw outlined how “I hope there are some big fights out there for me.”

“Martin Murray is a good name I’d love to get in with. He’s a good boxer; he should’ve won a world title by now. I think I would beat him easily though. I’m too big for him.”

“Domestically, the only names out there are Spike [O’Sullivan], [Luke] Keeler and [Jason] Quigley, I think I would be way too much for any of them.’’

‘‘I don’t like mentioning names, but I have had opponents pull out over the last six months. I am a dangerous opponent and everyone saw that against Ball.”

Before his last fight, McDonagh claimed to have not trained in over six months, however much has changed since the turn of the year. On the back of superb training with Tony Ward, Tony Conroy and later Jay Morris in Brighton, McDonagh looks like a new man, and ideally hopes to operate at middleweight.

While the Ball win came after six months of not training, McDonagh has been working since with the likes of Tony Ward, Tony Conroy, and Jay Morris. In addition, the Westmeath man has been subject to some superb sparring with top super middleweights.

McDonagh described how “I’ve been training hard. For my last fight I was a light heavyweight, for my next fight I’ll be down to middleweight.”

“I had an injury after Christmas, that’s delayed my comeback too. I’m really excited to get back amongst it on July 23rd.”

‘‘I have been out in Ukraine sparring with Max Bursak. It was a great week or two. Max was unlucky in his world title [v Gilberto Ramirez] fight then, beaten by the better man.”

“I was sparring with Christ Eubank Jr just two weeks ago. Again, great experience for me, it was brilliant.”