Mark Dunlop turned down Chris Eubank Jr undercard offer for Paul Hyland Jr
Belfast crowd-favourite Paul Hyland Jr [14(5)-0] could have boxed on the undercard of Chris Eubank Jr’s pay-per-view fight with Renold Quinlan last night.
However, his manager Mark Dunlop turned down this offer to allow Hylo headline the ‘Inquisition at the Europa’ card in Belfast.
Hyland made the step up to ten rounds for the first time in his career on the card, which took place in front of a sold-out Exhibition Centre [700 capacity] at the Europa Hotel in downtown Belfast. ‘Hylo’ always brings with him a passionate support, but last night especially seemed bigger and louder than ever before.
Dunlop revealed afterwards that “tonight, and may God strike me dead, he was meant to be on the Eubank show, but I’d rather him be here topping his own bill. Why go out to an empty hall when he can fill a hall? You saw the amount of people there.”
Hyland’s fight itself saw him flatten Hungarian Giovanni Gallovich, an admittedly poor foe. Dunlop has been open both before and afterwards about his difficulty in finding a suitable opponent for the Lagmore lightweight – however this could be about to change following his move to the British Boxing Board of Control.
Dunlop described how he wants perhaps one more quickfire fight for the 26 year old before the Board, hopefully, order a British title eliminator for him. The MHD Promotions chief outlined how “they all say yes they want it but, believe me, they don’t. He’s going to be avoided like the plague, so it’s up to me to drive him into a position where they cant avoid him.”
“I’ll try get him out again sooner rather than later because he has been training for ten rounds. It’s up to me now to get him into an eliminator, but I wouldn’t mind one more because, for an eliminator, you’ve got to prepare for an eliminator. It’s a whole thing, psychological, the lot. He’s only just now joined the British Boxing Board of Control.”
“Even now I wouldn’t mind getting him out again as quickly as possible, maybe even on that Dublin show in a few weeks time [Red Corner Promotions, Dublin, February 25th], just to keep him going because he has been training hard and it was over early. His dedication is why I want to push him on.”
It was a quick win for Hyland, and Dunlop predicts that we will see a lot more of the Gleann man’s power in the coming fights. Dunlop stressed that “he’s always had power, if you look through his whole record, he’s floored about eight or nine of them. In the early days I made him carry opponents, because it’s no good to me what happened to James Tennyson where I can’t get him a fight [due to high KO ratio]. Even that time when he fought Andy Harris at the Devenish, he had him all over to place but I jumped in and said step back and let the wee lad go the rounds.”
“There’s no holding back now, he’s at 14-0, he’s in the Top 10 now and they’ll all be shitting themselves.”
“He was a different level to anyone in there, he was fantastic.”
While MHD stablemates Joe Fitzpatrick and James Tennsyon have both secured promotional contracts with Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions, Dunlop is in no rush to have Hyland snapped up, and believes that a bidding war could soon take place. He noted how “I don’t want to dive in and get him fixed up because there could be three or four that I can go to. Why jump into the well now when we can go to the waterfall? I’m going to take my time, we wont panic”
Photo Credit: Ricardo Guglielminotti – The Fighting Irish (@ThefIrish)
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Eric Donovan joins Gavan Casey and Joe O’Neill on Episode 2 of the Irish Boxing Show:
