Mick Conlan reveals he had a gun pulled on him at the Rio Olympics

Mick Conlan has revealed that he had a gun pulled on him while he was in Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympic Games.

The Belfast featherweight had lost controversially in the quarter-finals of the tournament to future Top Rank stablemate and pro opponent Vladimir Nikitin and had subsequently moved out of the Olympic Village.

On a trip back to the Village some Brazilian road rage led to a gun being pulled in a frankly crazy story – and one which astoundingly took over two years to surface.

Conlan [9(6)-0] recalled to ESPN how “I ended up moving out of the [Olympic] village to stay in an apartment with my mom, my dad, and my fiancee,”

“Me and my dad had to go back to the village to get things. We were heading back in the taxi and we had this gun pulled on us.”

“This taxi driver was driving like an absolute asshole and this guy pulled us over and pointed a gun straight through the window — a big Desert Eagle — right at his [the driver’s] face.

“I looked at my father, he was across the car from me and he said ‘don’t move, stay calm’.”

Conlan, his father, and the driver, all emerged unscathed and the Falls Road fighter admits that he wasn’t scared by the incident – instead being too downbeat to care.

The 2012 Olympic bronze medallist explained how “I was in a mood anyway. My dreams had already been shattered. My only dream as an amateur boxer was to be an Olympic champion and I had that dream stolen from me.”

“At the time, I couldn’t really give two fingers that there was a guy stood in front of me with a big Desert Eagle,” added the fighter who turned pro with Top Rank after his ordeals in Rio.

Since then, Conlan has risen through the ranks at a good pace and looks set to have a big 2019.

Before that, though, he will round of the year on the Warrington-Frampton undercard in Manchester on December 22nd where he faces former Commonwealth champion Jason Cunningham.

Photo Credit: Ricardo Guglielminotti – The Fighting Irish (@ThefIrish)