Tyrone McKenna aiming to beat the bookie with knockout jackpot

Tyrone McKenna [11(3)-0-1] is looking to buy the Christmas presents for his friends and family this year, and then some.

The Belfast light welterweight takes on Dublin’s Sean Creagh [4(2)-0] for the BUI Celtic Warrior title on Saturday night at the Titanic Exhibition Centre and there promises to be a lot riding on the fight – in both career and monetary terms.

Whilst he started as a 3/10 favourite (now 1/4), the odds on a McKenna knockout have been backed in from 7/2 to 15/8, and ‘The Mighty Celt’ is confident that he is going to win his followers some spending money.

McKenna spoke to Irish-Boxing.com about the hot slip in town and recalled how “I woke up on Wednesday with a text from one of my mates saying I’m 7/2 for the knockout, which was insane. Word got about in West Belfast and people just started lumping money on because they know I’m ten times better than Sean Creagh – and they know it’s not going the distance.”

“Obviously the bookies are smart and copped on to it pretty quick because the odds have gone from 7/2 to 8/15. Pretty short odds now.”

The all-Irish clash is one which has captured the imagination, and it has already seen its fair share of back-and-forths on social media between the two fighters. McKenna however pointed out that he is more of an occasional responder rather than a full-time combatant in the Twitter war of words.

The 26 year old southpaw explained that “I’m not the one making all the noise, he’s the one that’s popping up every day making some sort of comment or suggestion to me. Most of the time I ignore it or but sometimes I’ll respond something back.”

McKenna has his own theory about the ongoing verbals and theorised how “when he [Creagh] goes to bed at night he’s lies awake thinking ‘I may be slabbering, but I know that I’m getting beat.'”

“I don’t need to big up myself, I don’t need to big up my fighting ability, I don’t need to put fear into him, because I know that I’m going to beat him”

“He knows it himself. He’s trying to egg himself up, he’s trying to get himself confidence by slabbering to me and trying to belittle me on Twitter but I take no notice of him.”

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