Confident Aodhán looking to make it two from two on Saturday night

Kilcullen Professional Boxer, Aodhán Byrne is looking forward to his second professional fight when he takes on experienced Brazilian fighter Jonatas Rodrigo Gomes de Oliveria over four rounds at the JB Promotions Show at Leopardstown Racecourse on this Saturday night, 30 May.

Byrne, who boxes out of UNIT 3 Health and Fitness in Naas under manager and coach, Niall Barrett, had his first professional fight in February at the home town of his mother in Ballybofey when he outpointed Polish boxer, Marian Wesolowski, 40-36 over four rounds. He is now looking forward to Saturday night’s contest which will be headlined by UNIT 3 stablemate, Kildare’s Kelsey Leonard and will also include another stablemate in Laois boxer, Cian Reddy.

Speaking to The Kildare Nationalist this week, Aodhán reflected positively on his debut fight in Ballybofey. “I brought some crowd. We had 70/75 people who came up and it was unbelievable, to be honest. It was nice because I had so much family as well as my own friends that went up,” he recalls. “We brought a bit of a scene we caught eyes a bit and that's exactly what we wanted to do.” 

Byrne wasn’t distracted by the noise around his debut professional fight. “I've boxed probably 150 times, so you kind of get used to having your own little bubble and everything feels normal within that bubble, even though everything is chaos around.” 

Admitting that he sometime boxes off pure instinct he laughed, “sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to do. People think that I’m planning all these things but I’ve no idea.” 

After taking a week off Aodhán returned to the gym as he was the main training partner to Gary Cully who was preparing for his return fight in the 3Arena. “I'm gaining experience every day and training is what's going to make me go to top,” he said.

Preparations have gone well for Saturday’s fight with lots of sparring under Byrne’s belt. He admits that he gets nervous two weeks before a fight but then settles during the week of the fight. “When I get the closer to the fight, the more I feel in control. When fight day comes now it's up to me and I take a lot of comfort in knowing I can control it.” 

Looking forward to the fight Aodhán says, “there's a massive crowd going, so look. I'll be in the gym here all week and everything is going to be done at home so it's nice comfort to have. Between myself and Kelsey there's over 200 tickets so it's going to be a big crowd going from Kildare. Cian will sell another 100 tickets as well so we're going to have a big crowd in fairness.” 

He expected his opponent to be tough. “He comes with hands high and he'll try and usher you to come in. I said this the last time too. You can't get too caught up on what they do because then you'll never do what you do yourself. You have to have an idea what he does but at the same time I'm not the last one he fought so you kind of need to just take everything he does with last opponent with salt, because you're not them,” he explains.

Concluding Aodhán Byrne tells us, “I want it to be a nice and mature performance. I just want to box this one and get the rounds under my belt focus on a good strong technique. I want to be technically sound this fight. That's what my plan is. If the stoppage comes, it comes, you can't go looking for it.”