DURING A SPELL HOME from Los Angeles earlier this year, Jason Quigley kept busy around the boxing gyms of Donegal.
They were familiar venues.
The surroundings of the Finn Valley ABC in Stranorlar were those he left when he took up a professional contract offer from Golden Boy Promotions two years ago.
And it was in the Raphoe BC where he won his first ever title, when he won the Donegal Novice Boy 1 title at 36kgs.
The unbeaten middleweight has come a long way since.
Raphoe BC coach Gary McCullagh helped put Quigley through his paces last month.
“My elbows are sore since I did the padding for Jason – I got tennis elbow out of it,” says McCullagh, a former Ulster senior welterweight champion.
“He hits surprisingly hard. There is some power coming from those hands. He is very deceiving, very elusive and so, so powerful. He’s a ferocious puncher.”
Quigley takes on Freddy Lopez (9-3-0), a 30-year-old Mexican, who has won seven contests by way of knockout, tomorrow night at Fantasy Springs in Indio.
With an unblemished nine contests to his name, Quigley is feeling good – and believes his most recent training camp to have been his ‘best ever’. Not bad for a man who has danced in training with the likes of Nathan Cleverly.
While he was at home, the likes of his uncle, Billy, at Finn Valley, and McCullagh in Raphoe held the pads as Quigley went through the routine.
Go behind the scenes with #TeamEverlast athlete Jason Quigley from his past fight in Las Vegas, Nevada with this first edition of Fight Week!
Posted by Everlast on Thursday, March 24, 2016
“I was in with the likes of Leon Gallagher and Orin McDermott too, keeping in the ring, staying active with a few shots – just keeping that familiarity up,” says Quigley, as always relaxed and focussed at once as he heads into fight number 10, which represents his first eight rounder.
“My schedule has been perfect, to be honest. I had a busy year last year with six fights from March to November. I went back into camp in January and I’m ready to rock.
“After my last fight (a points win over Marchristopher Adkins in November), my body needed time to recover, but it’s been amazing the way I’m working and the way my programme is running.
“Everything is going to plan.”
When he went back to Tinseltown, Quigley stepped into world-class sparring.
The 2012 Olympian Terrell Gausha is a regular sparring partner, but this time Quigley has also worked hard with Matthew Macklin, a former Irish, British and European champion, and Jorge Sebastien Heiland, the last man to defeat Macklin.
“I met Matthew after my last fight in Vegas,” Quigley says.
“This sparring is unreal. One day I did four rounds with Heiland and then Matthew came in fresh for six rounds – that’s ten rounds with those guys. Where else would I get sparring like that?
“This is the very reason I came out here. Matthew has been such a help in every way.
“His experience is something else. In the ring, I learned so much, when to move right, when to move left.
“But he’s made money and done so much in the sport. It’s great to have him to chat to and find out what he’d have changed. I can look then and say: ‘I won’t do that’.
“Those are the small things that can make the big difference down the line.”
Quigley has impressed since moving to America’s west coast.
Eight of his nine wins have been inside the distance and his infectuous nature has endeared him to the fighting folk of California.
The former European champion and World silver medalist can sense an improvement with every spar, every punch, every jab. McCullagh’s arms can testify to that.
“This is a different sport now, a different world to what I grew up in,” Quigley says.
“This is work now. I get up in the morning and go to work in the gym.
“I’m fighting for pay cheques. They’re the reward for the hard work. That’s why people are seeing a different Jason Quigley. That’s why I have a different focus, a different way of training and a different determination.
“This is my job and this is my life. While other men get up, get the kids ready for school and go out to work, I get up, check my weight and head for the gym.”
Quigley won 32 of his last 33 amateur fights with a World final defeat to Zhanibek Alimkhanuly in 2013 the sole blot on his copybook.
“I take it now like I took it as an amateur,” he says now.
“I want to climb the ladder, of course I do, but I can’t look past Lopez on Friday night. That’s why I was so successful at the end of my amateur career – I never overlooked anyone.”
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