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After Michael Conlan’s career was left in ruins, he began a search for answers.
The Irish superstar took to the roads, running, spending time with his thoughts, his hopes and his shattered dreams.
Alone on the highways, the backroads and country lanes, mile after mile, he sifted through the wreckage of consecutive stoppage losses to Luis Lopez and Jordan Gill.
Hour after hour, run after run, Conlan endured months with his feelings, sometimes with friends and other runners, often alone.
The destination he hoped for was the clarity that had not been apparent when he was attached to the emotion of boxing, family or anything else. With time and space, he managed to free his mind as his body consumed more than 800 miles between January and April.
There were dark moments. The realization of fears and the dawns of reality were confronted – often in isolation on the roads – through driving rain, glorious sunrises, pitch darkness, up mountains and through fields.
But he wasn’t running away from anything, but to a decision that now, finally, exists in his mind.
Despite being written off by many, Conlan has decided, at 32 years old and with an 18-3 (9 KOs) record, that he has one last run at glory left in him.
By March, he had concluded he would fight again but he kept running. He did a 2hr 55min marathon and reckons he could get somewhere between 2.30 and 2.45 with more work, but boxing remains his calling.
He was stunned by Gill on December 2. By December 14 he was running the pain off as a member of a running club. He was still haunted by the losses, of the shocking Gill stoppage, the Lopez uppercut and, worst of all, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the dying embers of his Fight of the Year thriller with Leigh Wood for the WBA featherweight title in 2022.
“It’s been a tough time,” Conlan sighed. “Until the last few months, actually. I’m gonna be honest, big shout out to Road Runners Running Club, Road Runners A.C. in Belfast, because that running helped me through a very tough time. It was hard. It was very hard. To go to bed at night and you go over all of them, the fuckin’ Wood fight probably still keeps me up at night. You know, that’s a fuckin’ minute-and-a-half away and you’re going, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ And in hindsight you’re going, ‘Fuck me, if that slip was actually counted as a slip and not a knockdown, the momentum doesn’t change how it was meant to change and you box your way to victory and that’s it’. But it’s boxing and it’s a horrible game.”
The two-time Olympian is addicted to it. And it took those countless weeks on the road for him to realize he doesn’t want to turn his back on his first love.
“Running is something you have to be a little bit crazy for,” Conlan laughed, “because I even said to the ruining guys, ‘There’s something wrong with you, you’re getting up and doing this in the pissing rain, 5 o’clock [AM] in the winter, there’s something wrong with you’, and they say, ‘You get paid hundreds of thousands for getting punched in the head for a living, what’s wrong with you?’
“But we don’t know what people are going through in their lives and that’s what I’ve learned from running, more so than anything else. I’ve done that and these guys all have their own demons and they’re all going through something themselves and this is their release and it helps them.
“I was going because it’s a great community, great people. Everybody, all from different backgrounds, business people, normal people talking, everybody interacting with other people from the working class, people from upper class. ‘This is nice’.”
There is a very real side of Conlan. His heart has been broken three times. But, at the same time, he feels that while the Wood loss was a calamity, the version of Conlan who attended the Lopez and Gill fights did so in body and not in mind.
“It’s a fucking tough sport,” he said of boxing. “It’s a sport that you can love but it will never love you back. I’m not gonna be that guy who falls in love with it and gets knocked back. That’s not me.”
Conlan eventually calmed the chaos in his mind to settle on his career direction. He is trying out new coaches, Stephen Smith, Buddy McGirt and Grant Smith, but is taking his time before making any further decisions. Matchroom will still promote him.
“There was all this, ‘Will I or won’t I’, and it got to the point where I was, ‘Fuck this running’. I actually got to the point where I just need to get back to what I’m good at. With running,
you’re by yourself and it’s fucking long when you’re running on a Tuesday morning in the pissing rain and the cold. No matter if someone’s running with you, you’re by yourself. You’re fucking by yourself and I had a lot of time to think, a lot of time to think over things and loads of things you can look at with hindsight and go, ‘Well, if I had done this or I hadn’t done that’ but there’s no point. There’s no point. And I have come to terms with that through the running. ‘Well, I could have done this or that’, but you didn’t, especially at the time. ‘You didn’t do it’. Now I properly feel refreshed. It’s been a long time away from boxing and like the first session I’ve done back boxing was the end of May. I did four rounds on the bag and I was blowing out my arse. I was going, ‘Fuck me this is different. It ain’t running. It ain’t fucking running, man’.”
Conlan felt his legs got stronger with the endurance but said he lost a lot of muscle to the roads. He is now punching bags and lifting weights as the rebuild commences.
Psychologically, he also claims he is where he needs to be. The behind-the-scenes issues have been patched up, and he admits he made several judgments with his ego rather than his smart boxing brain, including giving himself just six weeks to work with new trainer Pedro Diaz ahead of the Gill fight, language barrier, travel and all.
Some have been left questioning the Irishman’s punch resistance after back-to-back stoppages, but he doesn’t take much from either defeat and especially not to Gill, during which “the badness was happening” in his life.
Now he wants to have a fight or two under the radar, get his legs back under him, and his family, including brother Jamie, believes he still has the talent to claim a world crown.
Conlan needs 36 perfect minutes to win a world title (“I know I have the ability to do that,”) and speaking to Stephen Smith, the coach bluntly said to him: “’You’re getting into wars, why the fuck are you doing this?’ You make the decisions and you live with the consequences.
“Nobody’s going to give you credit for having big balls and getting into a war. Who cares? “The only thing that matters in that ring is if you win.
“You live with the regret, but it is what it is. I’ve got my focus and drive and my reason is I want to be world champion. It’s not about the money now. I’m not thinking about money. I know I’m taking a pay cut with this one. I don’t care because I still want to achieve what I believe I can achieve.
“If I was to retire now, I already have a legacy. I’ve done great things in boxing. I’ve earned great money in boxing and even outside of boxing with the management and the promotion game, I’m on the right track. But for me, I know my ability and I know what I can do and I want to be world champion.”
Conlan made it clear there will be no rash decisions with his future. He will take his time to decide on a coach. He might not even return this year. As with life on the road, running, thinking, he’s learned pacing and patience. The sprint for the line was what got him in trouble.
“Make the right decisions at the right time, here we go,” he concluded. “Let’s roll the fucking dice and let’s see what we can do here. And if it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen. This is literally the last roll, no matter what, win, lose or draw… win the world title… done. Finished. See you later. But it’s all about getting back to the right me. And becoming world champion. If I don’t, I don’t. My family’s secure, I’m happy, I’m healthy and that’s it.”