'The main thing is to do it in front of my girls, get home safe, and be a father then on Sunday morning'
Gavan Casey
THERE ARE HOMECOMING fights and then there are homecoming fights.
From the age of 11, Pierce O’Leary would high-tail it out the door of his family home on Sheriff Street, often wrapped in a black bin bag, and sweat himself into gear ahead of the next boxing tournament. Only a few hundred metres beyond his front door, he would round The Point, and his imagination would run wild.
O’Leary, who recently turned 26, is just about old enough to remember The Bernard Dunne Days. All going well, tonight will mark the first of The Pierce O’Leary Days, a ‘Big Bang’ in keeping with his ring moniker.
Unbeaten in his 18 professional fights, with 10 of his wins quick, rising star O’Leary will face a legitimate test, live on DAZN, against the excellent Yorkshireman Maxi Hughes, who has stepped in to replace the injured Mark Chamberlain.
Local hero O’Leary, who was this week celebrated by hundreds of neighbours and supporters on a fun-run as he tapered off his training camp, has shipped the bulk of the tickets for tonight’s event at the 3Arena, which has been sold out for nearly a month. That’s already a test passed. While his clash with Hughes has been pencilled in as chief support to a tantalising super-featherweight world-title showdown between Belfast challenger Anthony Cacace and Liverpudlian beltholder Jazza Dickens, it will likely be an O’Leary-majority house on North Wall Quay, a sign that he’s ready to move the needle.
As such, should O’Leary overcome Hughes and propel himself into the world-title picture – by no means a given – promoter Frank Warren is likely to bestow upon O’Leary the kind of residency in his local venue that has proven unattainable for every Irish boxer since Dunne in the mid-to-late ’00s.
Pierce O'Leary (L) and tonight's opponent, Englishman Maxi Hughes. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
“I’ve attended some fights there over the years between the UFC and the boxing in more recent times (Katie Taylor x2, Callum Walsh and Michael Conlan),” O’Leary tells The 42, “and I always believed in myself that one day, that’d be me. I always believed I’d get there. And here it is now.
“Look, it did take time. I thought I would have gotten there a lot sooner, but… I like to think that God’s time is the right time.
“Now I look back and maybe I wasn’t mature enough to do it in the past,” says O’Leary, whose partner Amy gave birth to their second daughter eight months ago. “I know I am now.”
O’Leary won’t be wanting for advice as to how to shoulder the weight of expectation for a big-time fight in the capital. His manager is Brian Peters, who was the promotional mastermind behind Bernard Dunne’s run at The Point and who, in 2023, brought Katie Taylor to the 3Arena for her back-to-back epics with Chantelle Cameron.
Taylor will likely be in attendance to cheer on her managerial stablemate and O’Leary plans to “sit down with her, just run a few things by her” beforehand.
But whereas Taylor was made to look uncharacteristically mortal during her first ever outing in Ireland as a professional — you may recall it led to queries about her protracted ring-walk, and whether the emotion of the occasion had depleted her physically — O’Leary believes he’ll remain unfazed by it all when he takes to the stage sometime after 9pm tonight.
For one thing, butterflies will feel a hell of a lot better than it did to empty the contents of his stomach 15 seconds before making the walk for his previous career-biggest bout, a Dublin derby against Darragh Foley in Belfast in June 2024.
O’Leary had food poisoning on fight day and came perilously close to being pulled by his team while in the dressing room. His only concern was letting down the convoy that had made its way up the M1. O’Leary puked his guts up and put the foot down. He didn’t drink water at any point between his 10 rounds with the wiry, war-mongering Foley. “There were stages in the fight where I had sick in my mouth,” he laughs. And yet O’Leary dropped Foley with a thunderous right uppercut in the second and won a landslide unanimous decision.
Foley, who paraded his fellow Dub around the ring atop his shoulders following the judges’ verdict, told O’Leary that he had never before suffered so much in a fight. He was subsequently astonished to learn that O’Leary had spent most of the day redecorating the jacks.
Pierce O'Leary at Thursday's press conference. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
“The adversity that I overcame that night, I don’t think we’re going to face anything like that one again,” O’Leary says. “I hope not!
“But, like, after something like that, the crowd on Saturday won’t affect me in any way. I’m fully locked in. I could be fighting anywhere.
“My [second] last fight, which was in Ipswich, I fought Liam Dillon in front of 25,000 fans,” adds O’Leary, who claimed a unanimous decision and the European 140-pound title at Portman Road.
Now, I know, 10,000 lunatics screaming your name in the 3Arena, which is small and compact, you’re going to feel it. But I’m more than ready for it.
“It’s what I really need at this point of my career now: getting the fans behind me”, O’Leary says, “and with the amount of tickets I’ve sold, it goes to show how much weight my name holds in the city and in Irish boxing. I’m truly blessed with the support that I’ve got but I’ve got one job, one job only, and that’s to get the win in whatever fashion it takes. Then, I’ll go and speak to the fans and be there with them.”
This set up and finish by Pierce O'Leary 😮💨Remaining tickets 👉 https://t.co/j5LxSk00Gw… 📷#WardleyHuni | June 7th | @DAZNBoxing | Portman Road Stadium, Ipswich pic.twitter.com/IlIf3Zh4Wf— Queensberry Promotions (@Queensberry) June 1, 2025
He might block them out tonight for 48 minutes, or however long it takes to deal with Maxi Hughes, but O’Leary has cultivated a rare connection with his thousands of supporters in Dublin’s North Inner City. So much so that where most boxers would eschew home comforts and stage their training camp elsewhere, ‘Big Bang’ has done the opposite for this fight: after a couple of weeks of early prep with his trainer, Joe McNally, in Liverpool, O’Leary has based himself for the past two months in his old amateur gym, Docklands BC. He has trodden the roads he ran as a kid, routinely flanked by those who watch him these days on TNT Sports or DAZN, or see his highlight-reel knockouts on TikTok.
In order to prepare to fulfil his dream, O’Leary has returned to where he dreamt it up in the first place. He’s imbued by the extent to which this fight feels like a collaborative effort between him and the people whose mannerisms and mindsets have shaped him for 26 years, and equally his omnipresence around Dublin’s North Inner City throughout camp has only amplified the degree to which people feel a sense of belonging to his story.
“Most fighters would think it would be a distraction to train at home,” says O’Leary. “But seeing everyone being more excited than I actually am myself, that just adds more fuel to the fire.
“To be able to see all these familiar faces where I grew up and complete my biggest goal yet, that’s kind of a beautiful thing. That weighs more than anything. That means everything to me.
The thing is, everyone sees me every day anyways, so they know when I’m in a fight, you know, ‘stay away from him’ at certain times, ‘give him his distance, his personal space’. I love that people actually realise that.
“But I mean, I’m leaving the gym and all the young kids are leaving school at the same time, and they’re all obsessed with it, a bit star-struck even. But the main thing is they’re seeing me putting the hard work as they get out of school, and it’s just those little bits of advice you can give to them around [work ethic]. I never really had that growing up, but it feels nice to be able to give it.”
Pierce O'Leary scores a knockout over the 16-0 Hovhannes Martirosyan. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
The Golden Mile, then, should continue to churn out high-achieving sportspeople. O’Leary is the latest cab off a rank which includes Ireland football internationals Olivia O’Toole, Wes Hoolahan and Troy Parrott, as well as two-time Olympic boxing champion Kellie Harrington.
“And don’t forget my brother-in-law, Graham Burke, who plays for Shamrock Rovers!” O’Leary says. (Burke also has three senior caps for Ireland).
“So there’s plenty of talent in the household itself. There’s a bit of back and forth: who’s actually the more famous person?” O’Leary laughs.
A Rovers fan, then?
“I’m on the fence on that…” O’Leary replies, and with some haste.
“Our support as a family obviously goes mostly to Graham,” he adds.
I go to games all the time. I really enjoy League of Ireland football. It’s nice to be able to sit down for the evening, spend time with family, and watch someone else succeed on the pitch.
“I just think it’s a win-win situation…”
Say no more.
Pierce O'Leary celebrates victory against Jose Edgardo Perdomo. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
O’Leary’s true escape from boxing, however, is horses. Not so much the sport of horse racing — just horses. He loves them.
O’Leary inherited his passion from his grandfather, who once kept a horse roughly where the Luke Kelly sculpture now stands on Guild Street. Paddy — or Paddywhack as he was known to his family — was a coalman, delivering from horse and cart to flats around Dorset Street, Sheriff Street, and the Liberties. Locals knew him as ‘John Wayne’.
As he grew older, O’Leary’s father and uncle helped Paddywhack to lug 40-odd-kilogram bags of coal to people’s doorways, their teenage workdays often beginning as early as three o’clock in the morning.
“That’s how my grandfather put food on the table for me auntie, me uncle and my father,” O’Leary says. “So, when the tough gets going for me — you’re in your chair in a nice warm house, you’re looking outside and you have to go and do that track session but it’s pouring rain — I just think about that: my grandfather did what was needed to be done. And then it’s just pretty much, ‘Right, where are me running shoes?’”
O’Leary used a portion of a recent fight purse to follow in the family tradition and purchase his first horse, which he describes as “the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Now a local celebrity in his own right, ‘Patsy’ has featured prominently in promotional material for tonight’s event, O’Leary taking in the 3Arena on horseback and most likely giving Frank Warren conniptions.
“That’s my meditation, now, from boxing,” he says, “and I’m truly, truly blessed to find the off-switch from fighting and the business of boxing, be able to turn the phone off whenever I’m in the stable and go and enjoy my hobby.
“And being able to do that with my daughter, who’s also now into the horse-riding herself”, O’Leary adds of his eldest, Effie, aged six, “we share that now as a bit of a bond together, which is a beautiful thing.”
Pierce O'Leary horse-riding with his daughter, Effie. Instagram / pierce.oleary/
Instagram / pierce.oleary/ / pierce.oleary/
Effie and her younger sister, Hetty (eight months), naturally provide O’Leary with plenty of fuel to do his own job. It’s his turn now to put food on the table. On the family front, his first training camp in Dublin has been a tonic compared to the 18 that went before it, but O’Leary is cognisant of the uncomfortable reality of being both a boxer and a dad: it usually works in that order.
“It’s great being back home to be able to be a father, but if you look at nine months out of 12, usually, they’ve got no father in their life because I’m away in camp.
That’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow for two young girls, to have someone who they feel protected by and protective about, but he’s not there most of the time. It’s hard for them, y’know?
It’s even more challenging, he acknowledges, for his partner, Amy, who has to field the questions from Effie as to when Dad is coming home.
“Hats off to her. She’s been doing it all,” O’Leary says. “She’s been doing me tickets, me meal prep, looking after two kids, looking after our household. Without her, it wouldn’t be possible.
“We’re a strong, solid team. We know the craic. We know what needs to be done. That alone is enough for me to get through anything.”
If he can get through Maxi Hughes tonight, O’Leary will go a long way towards securing his family’s financial future. Victory will open the door for even more lucrative, headline bouts, and perhaps even a world-title shot later this year.
💣 Pierce O'Leary knocks out 16-0 Hovhannes Martirosyan in round 9 with a tremendous left hook.Hard fight up until that point, very competitive. O'Leary was up by one point on 2 cards and three points on the third card - per commentators. #HeaneyPauls pic.twitter.com/dm7TTlv6RA— EverythingBoxing | Darshan Desai (@EverythingBoxi2) March 16, 2024
Hughes has taken this bout at short notice, moving up from 135 pounds to 140 in order to deputise for Mark Chamberlain. The 36-year-old’s record on paper, 29-8-2 (6KOs), belies his Indian summer in which he has either troubled or defeated several world-level talents.
The oddsmakers interpret O’Leary’s bout with Hughes as being a potentially close-run thing, with the home fighter favoured at around 4/9 and the South Yorkshireman only a 15/8 outsider. Pertinently, Hughes has previously clipped the wings of three high-level Irish opponents: Paul Hyland Jr, former world-title challenger Jono Carroll and, most recently, Gary Cully, the latter two of whom feature on tonight’s card in Dublin.
O’Leary, however, has opted not to consult with any of his peers ahead of tonight’s bout.
“I don’t need to,” he says. “I know Maxi hasn’t been in with Pierce O’Leary yet. I’m going to drown him.
“Who was the last Irish guy he fought, Gary Cully?” O’Leary asks, rhetorically.
“Gary Cully will be the last Irish guy that Maxi Hughes beats,” he continues. “I’m going to drag him into deep waters and make him realise that he shouldn’t have taken the fight with me.
“It’s just confidence in my own hard work that I’ve been doing in the gym and knowing where I’ve been. That’s all. I’ve never overlooked any opponent. This is the same thing. I’m going to pick up where I left off in sparring, show my class, give the fans what they wanna see, and get the win.
“And the main thing is to do it in front of my girls, get home safe and sound, and be a father then on Sunday morning.”
