Boxer dominates in the ring
Brandon McCarthy lands a blow. Photos and videos submitted
By Tom Victoria
Brandon McCarthy packs a wallop. His opponents in the ring can attest to that.
The Irish boxer amassed well over 200 victories and is a 16-time National Champion as an amateur, then scored a knockout in his debut professional bout March 16 in San Francisco.
“It felt great to get the KO,” he said. “I’ve been working on developing my power and it’s starting to show. I’ll be aiming for the KO in every fight. I know I have the power to put these lads down.”
Despite it being Brandon’s first pro fight, he didn’t feel much trepidation.
“I actually wasn’t as nervous as I normally do be when I’m stepping into the ring,” he said. “I was a small bit nervous, but those were good nerves.”
Brandon brings a wealth of experience to the ring with so many matches.
“I've had plenty of them,” he said. “I've had 250 amateur fights. I've won about 230 of them. I have 15 losses or 16, something like that. I've lost count at this stage now.”
Brandon’s bouts range the gamut in time.
“My shortest fight was actually about two years ago,” he said. “I got a knockout stoppage. It was the first round. It could have been 40 seconds, maybe, and then my longest would have been just the nine minutes of an amateur boat. That's how long an amateur bout is.”
Brandon came from Europe to pursue a pro career in America.
“My gym is based in Santa Monica,” he said.
Brandon resides in the adjacent Los Angeles.
“I live other there for 6 to 8 weeks for each camp,” he said. “It’s great to be over in L.A. and away from home, so I can full focus on training and have no distractions.”
Brandon explained why boxing is his passion despite having to take some punishment.
“There's a saying I always live by: you don't get into the shower and not get wet,” he said. “If you're going to get into the boxing ring, you're going to get hit, so you want to be used to that. But I just love the sport. It's all I've ever known since I was a young child. My father used to coach me and he used to do a bit of boxing himself, so he got me into it and it's all I've ever done. I used to play other sports when I was younger, but boxing was my main focus. That's what I put my time into and I became good.”
Brandon is eager to embark on this next stage of his life.
”It's an exciting journey,” he said. “I had a long amateur career, but I'm excited now for the professional game.”
Brandon fights in the lightweight division.
“I'm fighting at 135,” he said. “I'm coming eventually in a few years to win world Titans at that weight and many more if I can.”
Brandon’s hand is raised after one of his numerous victories in the ring.
Brandon relies on speed and power.
“Speed is very important, especially at my weight,” he said. “You have a mix of both. You have a mix of fellows that have speed, but then also fellas that are heavy-handed as well that could knock you out easy. So you want to have a mix of both. When I look at my own style, I feel like I kind of have that snappiness, that sharpness, and I'm fast as well, so I have the power. I can't wait to show that.”
Brandon works out throughout the week.
“I train twice a day Monday through Friday and once on Saturday, then Sunday is rest,” he said. “Early morning session, which is either track work or roadwork, that’s about 1.5 hours and then back for my second session in the boxing gym, which would normally be around two hours.”
Brandon is a veteran of the ring.
“I started boxing when I was 6 years of age, so 17 years ago since I'm a child,” he said.
As an amateur, Brandon was known for striking, not necessarily power.
“I had a very amateur style,” he said. “Amateur boxing is very big in Ireland, so I broke through the national teams all the way from 11 years of age up until now. I've always learned that style and always had that amateur-style hits and not get a hit. So it is a big difference now coming into the pro game. But I'm using bits of what I had in amateurs, just sitting down a bit more now, putting more into the punches, hitting harder. But that would be my style: hit, not get hit. Kind of the name of the game, isn't it?”
Brandon’s tactics yielded results.
”I've won every national championship since I first started competing when I was 11 years of age all the way up until last year, until I was 22 years of age,” he said. “I won every one of them, so it's a great achievement. I've been involved with national teams, traveled all over the world representing my country. It's going to benefit me a lot now on this new journey.”
Brandon has encountered a variety of fighting styles.
“I've met every style possible,” he said. “I've fired with some of the top amateurs in the world. I've met every style, so I'll be ready for whatever comes. I know how to deal with every style and it'll be good.”
Brandon never sustained a major injury or permanent cosmetic damage such as cauliflower ears, but he’s not worried about aesthetics.
“You're not in it to look pretty and stay pretty,” he said.
Brandon first came to the U.S. last fall.
“I first came over here last September,” he said. “I had two training camps over here with another teammate of mine. He's a professional, Tommy Hyde. I came over with him last year. He was getting ready for two fights. I loved it over here, so I decided I was going to come back in the new year and be based out of California.”
Brandon wasn’t accustomed to sunny weather or the training opportunities found in California.
“We don't have this weather back in Ireland,” he said. “The weather, the training, the sparring, it's brilliant. Irish boxing, professional boxing, isn't up there yet. If you want to be making it and you want to be growing and learning and getting all this experience, America is the place you need to be.”
Brandon explained why boxing is his sport of choice.
“What I like about it most is that I'm in control of everything,” he said. “I like that it's an individual sport. I used to play team sports when I was younger, but what I found with them is you're relying on other people, you're relying on other players. With boxing, it's all yourself. If you don't put the training and you don't put the hard work in, you're not going to get the results. If I don't do that, then I have no one else to blame, only myself. If I do do that, then I'm happy.”
Brandon’s auspicious record doesn’t prevent him from getting a few butterflies before a bout.
”I'm always nervous for fights, even some sparring sessions,” he said. “Boxing is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. You never know if you're going to even come out of it on two feet, so I'm always nervous for that. But helping my nerves, I know I've done the training. I deserve to be in there. If I do what I was taught and do what I know, I won't get hurt.”
Brandon started training by learning how to move his feet in the squared circle.
“When my dad started coaching me, he was always starting with my footwork first,” he said. “He said if you get your feet right, your hands will come after. We’ve always done a lot of footwork.”
Brandon said the physical part of boxing isn’t the most difficult part about the sport.
”The hardest part of it isn’t even physical,” he said. “I think it's mental. You need to be right in the head. Even through disappointments, hard work and not seeing results, you need to stay consistent. That's a big thing. That was a big problem for me. I put a lot of work into it and I've kind of learned how to deal with my mindset now. But I think the hardest thing about boxing is inside your head.”
Along with hitting, moving and sparring, Brandon works on strength.
“I do two strength sessions a week as well,” he said. “I have a coach back in Ireland. He sends me on a program while I'm over here. I stick to that twice a week when I'm over here. Then we do some running sessions, track sessions and just into the boxing gym every day for the second session.”
Running improves Brandon’s endurance.
“Some days we do a long distance run to be for long endurance and then other days, it'd be onto the track for short sprints,” he said. “That's kind of what helps you get some stamina.”
Brandon keeps his cool in public so as not to massacre any untrained troublemakers.
”When I'm out in public, I don't look for trouble,” he said. “I try to avoid it because it'll only end up playing out worse. Luckily enough, I've actually never had any kind of dope or fool come up to me and try starting something. I'm sure it will happen eventually. But just keeping a cool head, let them do what they do. There's a bigger picture to be looking at because you could get in trouble from that and it could ruin your career over someone on the street.”
Brandon doesn’t intend to ever leave the sport entirely.
“I'd probably get into the coaching,” he said. “I love traveling now as well, so I always had that in my mind that I was going to travel. Now, if it's traveling with boxing, it could be that. I've been traveling since I'm a young age with the Irish team and getting experience all over the world. It probably will be something boxing-related when I retire. We'll see what happens when we get there.”
Brandon has already seen a significant part of the world.
“I've been to about 29, 30 countries so far,” he said. “I'm only 23 years of age, so I've just seen most corners of the world and I love it. I love the traveling. I love the experience, just traveling, doing what you love as well. It's killing two birds with one stone.”
Brandon couldn’t pin down one locale as the most scenic.
“That's a tough one,” he said. “I've been to some nice spots. I went to Cuba for a training camp a few years ago now. I really like Cuba. I've been to Armenia. Armenia was lovely. I was in Russia. Now, Russia was probably one of the worst spots I was ever in. I actually love L.A., but I'd say Cuba was probably one of the nicest spots I've been.”
The caliber of boxer differs depending on where they’re from.
“Cubans are the best amateurs in the world for boxing,” he said.
Brandon has been surprised by competing against unexpectedly tough opponents in tournaments.
“You’re happy with it because it's not a tough draw to start off with,” he said. “Next thing you know, you get a superstar out of that country and you end up fighting him. So there have been a few countries now that surprised me. I didn't think they were actually on that level because Ireland is in the top three countries of the world in amateur.”
Conversely, Brandon has found some boxers weren’t as impressive as he anticipated.
“I've boxed plenty of Russians now,” he said. “I fought a few of them and I was actually surprised. I was like, thought he was going to be better than what he was. And it was like, there's not that big of a hype about them at all.”
Brandon was surprised by how different his new surroundings are.
“When I came over here, it's such a different world,” he said about L.A. “There's so many types of people here. You don't know who you'd meet or what you would bump into. It's crazy. It's like the movies back in Ireland to be watching films and it'd be all over here. I never thought it was actually real until I came over here and I'm like, wow.”
Part of that reality is the seedy side of a major city, including drug addicts.
“All the crackheads over here out in the middle of the street dancing, people like that,” Brandon said. “It's just crazy stuff over here that they carry on. We have homelessness back home, but it's nowhere near as big a problem as it is over here. Crazy here. We were up in San Francisco for the weekend as well, and it's very bad in San Francisco, too.”
Brandon stays motivated to train through discipline.
”I keep myself motivated a lot, but I'm more disciplined,” he said. “I know I have to go and train today. I have to get it done, so I might as well go get it done, and then I might be in a better mood tomorrow or I might feel better tomorrow then, but I'm doing it so long now. It just becomes a natural thing to me that it has to be done. It's like going to work. You don't want to go to work some days but you have to get paid at the end of the week. That's kind of how I am with my boxing. I just have to do it, it has to be done.”
Brandon strikes. Photo for Westside Promotions
Brandon enjoys one aspect of training the most.
”I enjoy sparring,” he said. “Most people do love the sparring. You're getting in there and then you're putting all your hard work together, anything you've been learning and practicing on in the gym, you're able to use that. I like that to be able to reflect on how well I'm doing. It's obviously a bad thing if you have a bad spar as well. It reflects on how bad you're doing, too, so there's two sides of that. Sparring would be my main go-to, but all the other work has to be done as well. The road work, the strength work, the footwork, all that has to play a part before you can actually just hop in the ring and spar.”
Brandon dispensed advice to aspiring boxers.
“Don't take it too serious at the start,” he said. “Enjoy it. If you don't enjoy something when you're doing it or you're forced to do it, you'll hate it for the rest of your life. So make sure you enjoy it. Take your time. If people want to get in, actually box competitively, listen to your coaches and learn every day. You're not going to go from zero to 100 in a day. Enjoy the journey.”
Brandon’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandon_mcc16/