In August, it will be 10 years since Russian bantamweight Vladimir Nikitin was given the verdict over Ireland’s Michael Conlan in their quarter-final bout at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
Dripping blood and badly beaten, Nikitin was handed the fight and an Olympic medal in a cruel split decision.
Conlan arrived in Rio as favourite to take the gold, having won the World Championships in Qatar the previous year. In doing so, he added his amateur world title (the first ever won by an Irish male boxer) to his European belt and Olympic bronze medal from London 2012.
Majestic in form, Rio was to be Conlan’s crowning glory. Until, that is, the blood-soaked figure of Nikitin was gifted a place in the semi-final.
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As it transpired, Olympic boxing was even more disfigured than the Russian, who was subsequently forced to withdraw from the semi-final, such was the punishment inflicted by the Belfast boxer.
Conlan’s reaction to the verdict was swift and visceral as he launched into a ringside tirade, branding boxing “filth” and the governing AIBA as “corrupt top to bottom.”
People might have assumed we were listening to another disgruntled boxer unhappy with a decision. But he was more correct than he could have imagined.
In 2021, too late for it to be of much use to Conlan, the McLaren report on boxing was published. Blowing the sport apart, it cited widespread malfeasance and a culture of fear.
The report said referees and judges made hand signals to each other and a cash-for-medals scheme was in operation.
Handpicked referees gave instructions as to who would win bouts on the morning of competition. It said at least 11 fights were manipulated in Rio, with Conlan’s quarter-final against Nikitin among them.
Tonight in Belfast, the 34-year-old has probably one last chance to get something tangible back from the sport.
Fighting for his professional life, Conlan faces the unbeaten American Kevin Walsh in a WBC international featherweight contest in the hope of climbing the rankings and ultimately winning a professional world title, something that has eluded him since Rio.
In Conlan’s opponent, there is a life story too, one that picks on the threads of disadvantage and struggle. Walsh has also faced adversity to place himself in Belfast and he yearns for the same thing as Conlan.
Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, the 33-year-old posted on his Facebook page last year a brief synopsis of his journey so far. For a bozer, it is not an unfamiliar one.
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“I was born and raised in Brockton… Tough city full of smoke and drama… Pops suffered a brain injury when I was about 13, he was jumped and nearly beaten to death with a baseball bat… and died when I was 17,” wrote Walsh.
“From the age of 17-23 I was a menace to society… I swore I was going to be the next Pablo Escobar… I went left and turned to the streets… went to juvenile detention for a year.
“Always believed in street codes and G (gang) codes, never told on a soul… I was looking at going away for 3-7 years. That’s when I turned to boxing, I was about 23 years old.”
In jail he trained hard until a kindly judge saw a future in him and cut short his incarceration time. He is now at 19 professional fights and unbeaten, with the bout against Conlan in the SSE Arena as consequential for him as it is for the Irish fighter.
It is not Conlan’s first time to try and make a world mark as a professional. Under the German-born, English-raised promoter Kalle Sauerland, he hopes to put an end to Walsh’s ambition and break into the top of the featherweight rankings.
Conlan has had three losses, the last one at the end of 2023 to Jordan Gill, when he went down in the second round. After that he took a 15-month break. Prior to Gill, he lost in world title fights against Leigh Wood in 2022 and Luis Alberto Lopez in 2023.
At the age he is now, Conlan knows a fourth defeat would be catastrophic for his career. Win or bust has been the mantra all week.
“I’ve followed him for a long time and this chapter for him is the most important one – every fight is massive,” Sauerland told the BBC this week.
“When you think he hasn’t won a world title, it doesn’t feel real. He’s got all the skills, is from a boxing family, got robbed of the [2016 Olympics] gold medal so we know how good a fighter he is.
“He’s come within 90 seconds of a world title [against Wood] but how he hasn’t become a world champion is a mystery.”
From Cavendish Street, off the Falls Road in West Belfast, Conlan is a stadium filler with his good looks and profane, cheeky attitude. The rosary beads tattooed around his neck and on his chest mark him as a fighter who has a strong sense of place.
Redemption stories are nothing new in professional boxing, but given Conlan was defrauded by the sport he has devoted most of his life trying to perfect, it might seem dewy-eyed and callow to believe it owes him something back. But it does.
Almost a decade on from his furious exit from Rio 2016, Conlan may not get the decision in Belfast, but at least he knows it will be a level playing field.
