PRO GAME HUGE STEP INTO DARK FOR IRVINE

Michael Conlan and Carl Frampton

BRENDAN IRVINE has always had a ‘business mind’ but he’s not sure if he will follow fellow belfast boxers Carl Frampton and Michael Conlan into the professional ranks.

The list of promising fighters chewed up and spat out by the money game is endless and Irvine is quick to point out that there are other options are open to him.

“I have a business head on me,” stressed Irvine. “It’s been like that from the time I started selling sweets and fizzy drinks in school!

“Obviously I like the idea of going pro. The big thing as an amateur was getting to the Olympics, and I’ve done that. Obviously I want to medal next.

“But I don’t know. It is a completely different game when you go pro. If that injury stuff happened to me as a pro, I’d be done. I wouldn’t have the team around me that I have now,

“I just wouldn’t have that support and people believing in you that you could come back.”

“The pro game is a business. It’s a cruel business, too. It does entice everyone, of course it does.

“One day you’ll wake up and boxing will be all over. I did a lifeguarding course when I broke my foot and ended up doing a couple of shifts a week as a lifeguard, it kept me busy.

“So what happens after? You think about Brian Magee, Eamonn Magee... Ryan Burnett having to retire early. “But to be honest, down the line I would try to have my own business if I did decide to just work away, after I finish up.

“I’d love to open my own business working on cars. I love doing that already. Eventually I’d love to have my own yard, and to buy and sell

cars.”