Cronin set to face American
THE Kingdom Warrior, Milltown’s Kevin Cronin, is set to get his first taste of professional boxing stateside this weekend when he faces veteran American professional fighter Patrick Pierre at the Freeport Hall, in Dorchester Boston this St Patrick’s weekend.
Cronin is due to face Pierre in a Super Middleweight contest in the early hours of Sunday morning Irish time, Saturday night in Boston (eastern standard time).
41-year-old Pierre is a much more experienced fighter than Cronin in the professional game, but his record would suggest that he’s little more than a journeyman pro.
Cronin had been expecting a more formidable opponent for the fight, but logistical issues meant that he and his management team, led by former Olympian Michael Conlan, settled on Pierre.
“He’s the opponent now with the last two weeks,” Cronin confirmed.
“We’d another fella in line, but like that we’ve been through about three opponents in the last two or three weeks. So chances of something going wrong with an opponent were so high so we just said we’d make sure we had a back-up one and, thankfully, we did because it’s going to end up being the back-up opponent.
“He’s [Pierre] grand, he’s not as dangerous as the guy I was going to be fighting, but the way we look at it is, he’s fit, he’s still a big bloke, he’s going to be there, he’s going to give it a go.
“His record is a bit deceptive to what he does. He does give it a good go for a few rounds, so I’ll have to be switched on, keep on the jab and hopefully get him out of there.”
The native New Yorker has fought 32 times in his career, winning on five occasions, losing the other 27 times (being knocked-out on 17 occasions), meaning this is a fight Cronin really ought to be winning.
“It’s should be routine,” Cronin explained. “But I had a change of opponent at some point before and it was kind of similar. Your man looked like he had a poor record, you’d think it would be an easy fight and it ended up being one of my toughest fights.
“So to be honest with you I just look at them all the same now no matter it is. Hopefully he’ll come and give it a good go and try and upset the applecart, but at the end of the day all that matters to us is doing in there and getting the win and moving on to bigger and better things.