Ask Katie Taylor, and Gary Cully will one day be lightweight world champion. Eddie Hearn describes him as “the future of Irish boxing”.
Growing up in Naas in County Kildare, just a 45-minute drive from Dublin, where he is about to fight Jose Felix, Cully always shared the same dreams. Whenever he would visit what is now the 3Arena to watch live bands, or even fight nights featuring the great Irish super-bantamweight Bernard Dunne, he would vow: “I want to fight here one day.”
More than a decade on, it’s finally happening. “It’s a surreal feeling,” he grins.
This is not the first time Cully has fought on a Taylor card. At Wembley Arena in October, before the undisputed lightweight champion defended her belts against Karen Elizabeth Carabajal, Cully marched into the ring and took just 35 seconds to warm up before stopping Jaouad Belmehdi with a crunching left hand.
The shot was almost identical to the one that knocked out former IBF world champion Miguel Vazquez, the biggest scalp of his career so far. “People were saying it was too easy, I got that a lot,” Cully tells i.
“But even Saturday night, it’s been earned already. In the last 10 weeks in training camp, the last 10 months, the last 10 years. I’m very dedicated, very disciplined and I believe the victories and the performances are just a result of the hard work that’s been put in. I make it look easy on the night but training camp has been anything but easy.”
Saturday night is not only Taylor’s long-awaited homecoming, her first professional fight in the Republic of Ireland, but Cully’s too.
“They call us the ‘fighting Irish’ but we haven’t had boxing here in a long time. We’re big fans of the sport,” he says.
No major fights have been held in the country since the February 2016 shooting at the Regency Hotel, just three miles away.
A weigh-in organised by MTK Global, the promotional company co-founded by alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan, was targeted in an armed attack. Kinahan was believed to be the target, but the only fatality was one of his associates, David Byrne.
MTK is now defunct but plenty of Irish column inches have been dedicated to the number of its former fighters – Cully and Taylor’s opponent Chantelle Cameron among them – and trainers, Pete Taylor and Jamie Moore – who will be part of the night.
Asked how he felt about being drawn into criticism of the card, Cully responded: “This week I don’t feel any way about it, this week’s about Katie’s homecoming for me. It’s a special night for Irish boxing. I’m in fight mode and focused and ready for Saturday night.
“I can answer questions about that Monday morning, then you can ask me any questions about that. But this week I’m focused and I want to celebrate Katie’s career. I’d be prepared to answer those questions next week but this week is about Katie and I don’t think we should overshadow that.”
The hope is that despite the shadow of MTK looming somewhere in the periphery, Saturday night will mark a new era for Irish boxing. Cully is already an Irish champion, as well as holding the WBA Inter-continental belt, learning much of what he knows from Taylor’s father Peter, whom he describes as “a big part of my career and my life”.
Throughout his career he has enjoyed plenty of love from Irish boxing’s travelling fans, though for once they do not have far to go. “Irish fans are the best in the world, especially when it comes to supporting combat athletes,” he says. “We’ve travelled in America to support Katie and Conor [McGregor], so to have it back home is something special.”
Sign up for i‘s boxing newsletter
“Boxing Tonight” is i‘s weekly look ahead to Saturday night’s fights – and it’s now a free weekly newsletter. Every week, we’ll be talking about the biggest fights in the UK, US and beyond, with exclusive interviews and analysis from i‘s boxing writers.
You can sign up here to receive it straight to your inbox on Saturday mornings.
Does the mention of McGregor explain the beard?
“I’ve been trying to grow a beard for the last 27 years!” Cully laughs. “It eventually started coming through a couple of years ago when Conor started coming onto the scene, so people started making the comparisons. It’s kind of ginger, isn’t it, I’m just embracing the Irishness this week.”
Once the Felix fight is done, he will stay up into the early hours of Sunday morning to watch the very pinnacle of his division as Devin Haney defends his four lightweight belts against Vasyl Lomachenko. Cully does not usually sleep after his fights, fuelled by adrenaline and excitement.
He has already seen Felix, the Mexican lightweight with a record of 39-6-1, fight live in unexpected surroundings, when he took on his gym-mate Tyrone McKenna at Féile an Phobail on the Falls Road in Belfast. McKenna beat him by unanimous decision in a rare outing outside of North or South America but Felix gave a valiant enough performance not to be taken lightly.
“He went to war,” Cully points out. “He’s Mexican – fighting Irish, fighting Mexicans – and I believe the fans are in for a treat, I come to entertain and he likes to go to work as well.”
After Felix, a shot at a form of the world title against IBO champion Maxi Hughes could lie in wait. Jorge Linares is another option, but Cully’s first priority is to “spearhead the new wave of Irish talent coming through” and eventually to step out of Taylor’s shadow.
“If Katie eventually fights at Croke Park that would be amazing to be a part of,” he says. “But I want to work my way towards world titles and come back to Dublin and headline – and then start forging my own legacy.”
