McDonald captures BUI title on Celtic Clash card
TEAM TNT Coach, Eddie Hyland was delighted with the performance his boxer Carl McDonald produced to win the vacant BUI Celtic Super Bantam-weight title last Saturday night.
The Tallaght lad earned a unanimous decision in his clash with Cork’s Colin O’Donovan on the Celtic Clash 6 bill in Good Counsel GAA Club.
Carl McDonald with coach Eddie Hyland
“Carl boxed out of his skin and had him [O’Donovan] down in the sixth or seventh round,” said Hyland.
“He was 100 per cent coming into this fight and was completely focused on what he had to do to get the win.
“Of all the eight rounds, I would have given one to O’Donovan. It was in the fifth round when Carl just switched off for a split second and O’Donovan came on strong.
“But Carl boxed the ears of him for the other seven and put in his best display of boxing.
“He’s on cloud nine after this and now we’ll be trying to get him a fight for the Irish title by the end of the year,” he tol
This victory will have gone a long way to helping McDonald get over the disappointment of last year’s loss to Regan Buckley very much out of his system.
Since then he bounced back with a victory over Bulgarian Trayan Slavev, also in Good Counsel, which was followed by a very late call-up to take on England’s unbeaten featherweight Jordan Gill in the O2 Arena in May.
While that marked the second loss of his professional career so far, McDonald still turned in a very encouraging perform-ance and was on a sound footing coming into last week’s title decider against O’Donovan.
Another of the TNT fold, Graham McCormack was also out in action on the Celtic Clash 6 card and recorded a good points win over another Bulgarian, Radoslav Mitev.
It took the Irishman’s record to 3-0 and Hyland was pleased with his showing saying: “Graham was up against a tough journeyman who has gone the distance with a few good lads.
“He went out there and showed he can box rather than just fight,” he pointed out..
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