JASON QUIGLEY HAS A history of rising to the occasion when it matters most and when the stakes are high.
The Ballybofey man is 10-0 in a professional career that has gone as smoothly as could have been dreamed so far.
He faces what is considered and expected to be his toughest test yet in Las Vegas on Saturday night.
James de La Rosa (23-3), a Mexican who counts Alfredo Angulo among his scalps, is the next man in Quigley’s crosshairs.
Quigley is well aware of the meaning of this one: ‘This is the start of my professional career,’ he put it this week.
[adrotate group=”57″]Picture caption: Jason Quigley in training with Edgar Jasso on the pads ahead of his bout against James de La Rosa on Saturday night. Picture courtesy of Sheer Sports Management.
Throughout his career as an amateur, Quigley consistently defied the odds when they were stacked against him.
There were times, too, when he thought about quitting the sport.
Ten years ago, the Quigley family stood in the car park of the Finn Valley Centre in Stranorlar after the 14-year-old Jason returned from the Boy 4 finals in Dublin. At the National Stadium, Quigley had been beaten by St Michael’s Athy’s David Joe Joyce.
Quigley’s aunt, Mary, gave her downbeat newphew some advice.
‘Forget about them boys in Dublin and the boxing because you’ll never get a decision,’ she whispered.
It was a day that helped shaped the young Quigley, who chose not to take on board the words imparted by his aunt.
“It was a real setback for us as it had never happened before,” Quigley later said. He had won Irish titles at Boy 1, Boy 2 and Boy 3. Defeat was hardly considered as a possibility.
“I went straight home, straight to bed and got up first thing the next morning and went for a run.
“The only thing I could think about was Joyce beating me. Looking back now, losing that fight was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Quigley won his first Irish Under-21 title when he was just 17 and he subsequently entered the Irish Intermediate Championships.
He took to the scales in Dublin with the aim of gaining experience, but he overcame Patrick J Ward to become the National Intermediate Welterweight champion.
In 2009, Quigley dropped only seven points and registered 53 on his way to winning the Danas Pozniakas Olympic Youth Tournament in Lithuania, where he defeated Deimantas Mickevicus in the final.
[adrotate group=”58”]His big breakthrough came at the European Youth Championships in 2009 when Quigley defeated Emil Ahmadov from Ajerbaijan in the final.
Quigley was named Boxer of the Tournament and his father, Conor, would remember that he made a mental note. “I said to myself then: ‘I have a diamond on my hand here’,” Conor said four years later.
“It was the way he won them, hardly conceding a point. I knew I had a gem.”
Quigley lost senior elite middleweight finals to Darren O’Neill in 2010 and 2011. He went to welterweight for 2012, with the Olympic dream still a possibility. When he lost to Illies Golden Gloves man William McLaughlin, the future was uncertain.
In the darkened dressing room of the National Stadium, Quigley motioned to his father in the moments after that loss: ‘Right dad, what’s our next move?’.
It was a question and an answer all in one.
The following October, Quigley won a World silver medal having taken a European Gold that summer.
In the European semi-final, he faced Ukranian world number 1 Ievgen Khytrov and turned in a coming-of-age display. The unknown Irish middleweight was now the talk of Europe after a stunning 30-27, 30-27, 29-28 win.
When he defeated Bogdan Juratoni in the European final, it was evident that Quigley was something special.
[adrotate group=”38″]He confirmed it when taking a silver medal at the World Championships in Almaty, where a semi-final win over Artem Chebotarev remains one of his finest moments.
He was pipped to the title by Zhanibek Alimkhanuly in the final, but Quigley caught the eye of Golden Boy Promotions and was snapped up.
Foes from those European and World Championships have since turned pro. Khytrov is 13-0, Stefan Haertel 9-0 and Vijender Singh 5-0.
Quigely never believed in anything other than a win that day against Khytrov. At a pre-Championship camp, the two were in company and Quigley took note.
“I was watching him and was keeping an eye on what he has done,” he said after the Championships.
“I was looking at him sparring and saying to myself: ‘I can beat this fella’. I was watching everything he was doing, the way he was boxing and trying to figure out what sort of game plan I’d need if I did draw him.
“I might never have met him – but I did.
“I always have confidence in myself going to a tournament – any tournament. No matter who I’m boxing I’ll never get in and think: ‘This lad is going to beat me’. There is no point going through the ropes like that.”
Before he went to European and World level, he had to conquer the demons of the National Stadium and two senior final defeats to O’Neill.
He came back with a bang in 2013, overcoming O’Neill in a tense quarter-final before putting Conrad Cummings – now also on the rise as a pro in the middleweight division – to the sword in the semi-final and reaching a then zenith in defeating Roy Sheahan in the final.
[adrotate group=”43”]That glorious hour came after persistence at practice with some of the best in the business.
In October 2012, the Quigleys headed for Bargoed in Wales for a training camp with Nathan Cleverly, then WBO light heavyweight champion and who now has a 29-3 record.
Vince Cleverly asked if the young Quigley could go ten rounds with his man.
Quigley tried five ‘to see how it would go’.
By the end of five, it was 5-0 to Quigley. By the end of eight, Quigley hadn’t dropped a round.
As it was then, it is now.
Quigley has been sparring with some of the top names in the sport and has done 160 rounds of practice with champions of all sorts, all readying him for his own big nights – the first of which comes this weekend.
The list of names on that 10-0 record mightn’t be headline makers, but behind the bright lights and the flashes of the camera bulbs, Quigley has been preparing himself for nights like Saturday in the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
He’s ready for James de La Rosa.
He has been for quite some time.
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