Paddy McConigley feels like a different man these night as he spins the skipping rope at Letterkenny Boxing Club.
A year ago, McConigley tipped the scales at 88kgs and competed as a heavyweight.
Next week, he jets away to Boston with the Donegal Boxing team and will line up for a welterweight bout at the Teachers Union Hall in Dorchester on Thursday.
Now bang on 69kgs, McConigley is in the shape of his life.
“It’s a massive difference. I can feel it so much,” he says.
“Before, I’d have just been standing there in the ring. Now, I’m on my toes and moving well. It’s been hard to get used to, but I feel good now.
“I’m training three nights a week. We’ve upped it since we heard I was going to America.
“I boxed here for Donegal against Mayo and they were watching that show. Luckily enough, I got picked.”
Having shaved off 19kgs, McConigley is looking lean,
He lost to Achill’s Adam Dempsey in that inter-county show against Mayo, just eight months after he’d lost out to Daingean’s Brian Kennedy in an Under-18 quarter-final in Dublin.
“I was too small for the weight I was in so I had to change things,” he says.
“I’m doing more work in training and with my diet. I cut out the stuff I shouldn’t be eating. It’s serious discipline to do that. No more Hillbillies now.”
McConigley trains three nights a week at Letterkenny ABC under Rory McShane, Ryan Harkin, Stephen McLaughlin and Paddy Gallagher, while he does his own running programme twice a week too.
The Donegal team, a 15-strong boxing side with six officials to accompany them, heads to Boston on Tuesday and on Thursday they face a Boston Boxing Academy Team.
The experience of having been at The National Stadium to fight will stand to McConigley.
The Letterkenny puncher says: “It was a big change; a massive difference up in the Stadium. The Under-22s were a completely different thing. You go into the Stadium and the buzz is unreal.”
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