High hopes as Limerick boxing champ signs up with one of world's leading promoters
IN a first for the Rathkeale Boxing Club, one of its star members, Jason Harty has turned professional.
The 21-year-old from Askeaton, who also celebrated his coming of age at the weekend, has been signed up by Frank Warren, one of the biggest boxing managers and promoters in Britain. Frank and his son George own and run Queensberry Promotions and he is also a founder of the British boxing television channel BoxNation.
Jason will be in good company at Queensberry Promotions, a company which has worked with some of the biggest fighters in boxing history. Over the past 35 years, Frank Warren has promoted iconic names such as Bruno, Tyson, Collins, Khan and Eubank.
And now he has a Harty on his books. “It is a big step,”Jason said this week. “It is a different game, a new game.”But he continued: “It was something I wanted to do all my life since I took up boxing.”
Jason started his boxing life about 12 years ago, and very quickly was winning county, Munster and national titles at under-age. At under-14, Jason won silver in the European Schoolboys, at the same time as his twin brother Jamie also won silver.
At under-16, Jason brought home gold from the European Junior Championships. Last year, at the Alexandra Palace,at one of the big tournaments of the boxing calendar, Jason won the Harringey Box Cup. Last year also, he won the Irish Seniors at 75kg middleweight and the Elites Championship at middleweight in November.
“We are very pleased for him,” Rob Williams, secretary of the Rathkeale Boxing Club said this week. Following his win at the Elites Championship, Mr Williams said, the natural progression for Jason might have been to try to make the Olympic team. But Jason chose a different route to glory.
“I got my opportunity and I took it,” said the young man whose boxing hero is Mohammed Ali.
Jason expects to be “over and back” to training camps in the UK where his boxing coaches are based.
And he is hoping to make his début in Belfast later this year.
“I might be the undercard at the Carl Frampton fight,” he said.
“I will always be ready, always have the work done,” he declared.