Katelynn Phelan up for the fight in the unforgiving world of pro boxing

Some days Mr Daly, who lives next door, will see Katelynn Phelan heading to training and he'll insist on giving her a €10 note whenever he knows she has a fight coming up. Just to show his support

"And that can sometimes make a big difference," the Kildare boxer says brightly. With what's going on in the world at the moment not everyone has the money. But . . . it's the heart that's behind it as well."

You probably don’t know her name yet but, if she has her way, you will do soon enough.

Through months of unending greyness and stagnation, Katelynn Phelan’s boxing life has exploded into technicolour. She is, at 20, Ireland’s youngest pro fighter.

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The next youngest in the women's game is 34-year-old Katie Taylor. Last October, Phelan went to Donauwörth in Bavaria to fight Jessica Schadko in her local gym. The experience was strange: the airport ghostly and the taxi rank deserted when they arrived. They had to wait two hours just to get to the hotel.

On the night of the fight, a limited audience of 100 partisan locals made it clear that she was being brought there to lose. But for some reason, Phelan didn’t have a care in the world that night.

“In my changing room I was singing, dancing, had my music playing loud. While in their room, it was really quiet and dull. I knew it was exactly my time to be there.”

She boxed free and rattled the German with repeated punishing left upper cuts. Schadko didn’t come out of her corner after round five. Phelan was confused for a few seconds. The gym went quiet. She could see the referee waving a towel. She asked her trainer, Niall, what was going on. They could see the other coach urging the German fighter to go out but she was shaking her head. The referee signalled it was over.

“I had so many emotions at that moment that I didn’t actually understand what was going on. And the two of us looked at each other and it was just: ‘Shit, we’ve done this.’ And it was strange because every emotion – I was happy, I was proud, sad, angry – came through all at once.”

Just like that, Phelan had won her fourth professional fight and added the WBC Youth, WBF and WIBA world welterweight belts to her name. They celebrated with a McDonalds because everywhere was closed. It was the same at home.

Bullying

Normally, there would have been a civic reception in the square in Kildare town but that was impossible. In the weeks afterwards people would beep their car horns when they’d see her and wave and give her a shout.

There’s a lot of goodwill out there. She soaks it up because God knows she lived through the opposite for long enough. There’s a bridge that runs in front of the Phelans’ house and it’s one of those acoustic freaks where you can hear what passers-by are saying from the house.

During the worst years of Katelynn Phelan’s bullying, they’d walk across it and say horrible things knowing she could hear them. It’s in the past, for sure, but not the dim and distant.

In 2017 she’d become so demoralised that she stopped boxing. Apart from the miserable hours she was forced to spend in school, she hid out at home. The idea of boxing had become tainted and joyless.

It was a conflict. The Phelans are a boxing family. Her granddad passed the sport on to her father Paddy, a former fighter and a coach. Her brother Allan is a pro boxer. Her brother Darren is boxer. Her older sister Lisa-Marie did not box. In Katelynn’s heart, she became a boxer at the age of five.

“My dad didn’t want me to box at all. He didn’t really see it as a female thing because . . . not many people see boxing for girls. I was the baby of the family and I always wanted to go down to the club to see my brothers train. And he was an old-fashioned kind of man and he would say ‘no stay home with your mum and that is it’. But I have always been stubborn. Like, if I’m told ‘no’ I want to prove people wrong.

"So I went above my dad's head at that time to a guy named Tom McDermott, who owned the boxing club in Newbridge. And I was tiny then at five. I was two months premature so my growth was small. And it was just 15- and 16-year-old boys boxing there. And all I wanted to do in my mind was get in and bate the shit out of them!

“So I would say, ‘Tom, Tom please can I train. You can keep an eye on me every single day’. So he said that was fine. And it was like when Katie Taylor was one of the only girls in the gym. It was scary. And my brothers, like any older brothers, they are going to mess with their little sister and bully her a bit. But once I started boxing, I started giving it back to them.”

She's laughing as she remembers this. Phelan is a sunny kind of soul but deadly serious about her boxing. Her fight nickname is The Smiling Assassin. By the time she was about seven, it was obvious she had the skills: the footwork, the feints, the sharp accuracy and the bravery. Paddy Phelan became a convert – and her coach. Katie Taylor's ascension at the London Olympics helped progress the perception of girls and boxing.

Suddenly, every kid was signing up. Paddy found himself ferrying car loads of kids back and forth to Naas; it made more sense to form a club in Kildare town. So he set up St Brigid’s. Katelynn fought against boys at first and then girls when they signed up. She mowed all-comers down. A conspicuous talent. The obvious path had been cleared by Taylor: funding, amateurism, the dream of Olympic glory. But it was complicated.

Usual messages

In November of 2017 Phelan won a bronze medal at the World Women's Championships in Guwathi in India. The general reception was of delight and pride. By then she had reached the stage where she had become deaf to the congratulations. Within hours, the usual messages began to pop up on her Instagram account. She'd feel sick before she read them and couldn't not read them.

“Just . . . not nice things were being said. And I was made to feel shit about it. I think I spent a year literally not moving from my room. I was in a really bad mentality and wasn’t moving, I was scared to go and do anything and wasn’t happy. Because I was feeling judged. I didn’t box for a full year and I would be a lot further in my career if I had. This is when I was 17. It wasn’t that long ago.

“Like, I was bullied all through secondary school, from first year to sixth year. And I only opened up and told people in fifth year. And then it was too late and it had gone too far. And I was told that I had no proof – nobody had hit me so you can’t do anything about it. It was more mentally than anything. Physically I could stick up for myself.”

She knew these girls. They had been tight friends when they were children. In primary school, they’d run around together.

“That’s what was heartbreaking. We’d been best friends.”

Boxing, of all things, was the thing that got in the way. Most of the kids in the club were boys.

“And I grew up with older brothers so I was a guy’s girl. And everyone was coming to that age. And they didn’t like that. So they focused on me and my boxing.”

When I said 'yeah put me down for two', they said, 'oh sorry you aren't invited'.

It was a stealth campaign that lasted for years but by her senior year in school it had become intolerable. She’ll share this one detail. The school debs was coming up and anyone who wanted tickets had to put their name down.

“And when I said ‘yeah put me down for two’, they said, ‘oh sorry you aren’t invited. You aren’t allowed go’. And the school couldn’t do anything about it because the school doesn’t run the debs, it’s students.”

It might sound like teenage stuff, but it’s hell when you are in it. For 12 months, she stewed and fretted and didn’t box. The things that had seemed fabulous and starry a few years earlier – the Olympics – now left her with a heavy feeling. It was contradictory; the thing she most loved became the thing she most dreaded.

“And a year later I realised I didn’t have a love for the amateur sport any more. It was tied up with too many things. So it was either I give up anything and become someone who does a nine to five job. Or I make the change I need. So I thought: ‘right, I’m going to turn professional’.”

Telling nobody, she submitted her application forms and did her medicals. She waited until she was certified. Then she sat her parents down and told them; they were immediately anxious. “And they saw how hard it is for my brother.”

But she hasn't looked back. Tonight, she fights Kavina Kopinska in a super lightweight bout in Dudelange, Luxembourg. Five years ago, Kopinska was Katie Taylor's first ever professional opponent.

Because Phelan wants the fight, she has to pay for everything: flights and accommodation for the Polish fighter and her backroom team, Covid testing, an entry fee and then the costs of her own camp. The night will leave her with a bill of around €4,000, win or lose. She posted a kind of appeal on Facebook recently and was flooded with replies from people indignant on her behalf.

Big name

“People were saying this is crazy and asking why the promoter can’t do it. But they are trying to promote a show themselves. And I’m not a big name yet. Soon, I will be. The more fights you get the more of a chance you have of being noticed by a big promoter or manager. Once the momentum starts you have to try and keep it going.”

On the night she made her debut, her family was among the crowd in the National Stadium and her brother Allan fought on the same card. Being a professional just felt right. She asked Niall Barrett, who runs Unit Three in Naas for a pad works session. From the moment she set foot in their gym, she was immediately struck by the overwhelming feel-good energy within the place. She asked straight out could she train there, as bluntly as she asked Tom McDermott when she was five.

"And that is when my life changed altogether, training alongside Niall and Gary Cully [the WBO European lightweight champion]. As soon as I linked up with them guys my whole mindset changed and I started to feel proud for who I was and see a purpose in my life."

I am gone from 10 in the morning to eight or nine at night. . . Boxing is my job

Nothing is too out there for her. She'll spend an hour in the pitch darkness of a flotation chamber, immersed in Epsom salted water.

“It’s crazy, you start hallucinating and everything but it’s incredible.”

She practices visualisation. She regards herself as a business. Financially, it's a slog. She has a couple of local sponsors, Conlon Oils and Coyne Research which keeps her liquid. The idea of working part-time seems almost irresponsible to her because it leaves less time for preparation.

“I am gone from 10 in the morning to eight or nine at night. People say get a job or go on the dole. But boxing is my job. People see it as a hobby. But it is a business and it is my business and it is really, really hard. I want a career out of this. It is a massive struggle. Like, I don’t come from a rich family. Every little bit helps.

"I had a few T-shirts left over from Germany and I put a post up saying that anyone who sponsored me €50 got a tee-shirt. And I got messages saying, 'why are you charging €50 for a tee shirt?' And once I explained, they were really supportive. If you are not mentally and physically prepared for a fight, it is dangerous."

The women’s game is still finding its feet: although Katie Taylor is a national figure, the sport is still in its infancy. Katelynn Phelan belongs to the next wave of fighters coming through on her vapour trails.

Recognition

"You know, growing up I think every little girl in Ireland looked up to Katie Taylor whether you were a boxer or not. Just in the sense that she was such a role model in everything she did. I looked at her and thought 'yeah I can be like that'.

“I would be on this path even if she didn’t do what she is doing today. But she made it a lot easier for people like me to come up. And it is great to see Katie get the recognition she deserves. But there are so many of us who don’t get recognition because it does always go back to Katie.

“As an amateur I spoke to Katie a few times and she is a lovely person. No matter what you ask her she will always tell you and give you advice. Since I turned pro, though, we haven’t been in contact. But give me a few months and you never know, she might send me a text.”

This week has been monastic. Lemon water starts. Spinach and boiled egg breakfasts. Evening sessions to reacclimatise to night fighting. Studying film. A last walk on the treadmill and then bed. It’s gruelling and boring. The hate messages still come in every now and again. But they don’t carry the same power now. She is still under the radar, still planning big. She’s always known her mind and turning professional has been the right move.

“I just love it,” Phelan says, finally, of where she is with boxing now.

“You get that sense of pride and readiness. When you know you belong somewhere. I do get nervous. I get very nervous. But I’d be worried if I wasn’t. When I was growing up I was always told by my brothers you get nervous but that means you are ready. So it is just changing that nerves into excitement. As soon as I step through the ropes of the ring everything is gone. No matter what I am feeling or what is going on in the world, everything is gone.”