Adam Olaniyan was just 13 when he won a European gold medal for the first time as an amateur boxer.
Instead of soaking in that feeling or bragging about it, he recalls being sat down by his father for a serious conversation about his future. “He sat me down and he said, ‘Look, you give your younger years to this game, you give your 20s and you’ll have the rest of your life to enjoy. What’s the point of going to parties, going out with friends and missing training, missing competitions and fights?’ I left that conversation and I asked myself: ‘Do I want mediocrity?’”
After that pep talk Olaniyan put his gold medal in a drawer and hasn’t taken it out since.
That’s a pretty heavy conversation and realisation for a 13-year-old kid, but now, at 20, Olaniyan is mature for his age, and has Irish, European and world amateur titles to show for his dedication.
The Jobstown heavyweight fights on the undercard of Katie Taylor’s Croke Park homecoming on Saturday, his fourth fight as a professional, having won his first three by knockout.
It’s perfect for Olaniyan, who has always idolised Taylor and has a personal connection with her too. Taylor and Olaniyan share a manager in Brian Peters, and she accompanied him when he went looking for a professional gym, eventually settling on the Everton Red Triangle in Liverpool.
She also gave him a pair of gloves to mark the start of his professional career. “She took the gloves out of her bag and gave them to me and said, ‘I hope they serve you well’ … She’s just a gem. She’s one of the best people ever, ever, ever.”
He also says she gives him little pieces of advice on his career, helping him to stay grounded. If Olaniyan needs grounding, though, he need only look back to his home community in Jobstown who have been supportive of him throughout his amateur days and now as a professional.
Before Katie Taylor’s farewell, the undercard fighters get their night at Croke Park
“When I go home after fights to see my parents, little kids from the area come up and ask for photos. I was that little kid at one point, when Robbie Keane would come back to Tallaght … now I have young kids coming up to me asking for photos, asking me when I’m fighting.”
“‘I watched you on the telly,’ they go around saying ‘he’s on the telly’,” he laughs. “It’s the place that raised me, so I don’t want to forget it.”
Phone calls from schoolteachers are the last thing parents want, but his mam recently got a call from a former principal to say how proud they were of their former student.
Not that he would have been getting into much trouble back in those days anyway. He describes his schoolboy self as “very shy. Very, very shy.” Olaniyan now comes across as chatty, thoughtful and good-humoured in his interviews, and he knows he’s come on a lot since then.
“I hated speaking, I hated doing presentations, I hated all of that stuff. I don’t know where this has come from, but now I love speaking, I love talking to people, meeting new people.
“For the longest time I can remember, I was the shyest person, proper awkward,” he says, laughing again.
One memory of being a little more outspoken as a kid was thanks to the inspiration of boxing’s greatest icon: Muhammad Ali. Olaniyan will be the first heavyweight to fight at Croke Park since “The Greatest” and will also be wearing a specially designed Everlast replica of Ali’s kit from that night in 1972.
“I got the kit this morning, and it was a proud moment for myself. For me as a kid … wanting to be just like him. I cut my hair like him, I’d go around saying ‘I am the greatest!’ I’d try and be like him as much as I could.”
One way he is hoping to differ from Ali is by having a shorter career, though. He admits to not having many hobbies, focusing his whole life on becoming undisputed heavyweight champion, but also says his ideal career path would be “five, six years. Heavyweight champion of the world. Live on a ranch in Texas.”
When pressed a little on this unusual dream, he says, “When I was a kid, I always said I wanted to be a cowboy. So when I retire from boxing, I’m going to get a ranch in Texas, a couple of horses, few cows, few dogs, few sheep – whatever’s on a ranch – big ol’ house, and just barbecue steaks every night.”
It’s certainly a unique goal for a prizefighter, but if Olaniyan can execute the first dream of unifying the heavyweight titles, it would put him alongside Katie Taylor at the top of Ireland’s boxing history.
Olaniyan faces Czechia’s heavyweight Matej Hudak on the undercard, who is 6ft 2in, with all six of Hudak’s wins coming by knockout in the first round.