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L.B. pro boxer Seanie Monaghan to fight at Barclays Center on June 14
Fresh off his win over Joe McCreedy in April, light heavyweight boxer Seanie Monaghan will enter the ring at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on June 14 as one of the main undercard bouts for the Ruslan Provodnikov-Chris Algieri fight.
HBO will televise the main event, which was originally scheduled to take place at Nassau Coliseum.
Monaghan (21-0, 14 KOs), 32, defeated 29-year-old McCreedy (15-7-2, 6 KOs) to retain his WBC Continental Americas light heavyweight title at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on April 12, just before the Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley main event.
According to boxingscene.com, Monaghan scored a fifth-round knockout. He dropped McCreedy three times, all on body punches, once in the third round and twåice more in the fifth round. When McCreedy went down for the second time in the fifth, referee Jay Nady waved off the fight at 2 minutes, 25 seconds.
Monaghan said that he was proud of the win, which he described as “huge.” Micky Ward, the former WBU champion boxer portrayed by actor Mark Wahlberg in the movie “The Fighter,” trained McCreedy.
“The whole experience was great,” Monaghan said of the McCreedy fight. “I met [Evander] Holyfield and Micky Ward, and that was really cool for me. I got to know Micky Ward and he congratulated me. That was very special because I’ve always been a Micky Ward fan.”
Monaghan, who is ranked No. 5 by the IBF, will again put his title on the line at Barclays, he said, when he fights boxing veteran Elvir Muriqi (40-6, 24KOs). And a lot more than his title is on the line this time — Monaghan said that a defeat means he loses a shot at the world title.
“If I don’t beat Muriqi in impressive fashion, that all goes out the window,” he said. “He wants to go out with a bang, and he’d love to take my spot and get the world title shot.”
Indeed, Muriqi is taking the fight seriously; he is being trained by former professional boxer Roy Jones Jr., who made boxing history when he won the WBA title and became the first former middleweight champion to win a heavyweight title in 106 years. Monaghan, however, said that Jones, now also a boxing commentator, has acknowledged his performance in the ring, unlike some commentators who have played on Monaghan’s past as a tough Irish kid who used to brawl in the West End.
