Photographs: Matchroom Sport/thejournal.ie
Former European super-bantamweight champion Willie Casey returned with a win on Friday, June 20 in Belfast and now believes that title opportunities will once again arrive his way. Casey was made to work by tough Polish journeyman Krzysztof Rogowski for the duration of his featherweight six-rounder but managed to post a 59-55 success that will hopefully help to get the ball rolling again.
“He was so tough and I’m happy to get the rounds under my belt,” said Casey.
“Hopefully we can kickstart something again because there’s more left in me and I want to fight on. It’s so disappointing not fighting and I just want to keep on going. Being out of the ring for so long was tough and I was trying not to blow myself up in there.”
Casey is now looking at getting on to one, or both, of the proposed Dublin cards that are mooted to be happening over the next month or so. After that it’s a spot on Carl Frampton’s world title undercard that pushes the 32-year-old’s buttons. Willie is still dissecting his loss to Marc McCullough last October and feels he has pinpointed exactly where things went wrong.
“I thought I maybe started a little too quick [against Rogowski], just like I did against Marc. Not to take anything away from Marc though because he’s a good fighter. We want to get things right. There are a couple of shows coming up in Dublin so I’m hoping to get maybe a six-rounder or an eight-rounder on those and then if things go well we could get on the Kiko and Carl undercard in September,” he added.
Trainer Phil Sutcliffe was impressed with what he saw. The Dublin coach has handled Willie on-and-off since his debut and is to be commended for his work with the Limerick southpaw.
“The jabs were working well against a lad who we knew would be very tough as he’d boxed in the world championships as an amateur. He was strong, he took some stick and some left hands but the ‘Big Bang’ didn’t work with the right hook. We are getting there though,” said Sutcliffe.
