16-year-old Aaron McKenna is already a seven-time national champion.
As first reported by Kev Byrne in The Sun, the Monaghan pugilistic prodigy is currently in Los Angeles with his father, Fergal after signing with Sheer Sports - the US-based sports management company which looks after Donegal middleweight prospect and former amateur star Jason Quigley.
Having honed his skills in the famed Old School Boxing Club, McKenna will cross the border and make his professional debut in Mexico this July, and most fans and scribes alike believe he will become Ireland's youngest ever professional boxer.
The aforementioned Quigley speaks glowingly of Sheer Sports' PR chief Rachel Charles, and Charles is extremely excited to add McKenna to a growing stable of high-level boxers which now has a distinctly Irish feel to it:
Once we signed Jason, we started getting a lot of people from Ireland come up to us. And I was speaking to my friend who said, 'watch out for this kid, I think he's really special,' and that kid turned out to be Aaron.
We're going to take it very slowly, and be very methodical. We're not going to throw him to the wolves! Time is on our side so we'll match him up with good opponents. It should be okay.
With McKenna unable to make his debut in the US until he turns 18 in over a year's time, he and his team will instead head south to one of boxing's spiritual homes - a journey last undertaken by an Irish fighter when Christina McMahon was robbed of a world title in Juarez. McMahon, also from Monaghan, regularly spars with McKenna.
He will train in the States however, and Charles recalls how a then-15-year-old McKenna made quite the impression when he last sparred across the Atlantic:
We're going to go down to Mexico where there's a fighter on every corner, and so much talent. So we'll look for a tough challenge, but one which he can come through. But I really think he has something about him.
We took him down to a gym last year, and I think the kids in there were like, 'oh, who's this youngster? Let's school him around a little bit.' And Aaron battered two kids in a row! And one of these guys was the number one kid in town. My heart was pounding but Aaron literally pasted him all around the ring. The kid didn't like it.
Should he impress in Mexico and continue to develop, his management team will seek the aid of promotional companies. But given the Jason Quigley connection, Charles says she already knows whose door they'll knock on first:
I introduced him to Oscar De La Hoya last year, and he'll see him again this week. Hopefully we can take him to Golden Boy which would be a great opportunity for him, and we have a very close relationship with them.
Were McKenna to join his fellow Ulsterman on De La Hoya's roster and continue to progress, it would surely open up the mouth-watering possibility of a Golden Boy Promotions card back in their native land. Quigley has told us on several occasions that he believes he will be granted the opportunity to drag big-time pro boxing back across the ocean, but does Charles see The Golden Boy holding a show on the Emerald Isle?
Jason will be back sooner rather than later. It's getting to the point that we're going to have to give it some serious consideration. We'll definitely come home for him.
And obviously to have Aaron on the card as well would be just phenomenal - it'd be great for the guys and great for the country. It'd be a sell-out, obviously, so we'd have to get somewhere big enough to hold everyone. But that's definitely the plan.
Jason's biggest dream is to come home and fight in front of his hometown crowd, so obviously that will happen.
Until then, most Irish boxing fans will be forced to watch from afar as a teenager widely tipped as a future Olympic prospect dishes out a few pastings with smaller gloves. You might as well board the bandwagon early, because it promises to be one hell of an exciting journey for Aaron McKenna.
