It’s not an Olympic medal but Michael Conlan will take it.
Three years ago, at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the Irishman was eliminated by Vladimir Nikitin of Russia in the quarterfinals by a decision that didn’t reflect what happened in the ring. The Irishman famously let the judges know how he felt by showing them his middle finger.
This evening, on the Terence Crawford-Egidijus Kavaliauskas card, Conlan got the only redemption available to him.
Conlan dominated Nikitin in almost every conceivable way in a 10-round featherweight bout, outboxing him, outslugging him and ultimately outpointing him by a wide margin in front of his adopted fans at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
This time the scores were spot on: 98-92, 99-91 and 100-90, all for Conlan.
“I always said I had no ill feelings toward Vladimir, nothing personal. I just had to get that one back,” Conlan said in the ring afterward.
Conlan (13-0, 7 KOs) controlled the fight from the opening bell. In the early rounds, he was content to keep his distance from the aggressive Nikitin and outbox him, jabbing, pounding his body with consistency, landing shots to the head and moving when trouble approached.
Then, in the second half of the contest, Conlan decided to fight Nikitin’s fight by standing toe to toe with him at times. However, even then, even though he stepped bravely into a danger zone, he still got the better of the exchanges.
The only thing Conlan couldn’t do was knock out Nikitin (3-1, 0 KOs), although his body work and hard shots to the head late in the fight certainly got his opponent’s attention.
Conlan seemed to enjoy the inside exchanges, which pumped life into what became an entertaining fight, but he said afterward that it probably wasn’t a good idea when he could’ve cruised to victory from the outside.
“You could see, when I wanted to trade, I could do it better than him,” he said, “but this game is about longevity.”
Conlan didn’t want to discuss his future after the fight, saying his immediate goal is to enjoy his Christmas dinner. He did say that he expects to fight for a world title within a year, which is another dream of his.
He can focus 100 percent on that now. The Olympic thing has been settled.