Damaen Kelly: Belfast’s Gritty Boxing Warrior
Damaen Kelly is a former Irish flyweight boxer from Belfast. As an amateur, he won bronze at the 1993 World Championships and represented Ireland at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where he reached the quarter-finals.
Kelly turned professional in 1997. He went on to win British, Commonwealth and European flyweight titles before retiring in 2006 after a European bantamweight title defeat. His amateur and professional records document a career spanning both codes.
An international amateur career
Kelly boxed with Holy Trinity in Belfast and earned a second major amateur medal with bronze at the 1996 European Championships in Denmark. That result qualified him for Atlanta, adding an Olympic appearance to the world championship bronze he had won three years earlier in Finland.
At the Games, Kelly defeated Julian Strogov and Hussein Hussein before meeting Kazakhstan’s Bolat Dzumadilov in the quarterfinals. Dzumadilov won 13–6 and went on to claim silver. Kelly therefore finished one victory short of a guaranteed Olympic medal, having advanced through two rounds of the flyweight competition.
Titles after turning professional
His professional career brought a different set of championship achievements, including the British, Commonwealth and European flyweight belts. He also held IBO titles at flyweight and super flyweight. The career ended after two European bantamweight title contests against Simone Maludrottu in 2006. Their second meeting, held in Sardinia in November, ended in a third-round stoppage. Kelly announced his retirement shortly afterward, closing a career that connected international amateur medals with success in the professional championship ranks.
Sources
Sources: Irish Athletic Boxing Association Olympic history; RTÉ profile; The Irish Times retirement report.
Tags
Boxing, Boxing History
