RISING boxing star Jake Carr has described the thrill of preparing to fight at Hisense Arena akin to playing on football’s biggest day.
The 21-year-old from Newport has earned a coveted spot on the undercard for tonight’s big-ticket showdown between Danny Green and Shane Cameron.
Carr, a former Western Jets captain in the TAC Cup, will take on Dinesh Kanth, a Hawthorn fighter with two wins in four decisions, in just his second career super middleweight fight.
“It’s almost like playing a grand final every fight,” Carr (pictured) told the Weekly.
“You have an eight-week training camp, training twice a day, six days a week, leading up to my flights.
“To put all into one night, it’s a big occasion. There’s a lot of emotion that goes into it, so it’s pretty awesome on the night once you have a victory.”
Carr, trained by Steve Stenborg in North Melbourne, comes from top-quality stock.
His dad, Rod, was a Commonwealth and Australian champion.
One of his biggest admirers is Barry Michael, an IBF super featherweight champion in the 1980s. Michael has tipped Carr to become a world champion one day.
Carr dares to dream but is focused on the immediate future.
“Every fight in your career is as big as the next one and you are only as good as your last fight,” he said.
“In terms of where this could take me, hopefully within the next couple of fights I’ll take out the Victorian title and I’m hoping by this time next year I will be the Australian champion.
“Then the world is my oyster. Hopefully I can take it overseas and bring some titles back to Australia. But it has to be one fight at a time, one training session at a time. I’m just looking forward to getting Wednesday out of the way and having a victory.”
Carr, who says hand speed and his reaction time are his greatest strengths, has never seen his opponent fight in the flesh.
That’s not to say he hasn’t done his homework on him.
“I’ve never seen him fight live, but I’ve seen a couple of his fights on YouTube. I know what his abilities are and I know what his strengths and weaknesses are.
“I’ve done all my hard work in the gym so there’s nothing much more I can do and I’m hoping that with everything I’ve put into my training camp, I’ll be able to get on top of him and expose his weaknesses.”
Carr won his only professional fight, against Fabian Sullivan, back in July.
He said the thrill of that fight had spurred him on in the lead-up to his battle with Kanth.
“It was pretty exciting,” he said.
Carr said that experience would stand him in good stead.
He knows what to expect and what needs to be done to be peaking for fight night.
He said the biggest thing in his favour was the people in his corner, particularly Stenborg.
“He’s like nothing I’ve seen,” Carr said of his trainer. “I’ve had a couple of trainers before and I see how other trainers train their fighters.
“Steve is very technical, works a lot on technique and balance.
“Where I am at and where I was in my career, that’s exactly what I needed. He’s really taken me to another level.”
