Agyarko targets history as Ireland’s first black boxing champion

Caoimhin Agyarko will challenge Josh Kelly for the IBF light-middleweight title on Saturday, 25 July, in Saudi Arabia, with the Belfast boxer positioned to become Ireland’s first black professional boxing world champion. The bout will sit on the undercard of Anthony Joshua’s return against Kristian Prenga at the Jeddah Superdome.

Agyarko has built the opportunity on an unbeaten professional record of 18-0 with seven knockouts. His last outing ended in a points win over Ishmael Davis in September, a result that kept him in line for the title shot and underlined that this is a fight earned in the ring, not handed by circumstance.

The history angle carries real weight because Agyarko has said he wants to create a first for Irish boxing. He is a former Holy Trinity ABC fighter, and that link matters in a city where the club has already produced a world champion in Anthony Cacace. Cacace won the WBA super-featherweight title from Jazza Dickens and had previously held the IBF belt before relinquishing it, giving Holy Trinity a direct line to the top level of the sport.

Agyarko’s journey has also been marked by violence and racism away from the ropes. In 2017, when he was 20, he was attacked with a knife in Belfast. In a 2020 interview, he said racist abuse was part of growing up in west Belfast. He said: “Physically, the scar healed within a week. Mentally, I will never fully recover from it.”

That background adds context to Saturday’s title fight, because the stakes are both sporting and symbolic. A win over Kelly would give Agyarko the IBF light-middleweight belt and place him where no Irish black professional boxer has stood before. It would also deepen the significance of a title scene that already includes Holy Trinity graduates at world level, with Agyarko now aiming to turn his unbeaten record into a landmark result in Jeddah.