{"id":478108,"date":"2026-02-13T21:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T21:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/478108\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T21:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T21:08:10","slug":"hes-mad-hell-fight-anyone-wrexham-hero-james-mcclean-backed-for-professional-boxing-debut-against-jake-paul-or-ksi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/478108\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;He&#8217;s mad, he&#8217;ll fight anyone!&#8217; &#8211; Wrexham hero James McClean backed for professional boxing debut against Jake Paul or KSI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Both KSI and Jake Paul have made their way into celebrity boxing, parlaying their YouTube fame into huge viewing figures.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And former Republic of Ireland international Jeff Hendrick says McClean is &#8220;open&#8221; to any potential opponent.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fruityking.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Fruity King<\/a>: &#8220;He&#8217;s desperate for a professional boxing fight. He&#8217;s open. He said it, whether it&#8217;s in interviews or on social media. I think anyone who follows him sees he&#8217;s boxing most days. It&#8217;s not just a hobby for him, he loves the sport. He&#8217;s adamant he&#8217;s going to have a professional fight, so whoever that is against, I don&#8217;t know.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t say he&#8217;s not going to have a professional fight. I&#8217;d probably put a bet on saying he potentially will. Could he fight Jake Paul or KSI?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s been training hard at boxing for a good few years. He&#8217;s going to be fairly handy. And his fitness, I know through football, his fitness is top.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s one of the fittest players I&#8217;ve played with. So he will be ready and able. If a fight does come around and then it&#8217;s just so, he&#8217;s mad, he&#8217;ll fight anyone. So I just hope he asks me to do the ring walk with him.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both KSI and Jake Paul have made their way into celebrity boxing, parlaying their YouTube fame into huge&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,243154,243155,85,72780],"class_list":["post-478108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-derry-city","tag-j-mcclean","tag-sports","tag-wrexham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}