![\"Derry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/7P7YHEZFWNHWLAGJGUYA7H5VF4.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/M6FK7RYA6NPMBHQGHRIHMTWP3Y.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThe guy I met was one of my good friends,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cA very good fighter, as an amateur better than me, I would say. We sparred many times and he was an unbelievable fighter. <\/p>\n
\u201cI had the exact same kind of upbringing as him, the same sticky situation with my father as he had with his father. <\/p>\n
\u201cI lost my mother at 15 and, I don\u2019t know, I was doing stupid things with my life when I was a teenager.<\/p>\n
\u201cI moved out of my home at 15 and moved in with my grandmother. At 17 or 18 I got my own apartment. I was doing my own thing. I always knew how to make money, but sometimes I wasn\u2019t making money in the correct ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was only selling weed, I wasn\u2019t doing bad shit, but at the same time I was doing stupid things.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was doing very immature things and it was simply just because that\u2019s what everyone was doing in my neighbourhood. Everyone was doing it, all my friend groups were doing it, so I could easily have fell into that trap.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Colm](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/WPI5SDQPCREAHE535ZMSG2IGLE.JPG\")
Jono Carroll says he could have “fallen victim to the streets”. Picture: Queensberry\/Leigh Dawney (Queensberry\/Leigh Dawney) <\/p>\n
He pulled himself out before the jaws of the trap slammed shut around him. Like many others, boxing was the way out for him but only after he\u2019d come through his fair share of scrapes. <\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone would owe you f**king money, you know, 50-60 quid,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut because they\u2019ve been cheating you and they\u2019re not paying you, you\u2019d end up punching the head off them. <\/p>\n
\u201cBefore I went to Australia, I had three assault charges hit me.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, they weren\u2019t that bad, but still, at the same time, if that had happened, I may not have gone to Australia. I may not have turned professional. I was just falling victim to the streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was never me, it was always my friends that was getting into trouble and then I\u2019d get dragged into it, obviously being friends and associating yourself with those people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it was just a mad life growing up but I\u2019m very grateful for all them lessons of life because it makes me appreciate where I\u2019m at today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dubai is where he\u2019s at these days. He loves it over there and he has no intention of swapping the relative luxury of life in the Middle East to come back to Dublin, ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole thing, not paying taxes, the kids are safe, the safety aspect was the most important thing when I first moved out,\u201d he says<\/p>\n
\u201cInvestment-wise, the amount of people you\u2019re meeting over there, it can just open up crazy doors for you because everyone wants a better life.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone that\u2019s living there, they just want a better life for themselves, because they\u2019re going there hoping to improve their life, hoping to just become better versions of themselves, so we meet a lot of like-minded people there, it\u2019s a very good environment to be in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalking through town yesterday, the amount of people I bumped into, and I knew so many people were on drugs, so many people were drinking on the streets\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just very sad, you know? Because people always ask me: \u2018When you finish your boxing, are you going to come home here?\u2019 And I\u2019m like: \u2018No, not a chance\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people that I met in town around 2 o\u2019clock, drinking alcohol, just out of prison last week\u2026 It was a bit sad to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just all depends on your decisions in life. Thankfully, I made the correct decisions at the correct times, and I\u2019m living a very good life now.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JONO Carroll walked through the old neighbourhood this week, down the streets he used to roam. Carroll, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[141935,2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-475362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-anthony-cacace","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}