Belfast’s Anthony Cacace reckons his best days lie ahead

EVERY time he leaves the house these days, Anthony Cacace has something else to remember.

“I always take my belt in the car with me just in case,” he told Boxing News.

“Around my area [Andersonstown in West Belfast] people are always asking to have a picture with the belt. I would rather take it with me everywhere I go so that when they ask I have it with me and don’t have to go back home to get it.”

The belt is the IBF super-featherweight championship belt he took off Joe Cordina on the Tyson Fury-Oleksandr Usyk undercard in Saudi Arabia in May.

One look at Cacace’s social media pages reveals that he and his belt have been in demand for photographs over the last few weeks.

Nobody is more proud of the 35-year-old from Belfast than Carl Frampton, the former two-weight world champion who shared a gym with him as an amateur and pro and has been a friend for two decades.

TNT Sports cameras captured his celebrations after the referee dragged Cacace off Cordina in the eighth round in Riyadh.

Cacace laughed as he remembered Frampton’s “screech at the end” of his celebrations when they were brought together at Queensberry’s show in Belfast last month and Frampton said: “Nobody deserves it more.”

“I have known Carl from the start,” said Cacace, who has an Italian father and Irish mother. “We go right back to the Irish [amateur] team when I was 13, 14 years old.

“Carl was someone I always looked up to when he was winning senior titles and boxing internationally. I spent time with him in London [when both were with the McGuigans] and we sparred a lot of rounds. 

“Some of the things he’s said about me has given me a lot of confidence over the years.”

Frampton was quoted as saying Cacace was one of the hardest hitters he has shared a ring with.  Cacace has needed belief to keep going in a pro career that started way back in 2012 and continues at Wembley Stadium on Saturday, September 21.

That is when he makes his first defence of the IBF title against Josh Warrington and, again, Frampton may prove to be an ally.

Warrington beat Frampton on points in a ferocious 12-rounder in Manchester in December, 2018, after a fight Frank Warren described in the immediate aftermath as “the best fight I’ve seen in a British ring.”

Cacace said: “That’s the version of him I’m preparing for. I’m expecting a hard fight.”

Cacace says Frampton “could get a call” for some advice ahead of the fight, adding: “He’s always had my back and I’ve always had his.”

The last time Cacace was set to box at Wembley Stadium, it didn’t happen. He was matched with former IBF super-bantamweight champion Jonathan Romero in the chief support to Tyson Fury-Dillian Whyte in April, 2022, but three days before the show, Cacace was told the Colombian couldn’t get a visa and the fight was off.

“I was in shock,” said Cacace. “It took me a while to get over that.    

“I wasn’t having the best of camps, there were issues, but still, I couldn’t believe it.”

Cacace is only half joking when he says “every one of my fights is delayed at least once.”

The Cordina fight was put back 13 weeks after Fury was ruled out of the scheduled February date with Usyk and further back, Cacace’s British-title defence against Lyon Woodstock was rearranged three times.

Following the heartbreak of the Romero fight falling through, Cacace thought his luck had changed after manager Simon Legg got him a shot at IBO champion Michael Magnesi on the Tommy Fury-Jake Paul show at Madison Square Garden.

The show fell through because Fury couldn’t get a visa to enter the States and Michael Hawkins Jr, part of Cacace’s coaching team, told me a few weeks later: “I would have quit after that if I was him.”

The Magnesi fight went ahead a few weeks later – and 13 months after Cacace had last boxed. Magnesi had stopped his last eight and was world ranked and Cacace boxed out of his skin to win a deserved split points vote over the New Yorker.

“They expected him to come over here and blow me away,” said Cacace, “and Sam Bowen was expected to be too big and strong.”

Bowen had been too big and strong for his previous 15 opponents, but Cacace stood up to the Leicestershire powerhouse, outboxed him and took away his British title with a split points win in what looked like a make-or-break fight for the Irishman.

“For years I’ve been hearing: ‘If he loses this, he’s finished,’” said Cacace and as it turned out, it is Bowen who hasn’t fought since that night in Birmingham in November, 2019.

Cacace might have also walked away by now. “Boxing is the only thing I’m good at,” he told me once and he explained last month before a commentating stint at Queensberry’s show in Belfast: “I’m not a normal person without boxing. I lose my mind. It keeps me grounded.

“I left boxing for four years when I had my first daughter at 18. Those four years it was hard to make ends meet.

“I’m a qualified plasterer and, when the work dried up, I ended up making sandwiches in my local Subway.

“I’ve been a gardener, a bouncer, I’ve made sandwiches. I’ve done whatever I had to do, but I knew I had to get back to where I belong.”

Cacace has been boxing for most of his 35 years. 

“There was a boxing gym on our street [Oliver Plunkett Amateur Boxing Club] and there was nowhere else to go,” said Cacace, a father of three. “I first went there when I was 10 years old.”

Watching Ricky Hatton bulldoze his opponents inspired Cacace to keep going to the gym. “I did my GCSE ICT [Information and Communications Technology] on Ricky Hatton and his career,” he said. “It was all slide shows and pictures. I got a ‘C’ so it can’t have been too bad.”

Cacace found he wasn’t too bad at boxing either, competing in the 2007 European Junior Championships in Serbia during a 150-12 amateur career with Oliver Plunkett and Holy Trinity ABCs before turning over in 2012.

Nine months and five fights into his pro career, Cacace was Irish champion after a one-round demolition of Mickey Coveney and had a growing reputation.

Every Saturday night for years, Kristian Laight would fight a prospect. Most he didn’t even remember. He remembered Cacace. “Look out for the Irish kid,” was his advice after losing all four rounds to him in Nottingham.

“I know I’ve always had the talent,” said Cacace, “but it’s a hard game, the business side of it. It’s hard getting people to get behind you and push you on.”

There were doubts over Cacace, who was based in Philadelphia for a spell earlier in his career, before deciding he needed to be closer to his young family.

There were rumours that he didn’t live the life and that he was tight at 130lbs. The latter rumour seemed vindicated by a points loss to Martin J Ward for the British title in July 2017.

The Cacace team were unhappy after the judges had Ward up by one, two and three points, but the consensus at ringside was Cacace hadn’t done enough.

In his subsequent seven fights – spread over seven years – Cacace has outlasted Bowen, Magnesi and Cordina in against-the-odds wins.

“Nobody gave me a chance,” Cacace beamed after stopping Cordina in eight after dropping the Welshman heavily in the third.

“I was grinding him down, making him work,” said Cacace of the best night of his 22-1 career.

“I knew he was struggling at the weight, so I kept a high pace and broke him down. I was surprised I broke him down that quickly.”

Punch stats revealed that, at the time of the stoppage, Cacace had thrown 617 punches to Cordina’s 325 and outlanded him 282-113.

“Everything that’s happened, all the negativity, it was all wiped out by winning the IBF title,” said Cacace and next is a high-profile first defence against Warrington.

“He’s a former two-time world [featherweight] champion,” said Cacace, “and it’s not going to be easy.

“I don’t really have wars. I’ve had seven fights in the last seven years. I’m the freshest 35-year-old fighter you will meet.”