The road from Ros Muc to Madison Square Gardens' main boxing rings is not a well worn path.
But Sean Mannion is one person who did take that route in a story which is immortalised in a new documentary film Rocky Ros Muc by director Michael Fanning.
In the mid-1970s, Mannion left Galway for Boston on a pugilistic adventure that would eventually lead to him fighting at New York's Madison Square Gardens in 1984 against Jamaica's Mike McCallum for the WBA World Light Middleweight title.
Living in Massachusetts, The 61 year old joined Joe for a chat to talk about the ups and downs of his career.
"Like other parts of Ireland at the time, there wasn't much work around when I was growing up," he said of the factors that led him to emigrate, although he remembered it as a "great place".
"It was kind of lonely seeing everybody leaving. My brothers and sisters, they done the same thing and I seen it all. And they used to come back for holidays and then we'd be very lonely after they left."
With boxing in his ambitions, he left for Boston to "give it a shot" and signed his first pro contract in 1977, although the deal was not exactly beneficial in his direction.
Despite shortcomings in his early training in the USA as he explained to Joe, he did manage to lose just one of his first 15 fights, that coming against Sugar Ray Leonard's brother Roger Leonard.
The mob was active in Boston at the time - Whitey Bulger a prominent figure among them - and that world sometimes interacted with the boxing circles.
"I met him once," Mannion said of Bulger.
"He had all these young kids selling drugs for him and everything like that. At the time they were about my age or some of them were younger and some of them were older.
"They wanted me to come down and meet him. I don't want to meet him. I wasn't into things like that. I didn't like it. I like reading about all that but that's about it. I didn't want to be involved."
And he added that Bulger didn't appear enamoured with boxers.
Mannion was enjoying success as a boxer at the time, picking up from the excellent early teachings in Ros Muc.
That road led to the title shot against McCallum in 1984 and as unknown in Ireland, it appeared he had just burst onto the scene.
"It wasn't easy for them to follow me," he said of the Irish media at the time given his own peripatetic fight schedule.
A sparring injury ahead of the McCallum fight wasn't ideal preparation and he would go on to lose by unanimous decision after 15 rounds.
"I wasn't in the greatest shape of my life for one thing," he said.
You can listen to the full interview on the podcast player where he also discusses the impact that defeat would have on him.
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