{"id":119244,"date":"2025-05-21T07:52:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T07:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/119244\/"},"modified":"2025-05-21T07:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T07:52:16","slug":"the-current-everton-star-who-was-a-national-boxing-champion-before-he-became-a-professional-footballer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/119244\/","title":{"rendered":"The current Everton star who was a national boxing champion before he became a professional footballer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Professional footballers can often have very unique backgrounds in other sports. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Petr Cech grew up playing ice hockey, Gary Lineker was a cricketer and infamously, Gareth Bale loved playing golf during his career. <\/p>\n

In fact, Bale has played at a pretty high level since hanging up his boots, appearing at AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and BMW PGA Pro-Am at Wentworth. <\/p>\n

Everton<\/a> also have a player who has a background in another sport, and he was actually a national champion at under-14s level.<\/p>\n

\"PhotoPhoto by PAUL ELLIS\/AFP via Getty ImagesJake O\u2019Brien was a national champion in boxing<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just come to light that Everton defender Jake O\u2019Brien<\/a> is a man of many talents, as before he decided to become a professional footballer, he was a national champion in boxing and hurling, quite incredibly. <\/p>\n

Interviewer: \u201cI do my research on you and you\u2019re such an athletic child. Like, you\u2019ve done boxing, national title, at under 14 or under 13?<\/p>\n

\u201cHurling, national title, under 14. You\u2019ve won stuff in football then you made the transition at around, was it 14, 15, 16, to football?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien replied: \u201cYeah, I think I was 15 when I kind of just, like, cut the other sports and just focused on football.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just enjoyed football more. I found myself enjoying it more than going to other sports. And at that age, I just had to pick one because I was just training two, three times a day and I was just getting wrecked.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien was asked if he\u2019d ever get back into hurling after his football career, considering it\u2019s a sport that has some players well over the age of 40. <\/p>\n

\u201cPossible,\u201d O\u2019Brien replied. \u201cPossible, yeah I mean it\u2019s a great sport. I mean, if people don\u2019t, if they\u2019ve never seen it before. Like I was watching it yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 6ft 6 defender is clearly incredibly athletic and has been able to show that in his new role at right-back, bombing up and down the pitch. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien admitted that he finds overlapping weird<\/a>, but it\u2019s something he\u2019s getting used to and is really enjoying getting forward. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Republic of Ireland international has been able to get on the scoresheet twice in recent months and looks a real threat whenever he marauds forward. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Professional footballers can often have very unique backgrounds in other sports. Petr Cech grew up playing ice hockey,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,52520,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-119244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-jake-obrien","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114544741165320730","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}