Really, the opponent doesn’t matter. The selling point of Top Rank’s St. Patrick’s Day show in New York is that it will be headlined by the professional debut of world amateur champion and Olympic medallist Michael Conlan.

Still, it’s nice to see that Conlan’s opponent is no longer listed as TBA. Those three letters have now been replaced by the name Tim Ibarra.

Ibarra, a 26-year-old native of Colorado, possesses a modest professional record of 4-4 and he is coming off of a loss to unbeaten youngster Jose Gonzalez. So it doesn’t appear as though Conlan will be fast-tracked by Top Rank in the same manner that amateur great Vasyl Lomachenko was when he turned pro against 25-3 Jose Ramirez in late 2013.

Few fighters ever get that treatment, though, and Ibarra is exactly the kind of opponent one would expect to be selected for a promising former Olympian’s maiden voyage into the paid ranks.

Credit to Irish Boxing News, who first caught wind of the news…

UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor will accompany Conlan to the ring for the bout, which takes place inside the Theater at Madison Square Garden, often called ‘the small room’.

As is traditional over St. Patrick’s weekend, the big boxing cards in New York are set to be littered with Irish fighters. Paddy Barnes is expected to join his former amateur teammate, Conlan, on the Friday night card, while Katie Taylor will box on the undercard of the following night’s massive middleweight title unification bout between terrifying Kazakh puncher Gennady Golovkin and fellow knockout-artist Danny Jacobs.

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