The heavyweight, who turned 20 in February, has been tipped for superstardom in the pros given he won the World Youth Championships in 2024 and also claimed a pair of European golds as an amateur.

Olaniyan’s journey in the paid ranks starts on Saturday night after he decided to eschew the chance of qualification for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics in favour of a professional deal with Frank Warren and Queensberry Promotions.

His first outing of that agreement will take place at Dublin’s 3Arena, only a short bus ride away from the south west suburb of the city where it all began for him and his boxing brother Josh.

Olaniyan was only seven when he followed Josh, himself a boxer of much promise, into the gym. Their mother, fed up of their antics, decided the boxing gym would be the best place for them to channel their youthful exuberance.



It was Josh who competed first and it was only then that their father told the boys that the sweet science ran in their blood given he had boxed in the Nigerian army. Not only that, but he had already taken them out on runs and held pads for them in the hope that one day they too would lace them up.

“Up until that point he had never told us about any of it,” Olaniyan tells The Ring. “He showed us pictures of him boxing and all of that stuff. We didn’t know it but he was training us when we were kids.

“We would go with him on his training jogs and teach us how to hit the pads but we just thought it was a bit of fun. We didn’t take it seriously but he actually had a plan and that was to teach us how to box. It’s mad how it all worked out, he knew what he was doing.”

Even so, Olaniyan did not really take it seriously until he was handed a particularly memorable beating in sparring when he was 13 years old. By that point, he was 6ft 2in and over 260 pounds and decided it was time to lock in as the punches rained down on him from the older boy.


“I remember being there just holding my hands up,” he says. “I just thought ‘I’ve had enough of this, I’m taking it serious’. I won two nationals and a European gold that year and haven’t looked back since.”

He has, however, become acutely aware of what can happen when you take your eye off the ball, if only momentarily. Given his success as an amateur and therfore his potential value as a commercial commodity, the secret was well and truly out among the world’s biggest promoters.

That gold at the World Youths in November 2024 marked him out as a potential star and all eyes were on him when he boxed as a senior in the Irish elites the following summer. But he was brought back down to earth with a bump as he was stopped in the third round of the final by Belfast’s Martin McDonagh.

“No disrespect to my opponent because he beat me fair and square that day,” Olaniyan says. “But it was hard to knuckle down in training and do what I needed to do because lads were flying me first class everywhere, you know what I mean?

“I was going to America, I was going to Portugal, I was here, there and everywhere. And as an 18, 19-year-old kid that makes it hard to focus. But I got beaten and it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.



“I was able to learn from it and come back. It really shaped me and my mindset now going forward.”

His alliance with Warren and Queensberry seems like a significant one give how the Hall of Fame promoter has handled Daniel Dubois and Moses Itauma, two elite heavyweight who turned over as teenagers. Dubois has won and lost the world title already while Itauma, only 13 fights, is expected to rule the division eventually.

But Olaniyan, who will be boxing out of Liverpool’s famed Everton Red Triangle gym, said: “I don’t think it’s about following any blueprint or trying to copy what anyone else has done. I’m Adam Olaniyan and my road plan is different. My destiny is different and I’m just going to do what I need to do.

“I’m not looking at, or following anybody else. I’ll just be doing what I know what to do.” The Gerbasi Corner honors longtime Ring Magazine and boxing contributor Tom Gerbasi, who passed away suddenly on Sept. 15, 2025. A 2024 Nat Fleischer Award winner for excellence in boxing journalism, Gerbasi took particular joy in telling the stories of up-and-coming and unheralded prospects in the sport.