Behind a large Garda SUV, a blacked out Peugeot pulls up outside the venue as applause begins to ring around the large crowd gathered in the early evening rain.

Aaron McKenna, the county’s first world champion for 40 years, steps out of the car and immediately hoists his red and gold IBF middleweight belt high into the air. McKenna, not usually a big one for smiling, can’t help but grin as he looks out across the soggy hordes. 

When this journey began more than two decades ago, few in the town knew much about six-year-old Aaron and his eight-year-old brother Stephen, from down the road in Smithborough. But now, after his historic win in Dublin over Etinosa Oliha on Saturday night, he has etched his name into Monaghan history forever.

“It's been some week for me but I feel like it's been a long time coming,” McKenna tells The Ring 24 hours after his reception at the Squealing Pig.

“It’s a lifelong dream to become world champion so for it to finally happen, it's a brilliant moment for me and my family. To actually become world champion in front of all the Irish fans for the first time, it makes it a lot more special.

“It's been a crazy 48 hours. After the fight, I went to the hotel, all the fans were there so I was just getting pictures with everyone. It was great to see everyone that came up and travelled and to talk to people about it. A lot of people were very emotional as well saying that they've never felt anything like it. It's great to hear stuff like that too from people.

“Then a police escort to The Squealing Pig was a new one ... it has been a crazy time. It means so much to these people, especially coming from Monaghan and I live out in the middle of nowhere too, so it's crazy to think a guy like me has become world champion.”

It means that after 21 years of working towards a goal, McKenna has finally achieved it. But reaching the end of such a long road does not come without its challenges. Tyson Fury famously spoke of his struggles after claiming his first world heavyweight title, against Wladimir Klitschko in 2015, describing how reaching the summit of Everest meant there was nowhere left to go but down.

So, after his own Everest moment, does McKenna understand where the Gypsy King was coming from?

“Yeah I do but honestly it's made me even hungrier,” McKenna says. “Like I can't wait to fight again already.

“I'm already looking to unify the division and trying to make those fights happen. I want to clear up this middleweight division as quick as I can and it's made me far hungrier. I've got a taste for that first world title and now I just want to go and get more.

“But winning the world title is a very strange feeling for sure. You couldn't properly describe it if I tried. I don't think it's still sunk in yet that I'm world champion because I always knew and believed I would become one but the fact that it's happened now at 27, a very fresh 27, is crazy.”

McKenna was only a couple of years old when his father and grandfather started building a training facility around 20 feet away from the family home in Smithborough. But the journey towards the world middleweight title really began to gather pace a lot further away from home after Fergal decided to take Aaron and Stephen to America when they were both teenagers.

“I first went out when I was 16 with my dad for three months to see if I'd like it and see if I even wanted to be a pro boxer,” he remembers. “Even then it was something that I loved straight away.

“Me and my dad initially spent three months there going around every gym in LA sparring all the Mexicans and Americans and I was doing really well in every single spar. I knew from then that that was the place to be so once the turn of the year came, me, my dad and Stephen moved over.”

But that was really where the hard work started for the three visitors beneath the Californian sun.

“It was tough because you’re just hoping to see some rain,” he says. “There’s no Irish over there at all so you’re just hoping to see someone else Irish.

“What made it a lot easier probably for us was that we had each other because if you're over there on your own it's a different story. Then our mum would come over as often as she could too. I had 10 fights there and Stephen had four and our mum never missed one of them.”

After outings in Nevada, California, Coventry, London, Manchester, Liverpool and even Osaka, Japan, Saturday night’s fight at 3Arena was his first on Irish soil as a professional. But when he looks back on that rocky road to Dublin, McKenna knows it was his seasoning in the rough, tough gyms down America’s west coast that provided him with the requisite seasoning for success.

“It was definitely one of the most important things we ever did,” he says of the family’s temporary relocation.

“I believe it's something more Irish fighters should do because we were going over, doing new training that we were never used to, we were getting the sort of sparring that you'd never ever get back home and it turns you into a different animal.

“At 16 when you're sparring the sort guys we encountered, you're forced to fight some of them, you're forced to box some of them, you have to adapt. You're learning every trick there is to learn when you're sparring some of those Mexicans. They have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, so we were picking up those small things and we're still using them in our arsenals today.”

Oliha started the fight as The Ring’s No. 5-rated middleweight, one place above the Irishman, but McKenna had an answer for absolutely every question he was asked in Dublin. As such, all three judges scored him a clear winner and therefore new world middleweight champion. Now he stands as The Ring's No. 3 160-pounder, with just Yoenli Hernandez (No. 2) and Carlos Adames (No. 1) above him.

As the belt was strapped around his waist and the Irish tricolour draped across his shoulders, McKenna was joined in center-ring by his dad, who has never been one to hog the limelight when it comes to his sons. But, all those years on from laying the first brick in his back garden, or from booking the first transatlantic flights for him and his boys, it felt appropriate that he would share the moment with his youngest.

“We wouldn't be where we are in this sport without our dad,” McKenna says. “He has sacrificed as much as we have. He was a carpenter growing up, so he gave up that job to move over to us with America.

“In boxing, the business side of things is just as hard as what happens in the ring, if not harder, but he made sure we never had to think about any of that. He took care of it so all we really had to do was just focus on our training. Any of the dirty business side of things he would always take care of.

“We had someone there that we could trust, because it's hard to bring someone in this game that you can trust. We're very fortunate that we had our dad there at all times and he's definitely one of the best coaches in the world and now he has the world champion.

“To be able to give that back to him after everything he has done for us means the world to me.”