Popular Irish boxer-puncher Carl Frampton thrilled his countrymen by claiming world titles at junior featherweight and featherweight in the mid-2010s.

Frampton, who was the middle child of three, was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on February 21, 1987.

"[We] lived in Tiger's Bay, which is an inner-city area in Belfast, right on an interface, so a lot of trouble and violence, it seemed between the Catholics and Protestants," Frampton told The Ring. "My mum worked in shopping centers, like Woolworths, Asda and my dad was a leisure center attendant on the Shore Road in North Belfast.

"We were working class. There were kids a lot worse off than us, but there were kids in the area who had more than us. I never really wanted for anything, mum and dad always looked after us, food on the table and tried to keep up with the trends and all that stuff as kids want to do."

The youngster was curious about boxing and visited a Midland Boxing Club on the same street as he lived.

"My mum brought me and a group of friends down one night," he recalled. "They didn't actually let me train the first night because when I was 7, I probably looked like I was 5. They weren't sure about accepting me in and let me sit and watch and if I liked the look of it maybe I could come back and I liked it and came back the next evening and that was me, I was hooked ever since."

Frampton's amateur career was initially a slow burn but as he got older, he began to catch the eye and medal at tournaments, including two Irish national titles in 2005 and 2009 and a silver at the European Union Championships in 2007.

Frampton, who went roughly 130-50 as an amateur, teamed up with Irish legend Barry McGuigan and his son, Shane, who was his trainer in the pro ranks. He made £4,000 for his debut on a Matchroom show, off TV, against Sandor Svinavel (TKO 2) in June 2009.

He won the Commonwealth title in his 11th fight and stepped into international class scoring wins over Raul Hirales Jr. (UD 12) and then former world champion Steve Molitor (TKO 6).

"Barry's a very, very good matchmaker, getting the right fights at the right time," he said. "Someone like Molitor, I was just a kid bursting through on the scene. Molitor was a world champion but past his best, still a bit of a risk at the time but Barry had a keen eye and knew what he was doing in that sense, he matched me really well. Each fight was a progression, and I was getting a slightly harder fight but that was benefiting me in the long run."

Then came power-punching European champion Kiko Martinez, who came to Belfast in September 2014.

"The fight was a difficult fight, a really hard fight,” he said. "The plan going into the fight was, be smart for the first four rounds and then you can start to take over. I remember going out for Round 8 thinking, 'When is he going to slow down!' He hadn't started yet. I was exhausted.

"I dropped him (in Round 9) and he tried to get up to his feet but wasn't able to.

"My hand was busted in the fight, I had two busted eardrums, I was pissing blood afterwards. So, to know I could come through something like that was a great help going forward. It put it into my head that I'm a European champion now, but I can certainly become a world champion."

Two more wins led to a rematch with Martinez, who had in the meantime captured the IBF 122-pound title.

"There was so much pressure on me when I fought him the second time because people forgot how hard the first fight was. They just remembered TKO 9," he said. "They knew I had improved but Kiko had went away, improved and become world [champion] and he was in good form at that time.

"As soon as the final bell went, I knew I was world champion but when you hear them words and it's clarified it's an amazing feeling. I had friends and family ringside who supported me from my amateur days. The fight was in the Titanic Slipways, a purpose-built arena 16,000 people, it was packed out, it was waste ground, and they put an arena in it for one night only, you could actually see Tigers Bay where I grew up. It meant so much to me personally, just a real historic moment.

"It was more of a sensible performance and although I beat him on points it was probably more of an easier fight than the European title fight."

In his first defense, he easily beat Chris Avalos (TKO 5) and then headed stateside to face Alejandro Gonzalez on a PBC show in July 2015.

"This one came out of the blue and I think I had three weeks' notice for this fight in El Paso," he recalled. "I was fit; I had been training. Just getting the weight down, I was starting to struggle with at junior featherweight.

"I'm looking at this 'Cobrita' kid and I was a big junior featherweight, and he was a bantamweight really, he was skinny and I'm looking at him walking around the hotel and I'm thinking, 'I'm going to batter you, you don't look up too much. You look like a child.' That was maybe a little bit naive for me to be thinking like that. I very quickly got that out of my mind. When you're on your backside in the first round twice and you have to get up and be more sensible [winning a 12-round unanimous decision] after that. That was another fight I learned a lot from."

Frampton had long courted fights with WBA ruler Scott Quigg and Leo Santa Cruz, who had recently moved up to featherweight.

"Suddenly when they see me on my backside, we started talking to Santa Cruz and Quigg's people," he said. "They saw a vulnerability and weakness, so in a sense it was a blessing in disguise. If I had blew Gonzalez away in two rounds, Quigg wouldn't have wanted to fight me."

Frampton and Quigg were able to broker a deal to fight their unification in February 2016 at Manchester Arena.

"No disrespect to Scott but it was easy. The tactics from their team was bizarre. I was winning rounds by doing very little," he said. "I remember coming back after like Round 6 or 7 and feeling the freshest I'd ever felt at that point in a fight. In fairness to Shane McGuigan the advice was good, 'You don't have to win the round by a mile. Hit them with a jab or one-two from a distance, keep doing it.' It was a boring fight, there was a bit of criticism threw at us for how boring it was, especially considering everyone was expecting a humdinger.

"I always knew I could outbox Quigg, and I feel like one of the judges gave it to Quigg which is insane. I feel like I won it by six or seven rounds. Quigg had a good 10 and 11 but there's the old saying, 'If your aunty had a set of balls, she'd be your uncle.' If he started earlier, he may have got knocked out. And people saying that I was fading as well, I actually won the 12th round, and it the 12th was my best round in the fight, so their argument was a nonsense really."

That left Frampton with a plethora of options at his disposal.

"There was talk of [Guillermo] Rigo[ndeaux] after Quigg but because of what happened in the Gonzalez fight. Al Haymon and Leo Santa Cruz suddenly came to the table, saying they want to fight me at featherweight," he explained.

"I get criticized for being afraid of Rigo and not wanting to fight him. I would have fought anybody in the world in and around my weight division, absolutely anybody. We would fought Rigo in Belfast, I know what I was getting paid in Belfast and you couldn't have put it on pay-per-view. The money to fight Santa Cruz in New York was probably six times what I would have got paid for Rigo. Leo was still a tough fight, but you would maybe say an easier fight than Rigo and for six times more money? Who would say no to that."

Frampton, who was a 12/5 underdog, met Santa Cruz for the WBA 126-pound title at Brooklyn's Barclays Center, New York in July 2016.

"I had a belief in myself, and I knew I could beat him," said Frampton, who stunned Santa Cruz, taking his unbeaten record by 12-round majority decision.

"I knew it was going to be difficult going in, a war of attrition, I'd have to deal with his output. Not match him as such, hit him hard and try to make him think twice about being aggressive and letting his hands go as much as he normally does."

The Quigg and Santa Cruz wins saw Frampton named Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year in 2016.

"It's my proudest achievement," he said. "I did have the best year in terms of unifying against Quigg and then winning the world title in a second division against someone who is in the top 10 pound-for-pound. I feel like I deserved it."

In the direct rematch, the usually aggressive Santa Cruz came with a very different game plan and evened the score at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas in January 2017.

"We underestimated and didn't think he could do that," he admitted. "There was no evidence he could move more and box at range. It was a clever performance from him. I just thought the output was going to be higher than the first, he would try a little bit harder.

"They were two good, close fights. I think the right man won each."

However, despite their score being tied at 1-1, the two never fought a decider.

"You can't point the finger of blame at me," he said. "I wanted that fight desperately. Leo and his team didn't seem too as much. There was a gentleman's agreement. You don't have gentleman's agreements in boxing because there's very few gentlemen. It's a sport with dodgy people doing dodgy deals. McGuigan along with a guy called Rupert Phillips met Al Haymon and Luis DeCubas without me, made this deal, shook hands. And that was a stupid childish mistake, I think from them, so that's why the third fight didn't happened. It's just a shame we never got to settle the score who was the best out of both of us."

That left Frampton to go in a different direction. He was scheduled to face Andres Gutierrez in summer 2017, only for the Mexican to collapse and injure himself causing a last-minute fight cancellation.

"Turns out that was probably a blessing in disguise for me, there was so much [expletive] going on between me and the McGuigans, I'd had a terrible camp, I was getting beat up in the gym, I wasn't sparring well, my head was all over the place," he explained.

"I had a tax man show up at the door when I'm in London and my wife’s at home, saying I owe £400,000 as a director of Cyclone Promotions, which was all [expletive], Cyclone Promotions needed to pay it, but they tried to get it out of me for some reason. In my head, I was going to have that Gutierrez fight and get away from them. I didn't want people to think I was leaving the McGuigans because I'd lost to Santa Cruz."

Frampton returned with wins over the tough Mexican Horacio Garcia (UD 12), four-weight world champion Nonito Donaire (UD 12) and then stopped Luke Jackson (TKO 9) during big nights in Belfast.

"There was a big buzz about the city, it's a big boxing city and to have Canelo [supporting his stablemate Garcia] at the Odessey sitting ringside," he said. "It wasn't a brilliant performance; I'd just linked up with Jamie Moore and Nigel Travis.

"Donaire was a step up again. Again, the whole buzz around the city for that fight. To have global stars like Donaire to Belfast, it was amazing. He's a lovely guy, I remember thinking how nice he was, he can't be this nice and maybe he's trying to lull me into a false sense of security and then try to take my head off. Turns out, he's just a sound guy.

"The [Jackson fight was the] biggest crowd I'd ever fought in front of. I think you get 19,000 but there was maybe another 5,000 on the pitch. Tyson Fury was on the undercard, which is a nice story to tell the grandkids."

Those wins set him up for a fight with IBF 126-pound titlist Josh Warrington back at Manchester Arena in December 2018.

"He was flying, he has that great win against Lee Selby and he was in the form of his life," said Frampton. "At this stage, I'd only lost one fight in my career and that was against a pound-for-pound guy, and it was quite a close fight.

"I remember going into the fight with a wee bit of a chip on my shoulder. I knew it was going to be difficult, I knew how strong and physical it was going to be, but underestimated his punching power, and I didn't think he could hurt me, I thought everything was going to bounce off my head and I got that wrong. He hurt me inside the first minute.

"There was nothing on his record to suggest he was a puncher. He had something like six knockouts on 27 fights. I'd been in with big guys, big punchers and been able to deal with them. I'm disappointed with my performance (UD12 defeat), still a little bit annoyed to this day. No disrespect to Josh, if I had performed better, I could have won that fight.”

Frampton bounced back with two wins and was presented with an opportunity to make history.

"I thought why not, in my head I wasn't a done fighter and then Covid hit in the middle of it all and the fight happened maybe two years after it should have happened,” he said.

"Although Herring was an older fighter than me, he was fresher in the sense he hadn't been in as many wars as I had been in. I'm not saying I'd have ever won the fight because he's a big guy, he had a lot of height on me. He's a good fighter but I feel I beat better fighters and his jab I couldn't get out the way on the night. I knew it was going to be a hard night when I sat down at the end of the first round, and he stopped me in six. That was it.

"Going into that, we didn't want to talk about it because it sounds a wee bit negative, the idea was to retire after - what a way to retire as Ireland's only three-weight world champion and one of the only Brits to do it. Go out with a wee bit of greatness attached to your name but it wasn't to be, I had a go, but I was a bit too old, small and too many hard fights."

In retirement, Frampton (28-3, 16 KOs) moved into punditry; he is currently working for DAZN: "[It] keeps me involved in the sport and the game I love without doing the hard bit. I feel very lucky and privileged that I'm able to do that."

Frampton, now 38, is married with three children and lives just outside Belfast. Away from boxing he enjoys helping his daughter's football team and also has a Whiskey company called Stablemate, which is available for purchase in Tesco across Northern Ireland.

He graciously took time to speak to The Ring about the best he fought in 10 key categories.

Jamel Herring: "It was a good jab, I couldn't get out the road of it. I think maybe a couple years previous to me fighting him, I may have had a better chance. I think my reflexes and my feet weren't as good as they once were, but I was being nailed with his southpaw jab from a distance."

Kiko Martinez: "I'm going to surprise people, Kiko Martinez. People wouldn't think defensively he's a good fighter but just his style and how he bulls forward, he kind of stays in this shell-like defense, he's very low, he's shorter than me, anyway but he remains low. He uses his height as an advantage. He's always tucked up pretty well, hands high, moves his head well, too. His defense was better than he was given credit for, just because he was an aggressive fighter people don't think he had a good defense but to nail him really, really clean [was difficult.] A lot of shots glanced him or hit him on top of the head or hit gloves."

Josh Warrington: "Donaire had a very fast left hook but for handspeed overall, I would have to say Josh Warrington."

Leo Santa Cruz: "Santa Cruz in the rematch, he outsmarted me. To be honest, I didn't think he could box against me like he did."

Santa Cruz: "You wouldn't typically describe him as a smart boxer. I'm thinking maybe him or Herring. I'm going to say Santa Cruz, he was able to change his tactics completely. It wasn't just a change in tactics from the first fight with me to the second. Up until the first fight me he always fought one way, we'd never seen a version of Leo Santa Cruz where he could get up and move around and use his distance and keep things at length, so for that performance, specifically in the second fight, we'll say Leo."

Warrington: "There's probably two, Josh Warrington very physically strong and Kiko Martinez, physically very strong. I knew both of them were strong going into the fights. I was expecting them to be strong but Josh Warrington's strength really, really surprised me, I'm contradicting myself, I knew he was going to be strong, but it even surprised me, he was much stronger than I thought."

Raul Hirales: "I don't think he was ever stopped, I don't think he was ever dropped. I remember bouncing shots off his head. I'd been scheduled to do 12 rounds before, but I knew I could maybe get rid of the guys before the end. I was expecting this one to go really long or the distance. It was a slow pace for the first 10 rounds and then I put the foot down the last two rounds and hit him with a fair amount. I didn't even really put a dent in him."

Warrington: "Kiko was certainly a big puncher. Nonito Donaire, he hit me hard on the arms in the first round and I knew I had to be really cautious the rest of the fight. He nailed me with his left hook, I think in the 11th round, and it really hurt me. Cobrita Gonzalez dropped me twice in the first. It was like a real sharp shot rather than raw power. Josh Warrington hit me, and I've never felt anything like it, although I didn't go down, I didn't know where I was for quite a while. I think Josh Warrington would edge it, in terms of what I felt."

Nonito Donaire: "I think unbelievable boxing skills, boxing ability, look at what he's done throughout his career, how long he's done it for and how many divisions he's done it in. I won the fight pretty convincingly and I controlled it really well but that was a lot down to me and knowing I had to be really switched on and be at my best to beat a great like Nonito."

Donaire: "His record speaks for itself. He probably wasn't in his peaks years when I fought him but in terms of his longevity and what he's done throughout the divisions, a multi-division world champion, who had an unbelievable left hook, it has to be Nonito."

Questions and/or comments can be sent to Anson at elraincoat@live.co.uk and you can follow him on X @AnsonWainwr1ght.