There was a time when emerging Irish heavyweight Thomas Carty wondered whether he would ever box again.

His dream St Patrick’s Day outing at Madison Square Garden Theater in New York City in March was just 5 minutes, 9 seconds old when it transformed instantly into a nightmare.

But this was no one-punch knockout or a masterclass at the hands of a far superior opponent but in many ways something far worse. As the second round entered its final minute, Carty and opponent Dajuan Calloway came together in centre ring, and the southpaw stumbled to the floor.

He got back to his feet, but something was seriously wrong. That he managed to somehow make it to the end of the round before he was pulled out goes to show that he did not realise just how serious the seemingly innocuous injury was.

“I didn’t know exactly what I’d done but I knew that my knee had gone,” Carty tells The Ring. “And I certainly didn’t think it was as bad as it was.

“After the fight I arrived home to Ireland on Tuesday, got the scan on Wednesday, and I ended up getting the results on the Friday so it wasn’t until five days afterwards that I found out that I had done my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).

“That was like a whole other blow. It was like being devastated twice in a week; once at MSG and then once when they told me the extent of the injury.

“A lot of people in my position would never dream of getting to MSG. There was a buzz around where I live, and I had nearly 300 people come along to support me alone. So it was a very hard pill to swallow on the night and then finding that out too.”

Now, nearly eight months on from that night, Carty speaks like a man who is confident he is through the worst of it after an exhaustive rehab programme. Amazingly, given the extent of the injury, he is hoping to box again before the turn of the year. That would represent a stunning recovery given he had briefly assumed that retirement could follow.

“I tried to stay as positive as I could do,” he says. “But I remember being very depressed and looking up everything about the injury that I could find, seeing how bad it could be.

“I’d love to be able to look back now and say I never thought I wouldn’t come back and that thoughts of retirement didn’t cross my mind, but I can’t. I was definitely doing some soul-searching at one point. I was borderline job searching.

“But then I met my surgeon, thank God, whose name was Ray Moran. He is one of the best in the world. I had a meeting with him, and he restored a bit of my faith in things. And thank God he did, because it was a grim week where I was fearing the worst.

“But I suppose nobody has had much experience with professional boxers and this type of injury at all really. So it was a bit of an unknown area for them too.”

But in many ways, Carty’s boxing career has always been about taking a step into the unknown. From Phibsborough in the north side of Dublin, his passion had been Gaelic football until he tried his hand at boxing by chance in his mid teens.

Given the lack of southpaws on the sparring circuit, he has had the opportunity to hone his craft in regular spars with the likes of Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, who have both spent two camps each preparing for one of history’s great left-handers, Oleksandr Usyk.

Never shy to throw himself in at the deep end, Carty had a bullish approach to his rehab from the outset too.

“I was naive to a fault, probably,” he says. “I thought I’ll be grand. They say it takes a year to come back, I’ll be back in six months. I thought most other sports are a bit soft compared to boxing.

“You hear stories of people walking out after surgery but not me. I was on crutches for about four weeks, heavily on them as well. It was all really slow in the beginning but I eventually started to pick up the pace.

“I worked really well with my physio, and when I say I did everything possible, I really did. I never skipped a session and I never skipped a single rep. I would always do absolutely everything as well as I possibly could, and that has allowed me to come back stronger than ever.”

Even so, there must be concerns that the nature of boxing, all lateral movement and transferring weight, would open the door to his knee going again.

“I think subconsciously you’re worried about it, but there’s nothing you can do," he replies. "I have done absolutely everything within my power to prevent that. So whatever happens, happens at this stage. If it goes, it goes, so there is no point worrying about it – but it won’t.”

Once he was back on his feet, it was not long before Carty was back among his stablemates at Pascal Collins’ Celtic Warrior Gym. “Probably a bit too soon actually,” Carty admits.

“But I remember my first couple of spars back, which were about four months post-op, I was just standing there and getting people to punch me so I could just have the feeling of being punched again. It had been a long road, and I needed to feel that.”

The road is still not quite behind him, but Carty (10-1, 9 KOs) feels like a turning point in his recovery is now within reach. The 30-year-old has completely ditched running in his training plan, preferring ‘off-feet’ conditioning, and now he is closing in on a ring return.

It is understood that a slot on the Queensberry Promotions card on December 13, headlined by the trilogy fight between Derek Chisora and Dillian Whyte, had emerged as a possibility, but there has been no confirmation as of yet.

Either way, Carty hopes to draw a line under his rollercoaster year by getting a win under his belt before a cathartic return to the Big Apple in 2026.

“I just want to get back, close this chapter, and then go hard at it next year,” he says. “I know the same St Patrick’s Day card is happening in the same place, and I would love to fight on that.

“It would be my chance to right that wrong and put it all behind me.”