He won a bronze medal at the 1971 European Amateur Boxing Championships before competing in the men's flyweight event at the 1972 Summer Olympics, where he reached the quarter-finals.
He turned professional in 1976 and won the Northern Irish bantamweight title the following year after stopping Terry Hanna in the fifth round.
[1] He won schoolboy boxing titles at regional and national levels before being selected to represent Ireland for the first time in 1969, travelling to Dundee for a meeting with Scotland.
He competed in the 1971 European Amateur Boxing Championships in Madrid, where he was one of three Irish boxers to claim a bronze medal, and won his first All-Ireland title the same year.
[1][2] At the games, McLaughlin recorded a points victory over Sudanese fighter Mohamed Abakkar in the first round before receiving a bye in the second.
The card suffered several interruptions; there were angry outbursts when British soldiers entered the arena, a bomb threat was phoned in threatening the site and, during the bout, the lights failed for several minutes.
[3] In July 1977, McLaughlin met Terry Hanna for the vacant Northern Irish bantamweight title, stopping his opponent in the fifth round to claim the belt.
He faced Johnny Owen again at the end of the year, losing again, before unsuccessfully challenging Nigerian Ray Amoo for the Commonwealth flyweight championship in 1980.