Ryan Rhodes: “It was my goal to become British champion and anything after that was a bonus.”

Ryan Rhodes: “It was my goal to become British champion and anything after that was a bonus.”

By Matt Elliott

In the mid to late nineties, the Ingle gym in Sheffield was flying. Senior pros such as Fidel Castro Smith, aka Slugger O’Toole and Herol ‘Bomber’ Graham were coming towards the end of their careers, but there was plenty of fresh talent emerging. Naseem Hamed was entertaining crowds whilst walking through his opponents and Johnny Nelson was building momentum after a run of early defeats, which would eventually see him win world honours. It was also the start of the professional career of Ryan Rhodes, who made his debut in 1995 and would go on to fight fifty-two times in a career that spanned seventeen years. I spoke with the man dubbed the ‘Spice Boy’ via Zoom, to discuss his career and what life outside of the ring has been like for him since he hung his gloves up back in the summer of 2012.

Boxing was something that came into Rhodes’ life at a young age. He recalls how his Mam took the initiative and made a decision which would ultimately lead him straight into the path of Brendan Ingle at the tender age of six years old.  

“When I was growing up, I was a bit of a naughty kid to be fair, well not so much naughty but I probably had too much energy. My mam decided to take me to see Herol Graham, he had a jewellery store in the local market in Sheffield and she took me down to see him one Saturday morning. She chucked me in from of him and said, what can I do with him, he has got far too much energy. Herol told her to bring me down to the gym and that is where it all started.”

It was the following weekend that Rhodes first entered the gym that would become his second home for many years to come. Saturday mornings were when the young kids and the newcomers would start and Rhodes will never forget the lasting impression of stepping over the threshold for the first time.

“The first thing that hit me was the smell. It had that aura, that smell of sweat, dampness and the leather from the bags. It’s the same now, when I take fighters down there or pop in for a chat with Dominic and John, it looks different but the smell is the same. So I remember walking in at six years old and looking at all of the big lads, the young lads, something was going on in every square metre of that gym, it was just crazy. There were guys punching bags, kids going around in circles, others going up and down the lines and people sparring in the ring. I just remember looking on in awe; I had never seen anything like that before in my life.”   

Whilst the scene Rhodes describes would instil fear into many of that age, for him it was the complete opposite. He was hooked. Then came his first encounter with Brendan Ingle, the man behind everything he had just witnessed and the man who would oversee much of his career, from his first amateur fight, through to the night he won his first professional belt.

“The first thing that stood out about Brendan was his accent. I had never heard an Irish accent before, so that was strange for me and I was thinking, why is he talking like that? Brendan asked if I had some gloves and I had bought some that week from a sports shop in Sheffield called Sugg Sport, which ironically ended up being one of my sponsors. He told me to put them on, pointed me towards one of the bags and asked me to show him what I had. So, I started punching away, I put my head down and started swinging. I ended up ripping the gloves on the seam and I thought wow, I must punch hard for a six-year-old.”  

It was at the age of eleven that Rhodes had his first amateur fight, and he looks back on that time in his life with pride and recalls fondly the experiences it afforded him and the things he achieved.

“I had my first amateur fight at eleven in Liverpool, which I won. Across my amateur career, I won four national titles, two schoolboys, a junior ABA and junior boys club title. I boxed for England twice, once against Scotland and then I went to Russia and I was the captain on that one. That was an unreal experience. We were living with different families, and I was with Michael Jennings and a couple of other kids. I loved it as an amateur, I loved going to different venues and I had sixty-seven fights in total, losing thirteen and most of those fights weren’t pre-arranged. I used to go to most shows as a spare or something like that and I’d end up fighting, it was crazy.” 

Despite his enjoyment of the amateurs, it was always Rhodes’ plan to turn professional as soon as he was able. In the Ingle gym, Brendan encouraged amateurs and professionals to train together, something which did not sit well with the ABA, who barred him as a result in the late seventies. For Rhodes though, mixing with the professionals ensured he was training at a more intense level and with his style, by his admission, less suited for the amateurs, he could not wait to turn over. His first professional fight came in February 1995 against Lee Crocker, and it was certainly a memorable one.

“I had just turned eighteen and I couldn’t wait to get out there. I was probably a bit too eager to be honest, as I went out and got knocked down twice in the first round. My mind just wasn’t right, I was probably overexcited and thinking it was going to be an easy night’s work. I remember waiting for my ring music and what they played was wrong. I had hair at the time as well and I was messing about with it. Brendan asked what I was doing, and I told him they were playing the wrong music, he told me just to get out, so I did but my mind was elsewhere. In the first round, I took one straight on the chin and immediately hit the floor. I got back up, it was just a flash knockdown really and then crack, another one on the chin and down again. I got back to the corner and Brendan gave me the biggest bollocking. He screamed at me and might even have slapped me at one point. I went out in the second round and stopped him. Welcome to the world of professional boxing.”

After that slightly shaky start, Rhodes went on an unbeaten run and in his eleventh fight he was given the opportunity to fight for the belt he had always dreamed of winning the British title. Quite often, when you speak to amateurs who are about to step into the professional ranks, they will tell you they dream of becoming a world champion; Rhodes never really considered that possibility, his ultimate goal was to get his hands on that Lonsdale belt, a dream that was borne out of an unusual set of circumstances.

“When I was around thirteen or fourteen, we used to go to working men’s clubs and do exhibitions. Brendan used to get some of the guys out of the crowd who had a couple of pints inside of them and offer them twenty quid if they could hit one of the pros on the chin and knock them down. Honestly, they were chucking everything to try and win that money. Then a couple of years later, at which time I’d been around the gym for about eight or nine years when the guys from the crowd were getting tired, Brendan would get me in the ring and tell them if they could knock me out he’d give them forty quid. Flipping heck, forty quid back then was a lot of money and I’d be running around like a headless chicken, whilst this grown, drunk man tried to knock me out. That’s how we learned to survive, how to move, and get away, typical Ingle style. At that time, we had three British champions around the gym, Brian Anderson, Herol Graham and then Johnny won his. The guys would take the belts down the club with them and everyone would want a picture. It was such a beautiful belt, so it was my goal to become British champion and anything after that was a bonus.”

Not only did Rhodes win the belt in a fight again Paul ‘Silky’ Jones, but he also became the quickest man to win it outright, with three fights in ninety days. More recently the rules have changed, meaning a champion has to make three successful defences to win the belt outright, but back in the late nineties, two defences were enough to ensure you kept the belt for life. Rhodes recalls that crazy period which stands alone as the proudest of his career.

“I turned twenty in November and boxed for the British (super-welter) title in December against Silky Jones. I won and I was the youngest in fifty-seven years to win that belt. Almost straight after I got a successful defence against Peter Waudby and then they offered me a guy called Del Bryan who was a former British champion. Initially, I wasn’t interested as I didn’t realise that I could win it outright in record time and I was ready for a rest. But Frank Warren and Brendan told me if I fought on the date they had given me and won, I would be the quickest to ever win it, so it was a no-brainer. I fought Del, beat him, and broke the record. At the time I think the record was ninety-five days and held by Michael Ayers from Liverpool but I did it in ninety. It was a crazy period, it felt like I didn’t have a day off.”  

Later that year, Rhodes would suffer his first professional loss as he stepped up to middleweight to face Otis Grant for the WBO world title. It’s a fight where Rhodes admits experience proved to be the vital factor, although if he could have his time over again he would have approached things differently.

“Whilst I stepped up in weight, it was more his experience that beat me in that fight. Otis was a great fighter; he was coming off a win against Danny Garcia, having drawn with Lonnie Bradley before that, who was the WBO champion at the time. Bradley had vacated and we were fighting for the belt. It was probably the one fight in my career that I went into thinking I was probably going to go the full twelve rounds, so I needed to prepare for that physically and mentally. I ended up probably saving too much energy because, in the last three rounds, I had too much, so I probably preserved too much in the middle rounds and, on reflection, I should have gone for it from rounds seven or eight, but it was all down to experience.”

Rhodes bounced back, winning inter-continental and international honours, before suffering further defeats in title outings against Lee Blundell and Gary Lockett. It was around this time that Rhodes started to do some soul-searching and ultimately made the decision to step away from the Ingle gym, teaming up with Dave Coldwell, as he looked to breathe new life into his career.

“I was twenty-two years with Brendan and had an unbelievable time down there. I learnt a lot and I am the man I am today because of being around that gym for so long, but the twelve to eighteen months of my career before I left, I was probably just going through the motions. I wasn’t enjoying training, I was just ticking over. I had a few fights fall through, opponents pulling out and I just needed something different, so I decided to leave and join Dave Coldwell. Dave and I knew each other because he had been at the Ingle gym for many years himself. He was my trainer and Mark Wille, who had also been at Ingles was my strength and conditioning coach, so I knew what I was walking into, it wasn’t a complete unknown. The first month down there I just felt a new lease of life, the buzz was back, I was enjoying training and the variety, not knowing from one day to the next what we were going to be doing. Boxing was there again, I was back to loving the sport.”

Rhodes had some of his best moments under the guidance of Coldwell. He won the British title for a second time against Gary Woolcombe and the WBC international belt with a victory over Vicent Vuma. Then, in 2009, came a showdown which would later be awarded fight of the year, as he challenged Jamie Moore for the vacant European super-welterweight title in a fight badged as the ‘War of the Roses.’ Rhodes discusses how the gameplan for that fight had to be torn up pretty early on, as the two men put on a spectacle which is still talked about to this day.

“Jamie was flying at the time, he was knocking everyone out and I think he was number three or four in the WBC rankings. The plan going into the fight wasn’t to stand and have a punch up, it was to keep moving, make him miss, tire him and then land some big, powerful counter shots. I was trying to implement that plan and get out of the way of him but he was cutting the ring off and I knew I was going to tire myself out more quickly than if I stood and traded with him. At the end of the first round, I went back to the corner and Dave said if you feel like you can stand and have a fight, do it now. So, from round two onwards we were just standing toe-to-toe, punching lumps out of each other and it was a great fight, even if that wasn’t my usual style. We traded punches for another six rounds, then I knocked him down at the start of the seventh before he recovered and I had to ride a bit of a storm before getting back on top and finishing it.”

As well as securing him the European title, that fight served as an eliminator for the WBC super-welterweight world title and whilst he had to wait almost two years, Rhodes finally got that chance in June 2011 against a twenty-one-year-old Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez. Canelo had defeated Matthew Hatton three months earlier and the fight with Rhodes was scheduled for Guadalajara in Mexico. The Mexican’s reputation was growing at that time, but Rhodes went into the fight full of confidence.

“I saw his fight against Matthew and thought, if you fight me as you fought him, walking him down and having no respect, then I’d love that, that fits my style, because if you do that to me and just walk forward, you’ll walk onto everything.”

Rhodes travelled out to Mexico three weeks before the fight to acclimatise to the altitude and the different time zone. He remembers how respectful the Mexican public was, as well as Canelo himself. It was also a bit of a surreal experience as his face was plastered across billboards and bus shelters meaning he couldn’t go for a run around the hotel without being stopped by people begging for pictures. The fight itself, which took place inside the Arena VFG, a 15,000-capacity stadium located in the back garden of a Mexican tycoon, didn’t go according to plan for Rhodes who was stopped in the final round after an onslaught from Canelo.

“We had a great build-up to that fight; I was in tip-top shape. I expected him to run out from the first bell and try and chase me down but he never did. He changed his style completely, he held his feet, and he was making me miss and counterpunching so I had to adapt, which I was good enough to do. I could fight on the front foot or the back foot, but whatever I did he had an answer for everything. I tried to box him, tried to fight him, but he just had an answer and when you fight someone as good as he is, then there is not much you can do, so I just did my best. After the fight, we said he will be good, but we perhaps didn’t expect him to become the superstar he has.”

After defeat to Canelo, Rhodes would go on to beat Siarhei Khamitski, before entering what would prove to be his fifty-second and final fight, a defeat to Sergey Rabchenko. Even before that Khamitski fight, Rhodes knew that the end might be in sight.

“Before the Khamitski fight, I felt good, but the sparring sessions weren’t right. My style was counterpunching and making my opponent miss. Before this fight though, I was just that split second late, my movement felt laboured but I beat Khamitski easily and shrugged it off as a tough camp. Then the same happened before the Rabchenko fight. The last thing that goes in any fighter is the punch, but the first is the reflexes, your movement, and the way you plant your feet. I was starting to get marked or suffer small cuts and at the time my daughters were getting older and I thought I am not putting them through this anymore. I was thirty-six; I could probably have fought again for the British or Commonwealth, but I was never going to win a world title, so I thought what’s the point? So, I decided to hang the gloves up and not once have I regretted it.” 

That was almost eleven years ago and Rhodes is still very much involved in the sport today. He runs his own gym in Sheffield and trains three fighters and manages six, including Ricky Reeves who fights for the Central Area cruiserweight title on the 22nd April in a show co-promoted by Rhodes, under his banner 26RR Promotions, and Stefy Bull, with whom Rhodes has collaborated on several occasions over the last four years. In addition to this, he has an amateur affiliation, achieved just before the covid lockdown, and currently has twelve young fighters on the books as he looks to unearth the next Ryan Rhodes. I asked him if this was how he had envisaged life outside of the ring.

“To be fair I never expected to walk into training. I wanted to stay in the sport but never really considered how. Initially, I just tried to keep fit and would go to the gym with Dave, do some sparring and some circuits and then a couple of fighters, Curtis Woodhouse and Dave Fidler, asked me to do some training with them and it kind of went from there. I then got my corners license and helped a couple of fighters and it has just escalated.”

When you think of the long list of fighters that were trained by the great Brendan Ingle, Ryan Rhodes might not be the first name that comes into your mind, but when you reflect on what he achieved inside of the ring and his determination to succeed, it is easy to see why he is now flourishing in his post-fight career. Long may it continue.