Whitehead passes 6 round test with ease

Ryan Whitehead…now looking for Midlands title fight

AFTER four fights, it’s too early to say what Telford’s Ryan Whitehead can achieve.

One thing we do know is the 29-year-old super-middle has a good engine, a very good engine. It’s now about discovering his commitment.  You need an almost pathological desire to be a major boxing champion.

In his first six rounder, Owen – announced as from Muxton, surely the first time the Telford suburb has had a shout-out on a professional boxing bill – cranked-up the pressure and pace to take every session against Oldbury’s Dwain Grant, 60-54.

The gym rumours were that Whitehead, a PT instructor by day, was to have faced the winner of Andy Owen and Michael Stephenson’s Midlands super-middleweight title fight.

Following drama on the scales, that fight went ahead for the vacant light-heavyweight strap, leaving Ryan in something of a quandary.

He doesn’t look like a light-heavy to me.

On BCB Promotions’ major show at the Hangar,  likeable Whitehead took part in his first six rounder and breezed the distance against Grant, a tricky, testing opponent, despite having won only three of 20 (one draw).

Fighting out of a Philly shell, his left hand swaying below the waistline, the 38-year-old attempted to set traps, but Whitehead refused to take the bait.

In the fourth, Grant talked to his opponent in a bid to make him reckless. Whitehead shrugged off the gamesmanship and kept firing straight punches.

He found a new gear with each round and by the final two sessions, Grant was taking stick on the ropes.

“I felt I was just warming-up,” said father-of-three Ryan afterwards. “I want to move to Midlands title level this year and I think 10 rounds will suit me.”

Trainer Tristan Davies – father of super-bantam champ Liam – said: “He stuck to the plan. He didn’t get involved, that was what it was all about.”