John Ryder realizes he won while losing the biggest fight of his career 8½ months ago.
The scorecards reflect Ryder wasn’t all that competitive with Canelo Alvarez in their 12-round, 168-pound championship clash. The resilient Ryder displayed gumption after suffering a broken nose just before the second round ended, however, and got up from a knockdown just before the midway mark of the fifth round to push Alvarez during the second half of their fight for Alvarez’s IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO super middleweight championships May 6 at Akron Stadium in Zapopan, Mexico.
The determination demonstrated by Ryder that night earned him another 12-round fight against the unbeaten Mexican contender who hopes a victory over Ryder on Saturday night leads to his own showdown with Alvarez on May 4. The 35-year-old Ryder intends to ruin Jaime Munguia’s plan to fight for Alvarez’s titles in what would be by far the biggest bout of the 27-year-old Tijuana native’s career.
Handicappers have made Munguia (42-0, 33 KOs) more than a 3-1 favorite to defeat Ryder in a main event DAZN will stream from Footprint Center in Phoenix. The odds notwithstanding, Ryder (32-6, 18 KOs) appreciates another high-profile opportunity that was presented to him based on how he fought against Alvarez (60-2-2, 39 KOs), one of the top pound-for-pound boxers in the sport, in the champion’s home country.
“I didn’t win the fight in May last year, but I kinda won the night,” Ryder told Secondsout.com during an interview posted recently on its YouTube channel. “I come away a winner from the performance. I mean, people say, ‘Well, why did you get up? Why did you carry on?’ It’s like, well, for my career to progress I need like for myself, mentally, and for more big fights in this game, I had to get up and continue. So, I mean, people will label you a quitter and whatnot if you don’t. But listen, for myself it was never a fact about staying down. It was about getting up, battling back and putting on a performance.”
Judges Jeremy Hayes (120-107), Gerardo Martinez (118-109) and Joseph Pasquale (118-109) still scored Alvarez a wide winner on their cards. Hayes credited Alvarez, who went off as a 16-1 favorite, with recording a shutout, whereas Martinez and Pasquale thought Ryder won two rounds apiece.
Ryder nevertheless took plenty of lessons from what on paper was the most lopsided points loss of a professional career the London native launched in September 2010. Primarily, Ryder, who has been stopped only once in 38 professional fights, showed that he could recover and push Alvarez after the four-division champion dropped him with a left-right combination less than halfway through their fight.
“I’ve learned a ton about myself in that fight as well,” Ryder said. “I told people I wish that I had that fight 10 years ago. I feel like it made me a better, complete fighter, but didn’t have the beauty of it. But I’ve had it now. I look forward to getting in the ring on January 27th and going to war.”
DAZN’s coverage of the main portion of the Munguia-Ryder undercard is set to start at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT). Preliminary action will begin on DAZN at 5:30 p.m. ET (2:30 p.m. PT).
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.