Islington southpaw John Ryder, one of the leading ranked super-middleweights in the world, heads to the sunshine state of Florida for a ten round non-title contest against Californian, Mike “The Menace” Guy at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Hollywood in Florida.

This will be Ryder’s first competitive fight for over a year when he walks out on Friday, December 18, due largely to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The 32-year-old has a fine ring record of 28 victories (16 inside) and just five losses and last boxed at the end of November 2019 when he lost a very hotly disputed points decision to Liverpool’s Callum Smith when the latter’s WBA and WBC super-middleweight belts were on the line.

His opponent, 39-year-old Mike Guy, has a useful record of 12 wins (5 inside), 5 losses and 1 draw in a career spanning over eleven years.

Ryder’s contest is a supporting bout to the clash between Kazakhstan’s Gennady Golovkin and Poland’s Kamil Szeremeta for the former’s IBF and IBO world middleweight championships.

The north Londoner is even more excited to be on this particular promotion as he has been a long time fan himself of the Kazakh ringmaster.

Looking ahead to his latest ring battle and just before jetting off on his trip to the Florida sunshine, Ryder told the Gazette: “It will just be great to get back into the ring after being out for just over a year mainly through the Covid 19 pandemic.

“It will be fine to get a change of scenery and have my full team around me once again. I treat every opponent with the greatest respect and I have to win next weekend to preserve my world ranking which hopefully will project me forward to another shot at the world title in 2021.

“The added bonus about being on this particular promotion is that one of my all time boxing favourites, Gennady Golovkin, is topping the bill and I want to impress him with my own ring skills.

“This will be my second fight in the United States, I won well in Las Vegas in May 2019 and I expect to win again, this time in Florida next weekend.”

Ryder certainly has mixed in much better ring company than his durable opponent and I expect the north London fight favourite to triumph again in his second ring outing Stateside.