WHEN John Ryder saunters into the busy cafe a short drive from his new home in leafy Essex, in a tracksuit and only a few pounds north of his fighting weight, he still looks every inch the boxer.
But the truth is, ‘Gorilla’, a veteran of 74 organised fights, is now officially a civilian and has been ever since his flight from Phoenix, Arizona, touched down at Heathrow late last month.
The old adage in boxing is that the fighter is always the last one to know, but Ryder, as he was for the majority of his time inside the ring, was a few steps ahead of everyone else. As he walked back to the changing room after a bruising ninth-round stoppage defeat to Jaime Munguia, he knew he was done.
“I think I knew, going into it, over a plate of avocado on toast with extra eggs. “But if you win, there’s always that lure to come back, isn’t there? I think the best thing is now that I didn’t win, so there is not the feeling of ‘just one more, one last hurrah’. I might have been tempted.
