Biog

All About Me

I first walked into a boxing gym at the age of 10, when my Granda took me down one day. He was always showing me how to throw punches, ever since I learned how to walk. His son, my uncle, Billy Bryce, used to box and after 110 amateur fights turned pro. He took me to Lambton Street Boy's Club in my home town Sunderland. I also liked football and played for the school team (East Herrington Primary) and after a couple of weeks at the boxing gym I packed it in and just played footy. I was not really learning much there. Then my Mam took me to Plains Farm Boxing Club for a couple of weeks with some old friends, but we just messed about and never really trained, so my dad decided to take me to Sunderland Amateur Boxing Club. He said they were a good club, and his friend Nathan Cliff had just won a national title. Sunderland ABC was a very disciplined gym where you had to want to fight to join.

Bobby Bute was the coach in charge, with the other coach (and my coach to date) Jimmy Richardson and there was no carrying on with Bobby or he would send you home or even kick you out and not let you back. I used to have to spar with the older lads because, at 10, I was weighing about 49KG, and was tall for my age. I used to spar with Martin Marshall, Sean Kelly, Thomas Ratcliffe, Irum Greenwell and a few more lads. Sometimes I'd get punched about a bit and hated it, then I got my medical, but it was really hard for them to find me a fight because of my age and weight. So the club gave away a bit of weight and I lost my first 2 fights against a lad from Sunderland, both close on points. The nerves where unreal! I was shitting it! But after that I never got nervous again

Then I had a 2 more fights against Steven Palmer who went on to box for England, and I won those. Bobby Bute entered me into the school boy Championships class B in 1999. I got a bye to the semi-finals, stopped him then stopped the kid in the final. Before I knew it, I was National Champion, the first in seven years for my club, since Billy Terral won in 1992.

That was just the start. Since then I've won two Schoolboy Titles, two National Boys Club titles, The Junior A.B.A's, The Senior A.B.A's, The England Box-off's (Gold), and have also boxed for England a total of 42 times out of my 82 fights. I won Gold in the European Cadets in 2001 The first Englishman ever to do it, Gold in an Indian Junior Multi-Nations in 2003, then another Gold in the Liverpool Senior Multi-Nations in 2005. Silver in Italy in 2003, Silver in Finland Gee-Bee 2005, Silver in Lithuania 2005, Silver at the Commonwealth Fed's in Scotland 2005, Bronze in the European Juniors in 2003 at Poland, Bronze at the European Union in Madrid 2004, Bronze at the European Union at Sardinia 2005, Bronze at the Brandenburg cup in Germany 2003, and a Bronze at a Greece Multi-Nation in 2002.

At 21 I was going for Gold at Melbourne in the 2006 commonwealth games. I trained very hard for it and was in the best shape of my life, I got off to a flying start winning my first two fights by stoppage then in the next round I was up against Scotland's Kenny Anderson

I was very confident going into this fight although he had stopped he's first to opponents.

People was saying this should have been the final, I ended up losing by 5 points and I was absolutely devastated, then he went on to win Gold. After the Games I had surgery on my right hand, and was out for the rest of 2006,

I was still on the England boxing team and in 2007 got picked for the GB Olympic squad full time training team, I trained full time Monday to Thursday down at Sheffield until the world championships the Olympic qualifiers, and I boxed well and ended up Qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Olympics - the first ever boxer to do that from Sunderland. This has been my long term goal ever since I can remember.

Next year is going to be very hard training but I'm looking forward to it hopefully it will pay off!.

Thanks for all the support from you all and special thanks to all of my sponsors. You really help me a lot!