Anthony Cacace vs Ryan Garner - could twice cancelled fight be on the cards later this year?
Anthony Cacace may be fully focused on this weekend's bout with Leigh Wood, but there are always thoughts about what comes next for a fighter.
A late bloomer and now 36, a shock technical knockout win over Joe Cordina to secure the IBF world super featherweight title last year has catapulted Cacace into the big time of British and Irish boxing.
Prior to his world title shot, Cacace had been set to face fellow super featherweight Ryan Garner until that proposed bout fell through twice.
With both men set to fight in the coming months, perhaps the duo will finally meet inside the ring.
Cacace vs Garner cancellations have worked out for both parties
In April 2022, Ryan Garner accepted the chance to step in on short notice to fight Anthony Cacace, only for the bout to fall through. A further meeting was scheduled for November 2023 but fell apart after Cacace injured his wrist.
That proved to be a blessing in disguise for the Belfast fighter, who would be offered the chance to take on Joe Cordina for the IBF super featherweight world title the following year.
Garner has since admitted that perhaps an earlier fight with Cacace would have proven to be a fool's errand. In fact, the man nicknamed the Piranha believed it was a bullet dodged.
He told Queensbury Promotions' media: "I was the one that wanted that fight with Cacace, but now that I look back on it, it could have been too soon. Well, it would have been too soon, because I'm a different fighter now. So, I'm glad it never happened. Me being a fighter, I want the biggest fights, I want the biggest paydays, I want the chances. But now that I'm a bit older, more mature, I think that was too soon.
With the benefit of time, Garner now feels differently.
"At the time,' he says, 'I was like, 'I'm ready for this'. But now I look back and I've seen myself in the gym, and how physically much stronger I am now, a different head on my shoulders. That Ryan Garner isn't the Ryan Garner that is here today."
Having avoided a potential loss in the form of Cacace, Garner has maintained his unbeaten record – with the Piranha now 17-0.
Cacace is at a stage in his career where he wants the biggest fights possible, having eschewed defences of his IBF world super featherweight title in order to face Josh Warrington and Leigh Wood.
In comparison, Garner is on the precipice of breaking into the world title picture, and whilst he may not carry the name power of Cacace's recent opponents, he can sell out an arena.
The Piranha headlined a show at the Bournemouth International Centre in March, with thousands of his fans travelling from neighbouring Southampton to support their man. Garner's promoter Frank Warren has hinted that his fighter will return to Bournemouth in the summer in a possible defence of his recently acquired EBU super featherweight belt.
According to the EBU, Garner is in private negotiations with James Dickens over a potential bout. A successful defence of his EBU crown would further increase Garner's stock and leave enough time in the final months of 2025 to arrange a fight with Cacace.
Garner has long spoken about fighting at the home of his beloved Southampton FC, St. Mary's, and a fight with Cacace would draw a huge crowd to the Premier League stadium. Cacace has also shown that he is willing to enter hostile territory to fight, as evidenced by this weekend's bout in Wood's backyard of Nottingham.
Sign up to a DAZN subscription to watch the very best boxing
DAZN is the home of combat sports, broadcasting over 185 fights a year from the world's best promoters, including Matchroom, Queensberry, Golden Boy, Misfits, PFL, BKFC, GLORY and more.
An Annual Saver subscription is a one-off cost of £119.99 / $224.99 (for 12 months access), that's just 64p / $1.21 per fight. There is also a Monthly Flex Pass option (cancel any time) at £24.99 / $29.99 per month.
It is not just about fight night, a DAZN membership also includes access to documentaries and features, weekly magazine shows, live fight watchalongs, press conferences, weight-ins, open workouts, exclusive interviews and access to training camps, and podcasts and vodcasts.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Royal expert reveals the truth behind THOSE Meghan pregnancy conspiracy theories
Mail on Sunday's Charlotte Griffiths has shared her thoughts on Meghan Markle 's recent Instagram video, capturing Prince Harry twerking alongside the Duchess inside her birthing suite. Click above to watch the video in full.
Finextra
34 minutes ago
- Finextra
Money 20/20: The fintech reopening access to African markets
At the start of Covid, large Fortune 500 companies began to leave the African financial markets, citing too much illiquidity and uncertainty. One Ireland-based startup, featured on this year's Money 20/20 'Startup Spotlight' session, built a solution. 0 This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Esca positions itself as a platform that enables stability and revenue protection within volatile and emerging markets. Particularly, they are interested in the African markets and the difficulties institutions and banks have faced with growth and investment in an area prone to frequent market volatility. CEO and founder, Shalom Osiadi said 'A lot of these business were unable to actually acquire the hard currencies required to book the profits they had made in the country. For example, GlaxoSmithKline has existed in Nigeria since 1955, they generate all their revenue in the local currency: the naira. They book this revenue by a forward contract with the Central Bank of Nigeria. The Central Bank of Nigeria does not have enough foreign currencies to actually settle this debt that they have with these multinationals. And so businesses like GSK, they go to the parallel market to look for liquidity and then the parallel market is 3-500 naira above what the central bank rate base is, so they're already losing a significant amount of profit margin just by trading on the spot.' The concept of Esca is essentially to take this on-the-spot fragility and replace it with a predictable, stable platform that protects revenue and, by extension, reopens growth within the continent. Osiadi explained this: 'We have understood that financial engineering really is the key to these markets, right? Once we understand how the macroeconomic environment works, how the numbers work, we can easily translate that into code. So what we're trying to do now is take our algorithms from Excel spreadsheets onto our platform.' With a long-term vision to increase foreign direct investment in the continent, they recognise that it must be done in a safe, transparent, and predictable way. Restabilising investment into the area provides a number of challenges, fundamentally education and platform experience. Speaking about the platform's future, Olumide Olugbemiro, co-founder and CTO, said the user experience has to be consistently seamless: 'To be honest, the more complicated it is, the more they don't understand it, the more we have to jump on calls to explain. So, I'd say making the experience as seamless as possible, as easy and explanatory as possible.' On education, Osiadi explained how 'One of the biggest challenges we had and we still have at Esca is educating African finance managers, CEOs, and CFOs on why currency hedging is important for their business.[...] so you have to change the mindset slightly to let them understand that long-term gain is better than short-term accumulation." Part of their approach to encouraging investment has also included making cryptocurrency accessible to non-crypto firms. This educational point has been key to this; by simplifying the complex elements and focussing on using their own experience to allow users to send, for example, fiat currency to an account and receieve cryptocurrency in a wallet tomorrow. Osiadi said "By using that experience, we've grown our business by over 300% in the last six months. We're forecasted about $6 million in revenue this year. Based off of that knowledge that we've gained from an existing product we've built, we're now translating it into complex products like derivatives."
Daily Mail
36 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Strictly's Karen Hauer looks smitten with boyfriend Simon Davidson as they relax on holiday
Karen Hauer looked smitten with her boyfriend Simon Davidson on holiday as they posed for a sweet Instagram snap on Thursday. The Strictly Come Dancing professional, 43, went makeup-free and showcased her enviable physique in a bright pink dress. Cuddling up to the former rugby player in the picture, the couple looked more than loved-up on their sunny getaway. She captioned her post: '3 days in… relaxation mode kicking in☀️' The pair sparked dating speculation in December 2023 when they were seen leaving the Strictly final together and later at a Birmingham hotel during the Strictly live tour. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. They then finally confirmed their romance in January 2024 by sharing a snap on Instagram of them cuddled up together during a countryside walk. Karen emotionally opened up about the breakdown of her second marriage to Kevin Clifton, as she insisted they 'belonged together'. The Venezuelan-American ballroom specialist married the dancer in 2015 - three years after joining Strictly 's team of professionals. They announced their divorce in 2018, but Karen has admitted the separation played out behind the scenes for months before she finally confirmed they were no longer together. Appearing on the latest edition of Paul C. Brunson's podcast, We Need To Talk, Karen insisted it was she who instigated the separation when it became clear that he had 'distanced himself' from the marriage. She said: 'This one hurt, because we belonged together. You wouldn't say each other's names without following the other person's name. 'I felt that he distanced himself from me, but I was probably doing the same. Because I felt that if you don't want me then OK, I'll retreat, I'll give you your space. It was one of those, where we're both not talking about it. 'I was like, "Do you want a divorce? Do you want to split up? I don't know what I want to do. What do you want to do? Do you know what you want? I don't know what I want. Are we broken up?"' 'So it took a while actually, it took about a year... behind the scenes. In front of the scenes everything was normal. 'We fell apart, and me not knowing... obviously, I didn't know what was happening in his mind and whether he wanted to be with me or not.' Despite calling time on the marriage after just three years, Karen claimed she would have worked at salvaging their relationship had he wanted to be with her. She said: 'I knew that I would've worked on it - I would've stayed. But at the same time, I couldn't be with someone who wasn't sure of whether they wanted to be with me or not. I couldn't wait. 'I waited for a while, and I was giving him his space to think, and then funnily enough I met someone. I was literally waiting to be loved. 'He just wanted a divorce, and I didn't fight it. Something had to happen in order for him to make a decision, because I wasn't going to make the decision. 'I wasn't going to pull the plug. So then I tripped and then the grenade went off. You know, I pulled the pin.' She added: 'It was tough for him, tough for me. It was tough for both of us at that moment. 'I could see he didn't want to let go. But that didn't give him any choice. He had to do the right thing for himself.' Despite their separation, Karen insisted she and Kevin maintained a mutual admiration for one another as trained professionals on Strictly Come Dancing. She said: 'The respect we had for each other in the workplace. We respected one another, you know. 'We never said a bad word about one another. I think that's because we hold each other to such a high regard, you know. 'There will always be love there. So, we still danced together on the show and we were still working around each other. We would still applaud each other, support each other. 'We never lost that and that was what was really sad, that we could and transfer that onto our relationship.' Kevin subsequently embarked on a new relationship with documentarian Stacey Dooley after the pair won Strictly together in 2018. The couple welcomed their daughter Minnie together in 2023. Meanwhile Karen went on to date opera singer David Webb before entering a new relationship with businessman Jordan Wyn-Jones, the man who would ultimately become her third husband. The dancer married Jordan in 2022 after they met online, but they divorced just 16 months later.
