Greenfield’s Ricketts ready for main event fight

By JOE LOFARO
Special to the Press
Daniel Ricketts was introduced to boxing a little more than a year ago when he began training for his debut in Pike Fights at the University of Tennessee at Martin, and Friday night the 22-year-old finance major from Greenfield will fight in the main event.
Ricketts, who is 6-3 and 185 pounds, will box Jeremy Bond, a Sigma Chi from Etheridge. Bond is 6-1 and 189 pounds.
“His experience is short,” Ricketts said about Bond. “I will see how he reacts, but more than likely I will go after him in the first round.”
The two boxers are scheduled for a three-round bout. Each round is one minute long.
Ricketts said he has been training five days a week for the fight. “I run about three times a week, but I am worried more about my arm cardio or endurance than I am about my lung cardio.”
Ricketts said he has spent a lot of time hitting the punching bag.
It was a year ago when Ricketts trained with his big brother in the fraternity, Jon Awwad.
“We started sparring a few times and we bonded,” Awwad, now a nurse in Memphis said. “I guess when you beat the snot out of one another you bond quickly.”
Ricketts said he talked to several people about boxing, worked out a couple of times with a man in Greenfield, but most of what he learned was from Awwad.
“He fights like a snake,” Awwad said. “Maybe his name should be Daniel ‘the Snake’ Ricketts. He is fast and will pick you off.”
Awwad plans to be in Ricketts corner Friday night.
“I think I was picked for the main event because the guys are confident I am going to win,” Ricketts said.
Tickets for the 24th annual Craig Long Memorial Pike Fights are $10 each for general admission and $15 each for floor seats. The doors open at 6 p.m., and boxing is scheduled to start at 7 p.m.
This year’s event includes 11 bouts with the main event set for the finale. Craig Long helped start Pike Fights when he was a student and a Pike at UT Martin. Long graduated from UT Martin in 1993, and was the national sales account manager for Premium Fresh Farms in Salinas, Calif., when he passed away in 2007.
“I am super confident,” Ricketts said. “All the guys are behind me.”

Published in The WCP 4.2.13