Shane McGuigan is hoping to add just a little more to the game of light heavyweight contender Craig “Spider” Richards to get him “over the line” and become a world champion.
Richards had his first fight under McGuigan when he scored a seventh-round stoppage of the tough Boris Crighton on February 10, having previously worked with Peter Sims.
Richards gave Dmitrii Bivol a tough night in 2021, and two fights later lost a decision to Joshua Buatsi, but the 18-3-1 (11 KOs) contender is looking beyond a return to domestic level.
“We’re looking into Craig potentially on the [June 1] 5 vs. 5, which is Matchroom and Queensberry – we’re working on that behind the scenes at the moment, but also there’s other potential fights out there for him,” McGuigan said.
“Dan Azeez is a good option for him. He’s just coming off a half-decent loss as it were to Buatsi, but that’s a good domestic fight and I believe Craig would be able to stop him and make a statement, if this 5 vs. 5 doesn’t come through.”
Aside from that, the idea is not to get Richards to the top of the pile in Britain in a stacked division that also features Lyndon Arthur, Buatsi, Anthony Yarde and Azeez – it is to make an impact internationally.
“For sure, the main event on that 5 vs. 5 is going to be Bivol vs. [Artur] Beterbiev, so he’s going to be looking at the winner of that, or what goes on with the winner of that,” the trainer said. “Are they going to vacate? Move on or defend it? So we just need to align ourselves in the position to fight for a world title and that’s the most important thing. Of course, there are some good domestic money fights out there, but he wants to become a world champion and he’s improving all the time. We just need to keep him busy.
“He’s been inactive for so long, we got him a little run out, now we’re going to go again in the summer and have another one at the end of the year. But come early 2025, I want him to be fighting for a world title.”
Richards has been sparring in the gym with stablemate Chris Billam-Smith, the WBO cruiserweight champion, and McGuigan believes he has a gifted fighter on his hands – and is confident he can get Richards, 33, to the top.
“Craig is very, very capable,” McGuigan added. “He needs work, but if he can do the work for a guy who’s already capable of performing and given Bivol a hard fight, I just believe that I can help get him over the line and really maximize himself, and become an absolute handful.
“I think since Bivol has gone on and beaten Canelo, people always looked at him [Richards] like the nearly man. He took [Frank] Buglioni at six days’ notice [in an early career defeat], then he took Bivol in lockdown, where there wasn’t that much attention on the fight. Then he took on Buatsi and gave him an absolutely nightmare of a fight, and that was all under a different tutelage.
“We [McGuigan’s Gym] have a lot of qualities in the way we prepare for fights, the way we analyze fights for a contest, and preparation is what wins and loses those close fights and I believe if he gets the opportunity again in those fights, he’s winning those close ones.”