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Leigh Wood reflects on this later stage of his career before fight with Anthony Cacace
A pensive Leigh Wood has spoken about the end of his career, talking about the long-term impact of the sport and of how it was impacting his decisions.
The 36-year-old fighter, who challenges Anthony Cacace for the IBO super-featherweight championship tomorrow at the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, said that he was still hopeful of fighting at Nottingham City’s ground but recognised that his age and time were against him.
Wood said: “I’ve not given up on it, but I’m coming towards the tail end and for that fight to happen, you need a lot of luck. You need the right opponent, which is hard when it’s the wrong time. Then you have the right time and right opponent. Now, it’s the right time, but the wrong opponent.”
He added: “It’s not about my performance, age, or physicality, because I’m on point and I’m performing. It’s how much these victories cost me, and at what cost? How many punches am I taking? How many have I taken to get to this point? How many punches will I take place in the fight? We’ll answer those questions after the fight.”
Wood said that he had had only five ‘real’ fights, and that all these had come in his most-recent bouts. Despite this, he said he felt ‘great’ but was concerned about the long-term impacts of his career.
He said: “I’ve worked my arse off for so many years. I want to be able to enjoy it after boxing. I want to watch my kids grow up and be there and support them with my faculties intact.”
Wood, who twice previously held the WBA belt, said that his fights had left him reasonably financially comfortable. Since 2022, he has registered wins over Michael Conlan and Josh Warrington, while splitting a pair of bouts with the Mexican Mauricio Lara in 2023.
A home soil fight against Cacace on Saturday for the latter’s IBO title will mark Wood’s first fight in a year-and-a-half. Despite the inactivity, Wood said that he had trained meticulously for the fight, having been given six weeks’ notice. The key to his preparation, he said, was to repeatedly drill moves and sequences.
Wood said: “How do people predict the stock market or earthquakes? They look at what’s happened before. It’s exactly the same thing with what my coaches do.”
He went on: “It’s not complicated. If you do this in this area, you’re probably going to get this. If you do this thing, you’re probably going to get that. If you don’t do this, they’re going to do this. So, we pull out the important things, and we execute and drill them and try not to overcomplicate things.”
Talk turned to the Warrington fight from October, which Wood won in seven rounds at Sheffield Arena. He said that he and his team had followed the same training scheme.
Wood said: “I know the Warrington fight doesn’t look like that from the outside, but the actual sequence when I finished it was something we’d drilled and practised. We knew that he would do certain things. I said before the fight that he’d be working extremely hard to win those rounds, and I’d make him pay for it.”
Wood made his remarks during a sit-down interview on the Queensberry Promotions YouTube channel.
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