Rhodes calls time on his career

An emotional Ryan Rhodes has announced his retirement from the sport.

At a press dinner in his home city of Sheffield, the 35-year-old southpaw said he felt the time was right to hang up his gloves despite most boxing experts still believing that he's got a lot left to give.

Rhodes lost to Sergey Rabchenko in June and feels that the climb to world title level again will be too arduous, while a drop down to domestic level doesn't interest him.

"Three months has passed since my last fight, and I've had a very good break to think over things," he said.

"As things stand it would be a case of going back to British title level. It's something I've won twice already, I own the Lonsdale belt outright, so I have to decide whether I can get up for another British title fight.

"Even if I won it, it would take a year, 18 months to get back to European title level, and who's to say after that I would get a world title fight, a world title win - my absolute dream.

"I'd be 38 by then. I always wanted it to be my decision whether I retire or not, and as things stand that's what I'm doing. It's the right time to bow out of boxing."

Rhodes was something of a sensation when he burst onto the scene in the mid-1990s.

Then nicknamed "The Spice Boy", he took the light-middleweight division by storm, becoming the youngest post-war winner of the Lonsdale belt.

A pair of world title shots at middleweight failed to go his way and by the middle of the last decade he was largely written off by the boxing fraternity.

However, a move to Dave Coldwell's stable in Rotherham gave him a new lease of life and in 2008 he regained the British crown he'd last held 11 years earlier.

The highlight of career came in 2009 when against the odds he stopped Salford's Jamie Moore in a fight of the year contender to take the European strap.