Ryan Dingledine eats, sleeps and breathes boxing.

Well, maybe he’s not that immersed in the sport. However, the recent Mexico graduate has shown much commitment to the ring by training every day and competing in an amateur circuit. 

“There has been nothing else that I have been this committed to,” Dingledine said. “It’s because I have a love for the sport.”

Dingledine, who also played soccer for the Bulldogs in the fall, is 3-0 in the IKF point sparring circuit in the Midwest region. He said it is a safe starting point for amateur boxers that forbids knockouts — unlike the Golden Gloves circuit — and emphasizes technique instead, forcing fighters to win two out of three three-minute rounds via points.

  “It’s points rather than power,” Dingledine said. “The person with the better technique, that’s who wins.”

Dingledine has only fought within Missouri so far but has had bouts with fighters from Iowa and Illinois and has defeated a 28-year-old man from St. Louis in one of his fights. As long as they aren’t 50-years-old in the senior circuit, Dingledine said, he said he can fight people from a variety of ages because they are all amateur boxers. 

He only has three official fights so far, but Dingledine said has logged more than 200 rounds of training. Ever since he was 12-years-old, Dingledine has spent time in the gym and ring because that was around the time of his inspiration. 

In 2019, Dingledine remembers watching a welterweight world championship fight between 40-year-old Manny Pacquiao and the 30-year-old Keith Thurman in Las Vegas. He watched his first boxing live event with his father. Pacquiao won via split decision and spoiled Thurman’s undefeated record, but Dingledine was hooked.

 “Seeing Keith Thurman’s will to fight, that’s what made me want to become a boxer.,” Dingledine said. “I started training with my cousin (Roddell Thomas), who is a former professional in MMA, and he taught me the fundamentals and have been training since.”

For the last two years, Dingledine said he has been “fully committed” to boxing by practicing two to two and half hours for seven days a week. Even on weekends, they are just more days for Dingledine to refine his technique and conditioning. He is grateful to fellow Mexico senior and sparring partner Gage Penn, who finished first in his most recent matches like Dingledine.

“It’s fight-like for sure,” Dingledine said. “It’s like a scrimmage. I get to spar about once a week.”

Watching film has been a huge part of Dingledine’s training because he likes to decide what he needs to work on, similar to how basketball teams do it. In the last year, he said he hasn’t even watched television and has only watched boxing videos, which he calls “a natural thing” for him because he loves boxing.

“If defense was lacking in my last fight, I’ll work on defense for maybe a week or so,” Dingledine said. “If my conditioning hasn’t been good, I’ll run a little bit more. If my punches are slow and not sharp, I’ll get on that heavy bag for an hour.”

Not only does Dingledine have a valuable contact in his cousin Thomas, but he also has talked “pretty often” with Michael Nunn over the last year. Nunn, who won three Iowa Golden Glove championships and then world championships in two weight classes with more than 60 fights at the professional level, has given Dingledine valuable pointers. 

Dingledine said he has stayed roped into boxing for so long because of how it benefits his life on top of how much fun he has had. He said it is a good way to “take out stress,” which he joked about being cliché, but the sport is more precious to him in another way.

“Being around people who understand fighting the way I do – the strategic points of it – I can apply a lot of these things to my life, taking a strategic approach to my life,” Dingledine said. 

He gave an example of how an opponent might be throwing a jab, and he would then figure out a way to counter it. For any unexpected or difficult situation in life, Dingledine said he takes the same approach. 

“I can think my way around it like I can think my way around situations in life,” Dingledine said. “For difficult situations, you’re going to run into difficult fighters. Learn how to stick to your game plan, have an understanding of knowing what you want to do and what you want to accomplish and just getting to it.”

In certain moments, Dingledine admitted to not wanting to “get off that seat” between rounds during a fight or go out for daily training but did anyway because “you have to do your job.” He said he is someone who sees tasks or commitments through to the end.

Dingledine hasn’t only boxed, but he has been a student and played soccer during the fall season. He said his first IKF fight was actually during the weekend before soccer districts and credits soccer for helping him stay in shape.

“Discipline is something that translates over,” Dingledine said. “Every aspect of boxing can translate over in some way.”Dingledine graduated from Mexico High School on Friday but fully intends to keep fighting. In the short term, he will go to Lincoln University in Jefferson, which has “a lot of opportunities for boxing” in terms of gyms, to study sports science and kinesiology. 

In the long term, Dingledine wants to work his way up to the professional circuits. If he doesn’t make it there, he said “it is what it is,” but he will definitely stay just as committed to boxing.

“I’m kind of like Muhammad Ali in that I see myself being a champion one day,” Dingledine said. “I’m going to keep working at it.”