Woledge off to good start for 2014.

Dan Woledge competed in his first bout of 2014 at Oakley Hall Bromley on Friday night, he was up against tall southpaw Dennis Ohshijo who boxes for Double Jab in New Cross. It was Dan’s first senior contest under the new AIBA rules which were recently adopted by the Amateur Boxing Association of England. The major change for Dan was that he competed for the first time without a head guard, this rule applies for all Elite open class boxers aged 19 and above, all ages and classes below that still compete with head guards.

From the first bell Dan got off to a fast start boxing out of a tight guard, he applied steady pressure to his opponent landing a clean variety of shots, the New Cross boxer returned with a high volume of lead hand Jabs and hooks but he struggled to penetrate Woledge’s guard. The second round was much the same and Dan started switching his attack to the body, as the round came to an end Dan took a clean left cross from the southpaw which led to small cut under his right eye. One of the newly adopted rules is to allow work on cuts between rounds with Vaseline, adrenaline etc.....to stem the bleeding, as seen in professional boxing. Going into the last round Dan kept up the pressure pinning Ohshijo on the ropes several times, switching his attack from head to body which seemed to drain the energy from the new cross boxer. Dan won the bout by unanimous decision.

When asked about boxing without a head guard for the first time Dan replied, “ It felt much better and made me think about my defences a bit more than usual, it wasn’t through fear of getting hurt I was just more conscious about cuts etc...stopping the fight, head guards can make boxers wreck less and take more shots. I think the change is good for boxing”.