OFTEN, it can be nigh impossible to find ways in which a rematch will be different, or at least partially dissimilar, to the first fight.
Most of the time, this leaves fans searching for a sequence of intricate details – a pattern, perhaps – that may explain how a result could swing the opposite way.
With Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan’s rematch, however, there is one factor from their first encounter which, if not for some unfathomable sorcery, should be well and truly removed from the equation.
That, of course, is the notorious incident involving an unassuming tin of red paint – or rather ‘paint-gate,’ as some have labelled it.
As the victim of ‘paint-gate,’ Ryan was compelled to enter her WBO world title fight in a far worse state, mentally, than she otherwise would have been in.
Moments before stepping through the ropes, a series of questions – most likely beginning with ‘who’ or ‘why’ – would have undoubtedly been racing through her head.
But now, unless the mystery perpetrator somehow emerges from the shadows once more, the anxiety surrounding her paint attacker should, at the very least, remain firmly at the back of Ryan’s mind.
Instead, she will more than likely be fully focused on reclaiming her WBO strap, knowing that, towards the latter stages of her first fight with Mayer, she was firmly in the driver’s seat.
It was her aggression down the stretch, after all, that made for a fiercely competitive contest last September, with the Brit piling on the pressure against her rangy – and at that point, fatigued – opponent.
Mayer, to her credit, got off to a far brighter start while enjoying lengthy spells of success with her spearing straight-arm shots, all expertly delivered from the many angles created with her feet.
Then again, just how much that was to do with her superior technical prowess, rather than Ryan’s hampered preparation, is perhaps impossible to say.
Ahead of their 11th round, though, the momentum should be in Ryan’s favour. More than that, the 31-year-old has, in many ways, already solved the puzzle that Mayer presented, no longer needing to fiddle her way through several tricky rounds but instead pick up from exactly where she left off.
So while another razor-thin battle is certainly on the cards in Sin City this Saturday, the added strength and assertiveness of Ryan could quite easily see her exact revenge with a clinical victory on points.
