Padley was not signed to a major promotion when he accepted the Stevenson fight, but his dedication to the sport meant he was ready when the call eventually came <\/p>\n
“You have to stay ready and around that weight category in case opportunities like that do come,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If I’d have ballooned up in weight and I’d not been in the gym just ticking over, then I wouldn’t have been able to take the fight and I wouldn’t be in this position today.”<\/p>\n
After fighting the majority of his career at lightweight, Padley is set to embark on a new journey at super-featherweight when taking on Bellotti in Sheffield, 20 miles from his home of Doncaster. <\/p>\n
“Now I’m able to be a full-time athlete, so I’m able to make more sacrifices regarding weight and discipline with my meals,” Padley added.<\/p>\n
“It’s given me the opportunity to move down and have a good first fight against someone like Reece, who’s been tried and tested.<\/p>\n
Bellotti, 34, has 20 wins and six losses on his record, but has been in the ring with top contenders Ryan Garner, Raymond Ford and Jordan Gill.<\/p>\n
Padley knows the route back to world title contention is a long one, but he intends to continue backing himself.<\/p>\n
“Any boxer starting out should have high aspirations because that’s the pinnacle of the sport,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I would love to get back on to those big Riyadh season cards – I’ve had a taste and that’s where I want to be. <\/p>\n
“Keep pushing on and aim as high as I can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Padley was not signed to a major promotion when he accepted the Stevenson fight, but his dedication to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-192576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}