John Ryder doesn’t exactly want to get in the habit of testing his spunkiness inside the ring.

The veteran contender from Islington, England, put up a game effort last Saturday night in Guadalajara, Mexico, against undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez. Despite incurring a broken nose and suffering a flush knockdown in the fifth round, a visibly bloodied Ryder managed to claw his way to the final bell and even made the last several rounds fairly competitive.

Ryder’s conduct drew broad praise, with Alvarez even going so far as to say that Ryder was the best British boxer he had ever faced.

After the fight, Eddie Hearn, Ryder’s promoter, suggested that Ryder’s efforts have legitimized him to the public and that some top American opponents in and around his division may look to fight him as a way to measure themselves against Alvarez. Hearn also floated the possibility of Ryder could fight former middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin.

In an interview conducted immediately after the Alvarez fight, Ryder (32-6, 18 KOs) indicated that he wants to continue fighting but that it would be important for him to have the “right fights” where he is not subject to the kind of punishment that Alvarez (59-2-2, 39 KOs) handed to him.

“For sure,” Ryder said in an interview with BBC 5 Live Boxing when asked if he expected to continue with his career. “I didn’t get the win, but I took a lot of credit from last night. But I will have a nice rest now. I will sit down when I get back with [trainer] Tony [Sims] and [manager] Charlie [Sims] and Eddie and see what the next [steps are]. But I definitely want to fight on.

“I can’t have too many more fights like that. I definitely want to have the right fights and keep going.”

Sean Nam is the author of the forthcoming book Murder on Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, the Black Mafia, and the Last Golden Age of Philadelphia Boxing