05:01PM, Wednesday 17 February 2016
A 24-year-old magician is one of a select few who can say they have stunned undefeated boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Ryan ‘Tricks’ Hicks blew the champ away when he performed an illusion for him on his Victory Tour at London’s Park Lane Hilton on Thursday, February 4.
The Maidenhead illusionist designed a trick especially for the 11-time world champion, who is nicknamed ‘Money’.
Ryan said: “I thought it would only be right to do a trick with money. So I thought, how cool would it be to put his face on a note?”
When Ryan borrowed £10 from the audience, Mayweather even said that his face should be on the note. The American boxer looked stunned and lost for words when Ryan did just that.
In a second trick, Ryan asks an audience member to think of a drink. They say ‘milk’ and Ryan opens a cola can and pours milk from it into a glass Mayweather is holding.
Ryan described the show, which is featured on his popular YouTube account, as ‘surreal’.
He said: “His face, I couldn’t have asked for a better reaction from him.
“It’s so hard to get near him anyway because he’s got such strict bodyguards and I was on stage with him. To me you can’t get bigger than that.”
The Ryan TricksTV YouTube page has more than 22,000 subscribers. A video of Ryan turning pennies into £1 and £2 coins for a homeless man has been seen almost 1.5 million times. Helping the homeless is one of Ryan’s passions, and he says he likes to use his skills to brighten people’s day and raise awareness.
He uploads a new ‘Magic Monday’ video each week.
Originally from Slough, he took up trickery aged eight when his mother bought him a magic set for Christmas. When Ryan was 15, his mum died following a battle with cancer and he packed his cards away, before rediscovering his love of magic on a minibus on the way to an Essex nightclub. That gave Ryan the buzz back, and he has since competed on Britain’s Got Talent and been featured on BBC and ITV.
He also performed a trick for hip hop legend Ice Cube and comedian Kevin Hart when they promoted the 2014 movie ‘Ride Along’ in London.
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