Women’s Boxing Night: Two significant clashes. Each one could have been the star of its own card.
This Saturday’s all-female 10-fight bill at the O2 Arena in London, featuring Claressa Shields vs. Savannah Marshall and Mikaela Mayer vs. Alycia Baumgardner, will be another major turning moment for Women’s Boxing Night.
The Katie Taylor-Amanda Serrano megafight in April demonstrated that women’s boxing could draw large crowds to Madison Square Garden in New York. Shields-Marshall was then scheduled for London, sparking a huge middleweight title battle. The fight between Mayer and Baumgardner, the junior lightweight unification champion of the WBO, WBC, and IBF, was added to the card.
The women’s side of boxing appears to have figured it out in a sport where the matches fans want to watch between high-level athletes in their primes can seem so difficult to book.
Mikaela Mayer: From admiring the Spice Girls to trying to reach the UK market
It started out as a commercial choice. Mayer wanted to be a part of the enthusiasm fans in the UK were showing for boxing, particularly women’s boxing. Although she was dedicated to expanding her fan base in her own America, this was a chance.
When it appeared that Mayer, the WBO and IBF champion, would be facing Terri Harper, the WBC champion of Great Britain, in a unification fight, she at first became a Twitter pariah in the UK. However, Harper’s loss of the championship to Baumgardner the previous year allowed Mayer to transcend the character of the villain. Mayer also started becoming more outspoken in the UK, where she frequently travelled and interact with locals.
I wanted to excel at something, says Alycia Baumgardner
Baumgardner made a reassurance to herself when she was eight years old while living and growing up in Fremont, Ohio, competing in boy-on-boy wrestling matches and training at the Fremont Wreckers Boxing Club. Baumgardner had a lofty objective in mind as she progressed through high school, the beginning of college, working as a nursing home assistant, and eventually pursuing a professional boxing career.
Baumgardner also aspired to be her own boss early in life, and she has utilised boxing as a means of getting there. Early in her career, she did her own ticket sales to guarantee that both she and her opponent were paid for fights. She lacked a prestigious promoter and a television network to air her fights on. Baumgardner was in charge of her life and made her own choices.
For her fourth fight of the year, lightweight Caroline Dubois (3-0, 2 KO) will take on Milena Koleva (10-14-1, 4 KO). Ebonie Jones (2-0-1) and Sarah Liegmann (4-0, 1 KO) will compete separately in the junior featherweight division. Shannon Ryan (2-0), a junior bantamweight, is another fascinating contestant on the card.
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