Tag Archives: Matchroom Boxing

The last dance: Katie Taylor

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From L to R, Eddie Hearn, Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, Jake Paul at the February 2, 2022 press conference announcing the Katie Taylor-Amanda Serrano, main event at the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden. Photo credit: Malissa Smith

“I think that’s real legacy, someone who left my sport in a better place,”

Katie Taylor, August 28, 2026

I admit I have been a Katie Taylor fan-girl since I started writing about women’s boxing in 2010 and even before that, when I was training at Gleason’s Gym, and boxers such as Mischa Merz would talk about how amazing she was to watch in action.

In particular, Taylor’s stance on the then-international boxing association, AIBA’s insistence in 2011 that women compete in skirts set a tone for her participation in a sport that has been uncomfortable, at best, with the inclusion of women in its ranks.

In an October 2011 interview with RTÉ’s Ryan Tubridy, on the RTÉ One program, Taylor said, “I want the boxing to be the focus … [not] what I’m wearing.”

She also had no problem walking away from the sport if the rule requiring skirts passed. Her father, Peter Taylor, put it succinctly when he said, “She won’t box. Simple as that. We’ve got morals that go above marketing.”

As a side note, writer Michael Rivest, reporting for the Albany Times Union, wrote that AIBA President, C. K. Wu wanted women to wear skirts so viewers could tell the girls from the boys in the ring. Apparently, with helmets, loose shirts, shorts, and, most importantly, though left unsaid, equal skills, some viewers couldn’t tell the difference!

Oh my.

That notion of boxing abilities so fine honed as to belie the construct of boxing as a gendered sport really did give pause and has been Katie Taylor’s story writ large: A girl from Bray who pretended to be a boy to compete and win because it was otherwise illegal for her to don the gloves in her native Ireland.

Years later, and after boxing became legal for women, in her same native Ireland, she was invited to serve as Dublin’s Grand Marshal for its 2011 St. Patrick’s Day parade.

That honor did not come from nowhere. Her boxing skill earned her gold at the 2010 World Amateur Championships in Barbados the previous year. This added to her collection of titles, including earlier world amateur and European championships, helped her play a pivotal role in securing women’s boxing as an Olympic sport set to debut at the 2012 London Games. She was also an elite two-sport athlete. From 2006 to 2009, she played for Ireland’s senior women’s soccer team as a striker and forward, including scoring goals in 2007 and 2008 against teams from Hungary and Italy, respectively.

Speaking in a Sky Sports interview in 2019, Taylor said, “I did have a chance to get a football [soccer] scholarship over in America when I left school, but boxing was always my number one passion. I knew I had to choose between the two sports and I obviously chose boxing.”

She spoke after winning the inaugural Women’s Boxing Lightweight Gold Medal in 2012, setting a record for the highest decibel levels ever recorded at the ExCel Exhibition Centre. After winning multiple championships as a professional in the the sport.

So yes. Her choice.

Her passion for boxing.

These are the hallmarks of the Katie Taylor we have come to revere and love. Plus her dogged determination to make history in a sport that first denied her a place. The Katie Taylor who never takes no for an answer. Who overcomes each obstacle with perseverance and faith.

Her pursuit of greatness became magic and legend in Ireland and around the world. And the world will come to Croke Park, Dublin’s legendary stadium, to watch Katie Taylor in her black gloves, tinged with white or gold, one last time. Where all 82,300 seats will be filled to watch her boxing spirit soar for one last dance in the squared circle against a young, hungry fighter named Flora Pili (12-0, 2 KOs), who will no doubt box with heart and gumption for the right to be called undisputed women’s super lightweight champion.

Katie Taylor faces off with Flora Pili at the announcement of Taylor’s last fight set for Croke Park, Dublin, Ireland on September 5, 2026. Photo Credit: Inpho Sports Photography

If Taylor’s active fighting career ends on the night of September 5, 2026, to the cheers and tears of the stadium fans and the millions who will watch on DAZN Boxing and RTÉ, her place in boxing and the legacy she has already given the sport will continue to make their mark for generations to come.

Just look at where professional women’s boxing is now, a mere ten years after Taylor’s heartbreaking loss at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. She licked her wounds, overcame her disappointments, and went on to sign with promoter Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing as a professional boxer. Shortly thereafter, she won her first bout, a six-rounder, by TKO at 0:58 of the third round on November 26, 2016, against Polish fighter Karina Szmalenberg.

By Taylor’s fifth fight in April 2017 and sporting a 4-0, 2-KOs record, she was on the undercard of the infamous Anthony Joshua – Wladimir Klitschko fight at Wembley Stadium, defeating the 5-0, 1-KO, German hopeful, Nina Meinke by TKO in the 7th round of their non-title ten-rounder.

Katie Taylor, DAZN Boxing launch, July 17, 2018, New York City, Photo Credit: Malissa Smith

The stuff of legend is how she brought a generation of fighters with her. Fighters such as Olympian Natasha Jonas said Taylor helped her see that a boxing career was possible.

As a generational elite women’s boxing amateur and Olympian, Taylor insisted on destiny. She knew she had to make her mark as a professional. She set out to show what it meant to fight the best. To model the daily workouts in the gym that are the chapter and verse of the work to come. The routine—dynamic stretching, jumping rope, shadow boxing, hitting the pads, sparring, hitting the heavy bag, cool-down rounds on the speed bag, wind sprints, weights, more stretching, pool work, road work, shadow boxing, and slipping under the shower head after an ice plunge bath—becomes the tool of passion. Being in the ring is the ultimate experience. Facing an opponent with equal skill and desire demands performance. It means making a mark. It means being of the ring, in the ring, and part of the boxing life that rises above gender and the other prefixes that mean nothing once the fight begins and there are two or three minutes to outbox an opponent, round by round, until an arm is raised at the end of the bout.

Taylor gave us many dances.

She became a lightweight champion, boxing the likes of Eva Wahlstrom, Natasha Jonas, and Jennifer Han.

Then an undisputed champion, fighting the Belgian title holder, Delfine Persoon, and winning in a very close contest by split decision.

For her next dance, Taylor became a two-weight champion, winning a super lightweight title after defeating Christina Linardatou.

Amanda Serrano (R) boxing Katie Taylor (L) fought the first women’s boxing main event at the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden on April 30, 2022, in front of a sold-out crowd for the undisputed world lightweight championship. Photo credit: Malissa Smith

In the first bout of what became a legendary women’s boxing trilogy, Taylor and her dance partner, Amanda Serrano, thrilled the world at the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden. They turned their women’s boxing premier main event into a fight for the ages before a sold-out crowd that openly shed tears at the brilliance of their efforts.

In another first, in May 2023, Taylor chose Chantelle Cameron as her dance partner for her first professional fight in Ireland and the chance to be called undisputed super lightweight champion. It was not her day, as she suffered her first professional defeat, but six months later she battled back to win the crown.

She had two more dances with Serrano in 2024 and 2025 bringing her to a 25-1, 6-KOs professional record to add to her 170-10-1, 35-KOs, amateur career.

Turning 40, however, and still full of fight, she had one more dream to fulfill: to return to Ireland and fight for an undisputed championship at Dublin’s legendary Croke Park.

That dream, the first championship bout at Croke Park since Mohammad Ali defeated Alvin Lewis by knockout on September 20, 1972, and the chance to say goodbye to the crowd, to the boxing community, to her fans, and to the world, is the stuff that dreams are made of and will be realized before the people who love her best.

Since she announced her impending retirement, many have spoken of her achievements, her role as an inspirational figure, and, importantly, her deep Christian faith as road signs of her commitment to ensuring women have a place in boxing.

What I’ve always loved most about Katie Taylor is the “dog” in her.

That rascally spirit that takes over from time to time and reminds us that she is still that girl from Bray who loves nothing more than to mix it up and scrap.

 

 

International Women’s History Day Event on March 7, 2024, 6:00PM GMT (London)

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I am honored to participate in the Women In Boxing International Women’s History Event on March 7, 2024 at 6PM, GMT (London).

Email: team@womeninboxing.com to register your interest and receive the link to this free event!

Other confirmed speakers are Niki Wilburn-Shaw, WIB; Caitlin Bennet, Matchroom Boxing; Kate Wilson, SheIsBossingIt!

About last night … women boxing

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WBA champion Erika Cruz and  WBC, WBA, IBF, champion Amanda Serrano fighting for the undisputed feather (126) title in MSG’s Hulu Theater on February 4, 2023. Photo credit: Ed Mulholland/Matchroom

MSG’s Little Theater — these days under the moniker of the Hulu Theater is a fun venue for boxing. Back when the Daily News Golden Gloves was a New York fixture every April, the stands would erupt with cheers as this or that young man or woman entered the ring in blue or gold.

The nice thing is there really is no bad seat, whether for an amateur or professional night of boxing, even way up in the back in the “300” sections, one can see, and it’s often where the true partisan cheers and flag waving abounds.

Last night was no exception. The Puerto Rican flags were in abundance waiting for Puerto Rico’s own (by way of Bushwick, Brooklyn), Amanda Serrano, and her main event fight. An undisputed contest for the feather (126 lbs.) championship.

The Amanda Serrano/Erika Cruz fight was at the top of a nine-fight card — made all the more special by the fact that it contained two undisputed women’s bouts and three undercard female “baby-belt” bouts.

France’s Elhem Mekhaled in the fight of her life against Detroit’s own Alycia Baumgardner who prevailed through ten grueling rounds to become undisputed champion at junior lightweight (130) on Feburary 4, 2023 at MSG’s Hulu Theater. Photo credit: Ed Mulholland/Matchroom

The co-main event featured Alycia Baumgardner contesting for her chance at an undisputed championship against Elhem Mekhaled, who was previously unknown to most fight fans in the United States.

Baumgardner who had defeated Mikaela Mayer on the all-female card in October at London’s O2 arena, came not only to fight and win, but to prove that her family’s deep legacy in the sport of boxing culminates in her as an exemplar of excellence and her and her family’s dreams.

Sitting with Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar and boxing writer Chris Benedict, MSG Hulu Theater, February 4, 2023.

Sitting for a time with boxing legend, Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar brought home just how far the sport has come. Lady Tyger began boxing as a teenager and first applied for a license in 1974 back when even amateur fighting was denied to women. She was finally able to become a licensed professional in New York State three years later. Boxing in earnest for no money to speak of ($1,500 was a lot) and in places like California which had a modest if growing boxing scene for women in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Trimiar went so far as to stage a hunger strike in 1987 to help garner support for women in the sport.

Still, she never imagined it would come this far, and watching so many fights at such a high standard of excellence brought solace of a sort, knowing that her battles on and off the canvas were important to the growth and acceptance of women inside the squared circle.

Certainly the sold-out theater — which is truly Amanda Serrano’s house, having fought there since her own beginnings in the Golden Gloves — gave truth to not only Serrano’s acceptance, but the notion that the fans came to watch excellent boxing … period.

For Serrano who made the point that she may be in a group of undisputed women champions, but she remains the only champion in seven weight classes; winning was the chance for her to revel in her achievement at the pinnacle of the sport.

Her next step was announced as she stood beaming in the camera’s eye — a second battle with Katie Taylor set for May 20, 2023 in Dublin, Ireland. She went on to say, “Katie Taylor is a true champion. She came over here. She deserves to have [the rematch] in Ireland.”

Befitting of a true champion — Serrano fighting Taylor will mean yet another first for both women, the chance for one undisputed champion to fight another in one or another’s weight class.

Thinking about Lady Tyger as representative of a lot of women who contested in the sport for the love of it, seeing Serrano and Taylor in the ring, the fans, cheering and waving, brought a deep sense of joy to my own heart. And as we exited, the latin beat pulsating, I felt exalted knowing that something really good had happened

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The results:

Amanda Serrano (USA) defeated Erika Cruz (Mexico) by UD, 97-93, 98-92 x 2. Serrano became the undisputed feather (126 lbs.) champion retaining her IBF, IBO, WBC, & WBO titles, and winning the WBA title from Cruz. Some pundits scored the fight more evenly giving a round or two more to Cruz who having sustained a deep cut from a head butt in the third round and was wobbled badly in the 6th round, put on a display nothing short of heroic.

Alycia Baumgardner (USA) defeated Elhem Mekhaled (France) by UD, 99-89, 99-89, 98-90. Baumgarder retained her IBF, IBO, WBC, & WB0 titles and won the vacant WBA title to become undisputed champion as junior lightweight (130 lbs.)  Mekhaled went down twice in the third round but never quit till the last bell tolled. Baumgarder tired in the latter half of the fight in spurts, which may have meant the scoring should have been a bit more balanced.

Shadasia Green (USA) defeated Elin Cederroos (Sweden) by TKO at 1:08 of the 6th Round in their WBA super middle title eliminator. Green also retained her WBC Silver belt at super middle.

Ramla Ali (UK) defeated Avril Mathis (Australia) by UD, 99-91 x 3 (some thought this was overly generous). Ali became the IBF Inter-Continental Super Bantam title holder.

Skye Nicolson (Australia) defeated Tania Alvarez (Spain) by UD, 98-92, 97-93, 100-90. Nicolson became the WBC Silver Feather champion.

On Women’s Boxing-what an October!

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I had the honor of introducing the 16 inductees to the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022. Held at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on October 22nd, the 9th class of inductees celebrated women’s boxing’s past and present in high style.

The brainchild of founder Sue TL Fox, herself an American pioneer from the 1970s when the denizens of women’s boxing went to court to win the right to box professionally, her insistence that women give themselves the accolades they deserve reverberates through the community.

Yes, we love that since 2020, women have been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York. And that in Hall of Fames across the United States and beyond, women are taking their place for the brilliance of their achievements.

There is something; however, to that wonderful notion put forth by Virginia Wolfe, of having a room of one’s own. And whether actual or metaphorical, the sisterhood of brilliant athletes swapping stories is irreplaceable. This year’s class included Tori Nelson and Suzi Kentikian, boxers you may well have heard of, but it also contained Cora Webber who not only boxed in the 1970s, but in the 1990s to great effect. And men too, including Irish promoter Jimmy Finn, who along with 2014 Inductee Barbara Buttrick promoted the actual first all-female card in the UK in 1994; and Tom Gerbasi, who has led the way as a boxing journalist giving space to the stories of women in the ring since the late 1990s.

This year’s event was also held amid women’s boxing’s dazzling October.

The all-female Shields-Marshall card at London’s O2 Arena on October 15th was held in front of a sold-out crowd of 20,000 cheering fans, not to mention the 2,000,000 eyes that caught the broadcast of the card on Sky and ESPN+. The card delivered not only in terms of the number of fans tuning in, but the brilliance of the performances from one end of the card to the other. The Shields-Marshall fight itself, produced a fight of the year contender to rival the Taylor-Serrano bout on April 30th whose main-event battle was held in front of a similarly sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.

What was notable, is that while Taylor-Serrano had 1.5 million views on DAZN, a full .5 million more viewed Shields-Marshall—to my mind, showing the strength of the Taylor-Serrano card to the women’s boxing “brand.” Afterall, it is highly unlikely that Bob Arum and Top Rank would have pushed to have their fighter Mikaela Mayer contest for the unified Super Featherweight title against Alycia Baumgardner, without the precedent of a sold-out Madison Square Garden.

Nor does it stop there.

Katie Taylor after her win over Karen Elizabeth Carabajal. Photo by James Chance/Getty Images

Consider Katie Taylor’s seemingly effortless retention of her undisputed lightweight crown and undefeated record against the mandatory Argentinian contender Karen Carabajal. Taylor led the card at the Wembley Arena—the very place where she had her pro debut. At that event, a mere six years ago, she walked out to nearly empty stands. At her homecoming of sorts, the cheering crowds floated her to the ring on a wave of love and admiration.

The two female fights on the undercard were also great action bouts showing off the prowess of Ellie Scotney as she pressured Mary Romero to a loss. And then there was the impressive professional debut of Maisey Rose Courtney, frankly one of the best I’ve seen, female or male. But think about that for a minute. She had her debut at Wembley Arena on a Katie Taylor card positioned as the swing bout leading into the main event.

Thinking about it more, Maisey’s entire boxing career has been informed by Katie Taylor.

Taylor’s amateur prowess and trailblazing amateur career provided Maisey with a goal to strive for. While her pro debut was on the undercard of a major fight by an undisputed champion in one of boxing’s more venerable arenas in the United Kingdom. This is Maisey’s world with the likes of Adam Smith stating Sky Sports commitment to putting on good cards as demonstrating “a move towards total parity and total equality in pay.”

The latter in particular remains to be seen. The boxing efforts on Saturday, October 29th across the globe; however, gave truth to the idea that parity and equity are long overdue. Consider Arley Muciño who wrested the IBF World Fly title from the Argentinian champion, Leonela Yudica, in a non-stop action fight at San Diego, CA’s Pechanga Arena and shown on DAZN. It should be noted it was Yudica’s 10th defense of the belt since she first captured it in 2014—a momentous upset by Muciño who had at one time held the WBO World Fly title. Announcing for the Golden Boy Promotions card was none other than current unified champion WBA and WBC World Fly champion Marlen Esparza, who immediately called out Muciño for a unification battle.

Let us also not forget that Yamileth Mercado successfully defended her WBC World Super Bantamweight title against the venerable Mariana “La Barbie” Juarez in her fourth defense of her title, her loss to Amanda Serrano in 2021, notwithstanding.

Those showings, the Taylor card bouts, and the women boxing at venues large and small establishes the sport has the potential for an even more magnificent future.

Let us all hope that actually comes to pass.

 

Katie, Amanda, Lady Tyger, and Me

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Author, Malissa Smith with Hall of Fame, women’s boxing trailblazer, Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar, Madison Square Garden, Taylor/Serrano Main Event, April 30, 2022.

It’s already May. The boxing ring dismantled, the people who filled the Madison Square Garden arena already home or having taken a few extra days in New York City readying to go.

And yet, the enormity of being surrounded by and among a sold-out crowd of nearly 20,000 people; on their feet, cheering, crying, and cheering some more for Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano both, reverberates. A crowd so loud the veteran Canadian referee, Michael Griffin, couldn’t hear the bell at the end of a couple of the rounds, and a few days later said he’d “never felt that kind of electricity.”

Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano fought the fight of their lives.

They fought for themselves, for boxing, for women, for little girls and little boys, for their families, for history, for the record setting, 1.5 million eyes who viewed it on the DAZN streaming platform, and all of us who could make it to that arena.

And we felt it.

I felt it.

Jolted through with the special juice that is an event that transcends its time and place. Becomes already immortal. Engrained in our consciousness. Where we view over and over the special magic of the tender smile that passed between Katie and Amanda just before they fought. Taking in the enormity of what they were about to achieve. A history making main event prize fight between two of the best boxers in the world–who because they happened to be girls meant the special sauce of a well-matched contest, was also infused with all the opportunities that had been denied in the past. With fights relegated to the unstreamed portions of fight cards, for little money, and far, far less than equal treatment.

In a world where gender defines and sets rules for how we live and what our agency is as women, boxing has proved itself to be the perfect medium for amplifying those inequities.

Sitting in the stands with the great trailblazing, International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee, Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar, it was not lost on me that her achievements and fights for equity were not unlike those of the fictional character, Don Quixote, jousting with windmills.

Her hunger strike in 1987 to protest the inequities towards women in boxing, a grand and beautiful stand for something, caused a ripple or two, but was largely forgotten.

A life time later, sitting in a majestic box above the Madison Square arena festooned with green light, she smiled, and with a wistful tone to her voice, said, “One million dollars for each fighter. I never earned much more than a thousand dollars, and that was for a title fight.”

If we measure equity in dollars and cents, women essentially earn the equivalent of a nightly bar bill of the Mayweather’s of the world.

Even the Taylor/Serrano fight, which passed the crucible of a minimum of a million for each fighter, an absolute first, still seems paltry in the scheme of things. Think about it. Two top-three pound-for-pound fighters duking it out in the ring together, what should that be worth?

Having had the honor to write about the women who’ve donned the gloves to contest in a sport that breaks their heart, watching Katie and Amanda fight with every ounce of their beings was among the most compelling evenings of my life. Here were two warriors of heart and spirit, meeting their moment of greatness, with power, with fortitude, and with grace.

Would that each of us could achieve an equivalent transcendent magnificence.

[Note: a version of this article was published in the Women’s Fight News eZine, April 2022 edition]

Shelly Vincent: Fighting For The Positive

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Shelly “Shelito’s Way” Vincent is a force of nature. Sporting tattoos, colorful hair, and a personality to match, she has pushed the boundaries of gender norms in a sport that is unforgiving at best when it comes to female participation in the sport.

Standing all of five feet tall with a nearly perfect record of 23-1 save for her one loss to Heather “The Heat” Hardy (21-0), Vincent’s outsized personality and constant motion in the gym gives her the appearance of someone much larger.

I had the opportunity to spend much of the day with Vincent a couple of weeks ago in Cranston, Rhode Island as she was winding down training for what will be the biggest, toughest ring battle of her life as she squares off against Hardy.

Billed as Hardy-Vincent 2, the pair will open the show on HBO Boxing’s last regularly scheduled boxing broadcast – in itself a remarkable feat as their fight will be only the second bout featuring female boxers shown on HBO during its long history. A championship battle, they will fight for the WBO Female Featherweight title belt at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater on Saturday, October 27, 2018.

The pair last fought in an historical bout in Brooklyn in 2016. Later dubbed the female fight of the year, it was also the first bout contested by female boxers broadcast by Premier Boxing Champions. Coincidently, their fight was on the same day Claressa Shields won her second Olympic Gold medal, something not lost on either fighter as they continue to push for legitimacy in the sport.

For Vincent, however, the “road” to the fight itself had been hard fought—and in the best tradition of boxing’s outlandish rivalries, Vincent had been calling out Hardy for years on social media and in person at Hardy’s fights to not only take her on in the ring, but to help build up the profile of their eventual contest.

She’s also had to fight hard for the rematch something she said she’d been promised, but as it was not forthcoming, Vincent was not shy about pushing for it, even “crashing” one of Hardy’s MMA bouts to press her case for the rematch.

Hanging with Vincent and her trainer, the highly regarded Peter Manfredo Sr., who has been training Shelly and acting as her ring guide for the past several years—one got the sense that while Hardy is a nemesis of sorts, there was also a begrudging respect that had begun to form, not only as fighters, but as women pushing the boundaries of a sport that doesn’t really seem to want them in it.

Still, of the first fight, Vincent voiced a number of issues that she felt hamstrung both fighters—but more so, herself.

“We only had three weeks to get ready, which means we only sparred about—six times, if we sparred to the max.”  The shortened time frame made cutting weight that much harder, and with the need to sell tickets ever-present, a mainstay for women if they want any chance to fight on a card, the pressure was immense. Vincent also owned to a certain amount of chaos in her life at the time that made focusing difficult.

For this fight, she and Hardy have had plenty of time to have a “camp,” and while Vincent’s life has had its ups and downs since the first contest, she is quite alone now and able to stay focused for the work ahead of her.

“You’re going to get ten today,” Manfredo said, as Shelly nodded wrapping her hands with practiced competence,  “The is the last day for it, for so many rounds.”

Camp has been good, a mixture of highly focused work with Manfredo at the gym in Cranston, and a lot of work on her own at all hours at the Seven Beauties Gym in North Attleboro, Massachusetts.  “To tell you truth, I haven’t been focused on anything but training, I don’t care about the promotion, I don’t care about nothing this time, and usually I’m the opposite.”

“I just want to focus on winning,” she went on to say, “Because she’s not beating me. I mean, I know I won that [first] fight. I didn’t back up once, I was landing body shots, I was landing combinations. She hit me more than I’ve ever been hit, but she didn’t hurt me … and I hurt her a few times. I mean she was hitting me with pot shots.”

In speaking more about the upcoming bout I asked her what she thought of their promoter, Lou DiBella’s likening their upcoming battle to the famed Gatti-Ward fights.

“I remember those fights. And they’re laying up in their hospital beds next to each other after. But you know what, it’s not going to be Gatti-Ward no more, after this it’s going to be Vincent-Hardy. It’s going to be the girl thing, it doesn’t have to be Gatti-Ward – let it just be us. When you think about it … when I beat her, ‘cause I’m beating her, then when we have the trilogy, that’s the first visual to a female trilogy and we can be remembered with those great trilogies.”

The rhythm of our day together was to have included Vincent’s training and sparring, followed by an interview with Manfredo and then with Vincent herself, but as I was beginning to interview Manfredo, he received word that his father passed away. It was a terribly emotional moment and after he left, Vincent and I sat down to make sense of it all in a life, that for her has been filled with tragedy, abuse, self-destructive acts, and the hard work of redemption.

“Family gotta come first, that’s like my father for real … I know he cares about me, outside of the ring, you know.”

The last thing, Manfredo had said to me was, “Shelly is really focused for this fight, the most focused I’ve ever seen her.”

Sharing this with her, Vincent nodded, and said, “Wow, he said that, he’s my father for real.”

Her own father disappeared from her life early on, and over the last few years she has felt the strength to share the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather and the experience of being raped at the age of thirteen. That is not something one just gets over and looking back on it she said, “I always wished I had somebody to talk to and I could have expressed all that stuff, because I feel I could have been a different person. So I always said, if I ever — because I thought I was going to be dead, but if I wasn’t dead or whatever from drugs or alcohol, I wanted to be that person for as many kids as I could, so that’s really why I walk out with the kids, and I remember before a fight, why the fuck I’m doing this.”

This mantra of sorts has pushed her to activism and has led her to be a role model for young kids who might otherwise go down a destructive path. She herself has had stints in prison for drugs and fighting, and wonders at times how she ever survived it, but of everything she’s experienced in her life, she credits boxing for showing her a path towards recovery.

“I didn’t get into boxing to turn pro, to make no money, not even to fight. I got in it to channel my depression and anger, and everything I had built up inside of me because that was the only time I wasn’t depressed because I felt that I was fighting back. When I fight … that’s why I wear the straight jacket, because it’s to symbolize the way women are tied down in sports, and me trying to break free of my demons and finally fighting back.”

Vincent has not been shy about revealing her sexuality as a gay woman, nor being clear that her appearance is her way of expressing who she is—and while she feels strongly that being outside of the “norm” of how women should look has her hurt, she is adamant that her self-expression is an important symbol of fighting back.

That self-expression includes a myriad of tattoos on her body and around her neck. The tattoos mean everything to her and taken together are her life.

“The right side is the dark side, the middle is change your world, and the positive comes out on the the otherside … Everything has a meaning on me, it’s not just there to be there, it’s like telling a story, if I was to die or anything, you could tell, it’s like you would read a book.”

Her story includes her boxing heroes, Ali, Tyson and Marciano, her mother, girlfriends, her nieces and nephews, and around her neck, the story of coming to 10-0 and what it symbolized to her as a moment of breaking free.

Still, she fights through depression as an almost daily battle to be reckoned with – making the boxing itself the easiest part of her day. In focusing for this fight, she has worked hard to strip away things to their core even eschewing some of the heavy weight training she has done in the past to focus on speed, stamina, and a fighters acumen for knowing how to play out her upcoming ten rounds with Hardy in the ring.

Whatever else is happening in her life, even the suddenness of Manfredo’s father’s death; right now, the upcoming bout with Hardy remains her focus. She visualizes the WBO title belt around her waist, as well as a third battle to round out the trilogy—only this time in her backyard. She also understands that at 39 years of age she is fighting against time.

Vincent knows this is the fight of her life, and if there is such a thing as a sisterhood of the ring Vincent and Hardy have much to share, as survivors, as activists in the sport, and as individuals who have figured out the best way forward is to come at life on their own terms as fighters.

Will this be another fight of the year – yes absolutely, but win, lose, or draw, what we can be assured of is both Vincent and Hardy will leave it all in the ring.