A Closer Look at Mikaela Mayer on the Hunt for a World Title in Liverpool

It was unusually quiet inside the DLX boxing gym in Las Vegas on this particular Monday, notwithstanding the early hour. The only people there aside from the fly on the wall were Mikaela Mayer, her coach Kay Koroma, Coach Kay’s assistant Manny Savoy, and former LA Raiders punter Marquette King who happens to be Mayer’s significant other. There was no loud music and no music at all for long stretches, an anomaly considering that many modern-day boxers appear constitutionally incapable of going through their paces without the accompaniment of angry rap music.

As was common knowledge among hard-core fight fans, representatives of Mikaela Mayer and IBF world welterweight title-holder Natasha Jonas were then on the verge of finalizing a deal. The formal announcement would come the next day. Mayer and Jonas will meet on Jan. 20 at M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England. The match will air on ESPN+ in the United States and on Sky Sports in the U.K. and Ireland.

At age 33, Mayer is six years younger, seemingly a big edge in her favor. However, the venue certainly favors Jonas who will be fighting in her hometown.

Mikaela doesn’t attach much weight to either of these variables. “I think women peak later than men,” she says. “We tend to pick up the sport later and I don’t think we take as much damage as the men.” That makes sense considering that women don’t punch quite as hard and two-minute rounds are the norm. (Editor’s Note: of the 15 female boxers rated tops in their weight class by ESPN’s Michael Rothstein, 11 are in their 30s.)

An LA native, Mikaela allows that fighting in her opponent’s backyard will be a novel experience, but points out that she too has fans across the pond. This will be her fourth straight fight in England. Two fights in London preceded her most recent assignment in Manchester. Her opponents were a fellow American (Alycia Baumgardner), a Swede (Lucy Wildheart), and an Italian (Silvia Bortot).

Mayer will be coming up in weight whereas Jonas has gone down in weight.

Mikaela won WBO and IBF world titles at 130 pounds, belts wrested away from her by Baumgardner. Natasha Jones was a unified title-holder at 154 before dropping down to welterweight to snatch a world title in a second weight division.

“I think 147 is perfect for me,” says Mayer. “As an amateur, I competed at 132. As pro, I believe I held 130 too long. I should have moved up after [Maiva] Hamadouche.” (A French policewoman, Hamadouche held the IBF version of the 130-pound title when Mayer fought her in November of 2021.)

A hot topic among fight fans today is whether women should be fighting three-minute rounds in common with their male counterparts.

On a personal level, Mayer (19-1, 5 KOs) favors the longer distance. “My style is better suited to three-minute rounds,” she says. “I’m a slow starter. I don’t knock anyone out with one punch, but with three-minute rounds I would have scored more knockouts because I tend to wear my opponents down.”

In some cases, the extra minute per round would slow down the action, making female bouts less fan-friendly. The April 2022 scorcher at Madison Square Garden between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, a watershed fight in the history of women’s boxing, might have been less if there had been more.

In Mayer’s case, an elongation would seem to be a non-issue. She has gone four-minute rounds with sparring partners. In addition to her daily work at the DLX gym, she spends some afternoons swimming laps and other afternoons working with a strength and conditioning coach at the UFC High Performance Center. If Mayer vs. Jonas wends into a fight of attrition, it’s hard to imagine Mayer being the most exhausted as the bout wends to its conclusion.

When Mikaela finds time to chill out, she has her furry friends to keep her company. Otter, age 9, Luna, age 5, and Moose, age 4, are all mixed-breed shelter dogs, rescued in inverse order of their ages; the oldest, Otter, is also the newest. The dogs won’t go to England, but when Mayer moves between her homes in Colorado Springs and Las Vegas, the dogs hop in her jeep and go with her.

Regarding her match with Baumgardner, it was extremely close. “I thought I won,” says Mayer, an opinion shared by British judge Terry O’Connor. He had it 97-93 but was out-ruled by his comrades, each of whom had Baumgardner edging it by a single point.

There was a clamor for a rematch, but Mikaela no longer has any interest in pursuing it, and not only because she is moving up in weight.

In August, Baumgardner’s promotional company, Matchroom, revealed that Baumgardner had tested positive for two banned acetate metabolites leading up to her July 15 match with Christine Linardatou. Baumgardner vehemently denies it and has offered up evidence to the contrary from an independent testing bureau, but the smirch isn’t going away.

“That will be her legacy. Now she needs me more than I need her,” says Mikaela who now finds it curious that there was no drug testing done prior to their bout in London.

When Mayer eventually stops fighting, she may remain in the sport as a TV analyst. On Aug. 14, 2021, Mikaela joined Crystina Poncher on the international feed of a Top Rank show in Tulsa, Oklahoma, becoming boxing’s first-ever all-female broadcasting team.

“It was challenging at first, but I have come to really like it,” she says while noting that in her amateur days she spent many hours watching tapes of boxing matches with the noted trainer Al Mitchell who hued her into an Olympian and has been a presence in her corner since her very first professional fight. In hindsight, those sessions in front of the TV were tutorials that made her sensitive to nuances that might not be apparent to the average viewer. Plus, she’s very well-spoken. ”Mikaela is a natural behind the microphone,” says Top Rank honcho Bob Arum.

If Mikaela gets by Jonas, she may get to fight the winner of Saturday’s rematch in Dublin between Katie Taylor and Chantelle Cameron. This match is being contested at 140, but there’s a general feeling that one or both of these ladies will continue their careers as a welterweight. Mayer alludes to this fact when she says, “In my mind, 147 is the next big weight class for women’s boxing.”

Stay tuned.

Arne K. Lang is a recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling. His latest book, titled Clash of the Little Giants: George Dixon, Terry McGovern, and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910, was released by McFarland in September, 2022.

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