Category: Boxing / UFC / MMA

• Price wins on points to unify WBC, IBF and WBA titles
• Dubois retains WBC 135lb on points in co-feature bout

Caroline Dubois has made her way to the ring for tonight’s chief support bout. Our ringside correspondent checks in:

The extremely shallow pool of premium talent in women’s boxing is hard to ignore but such nights can only help attract prospective new fighters. As the Albert Hall fills to around 80% of its capacity it feels important to remember that women’s boxing was still banned in Britain in 1998.

I also think British boxing has a clear future star. Caroline Dubois is the most gifted young female fighter in this country and the atmosphere is really starting to build as she prepares to showcase her vast potential against Bo Mi Re Shen, the supposedly tough and resilient South Korean.

Lauren Price, Natasha Jonas and Cindy Ngamba believe groundbreaking all-female bill offers the sport the chance to set aside its problems and show pride in its progress

“It’s maddening and sad to think that, not so long ago, women were banned from being fighters,” says Lauren Price as she prepares to face Natasha Jonas in a fascinating world welterweight title unification bout that headlines Friday’s all-female bill at the Royal Albert Hall. But, first, the Olympic gold medallist and world champion pauses to remember those who preceded her.

In August 1998, the British Boxing Board of Control were taken to court by Jane Couch, a professional fighter who had been forced abroad because women’s boxing was banned in her country. Bernard Buckley, the board’s solicitor, told the judge that “many women suffer from premenstrual tension which makes them more emotional, labile and accident-prone. They are too fragile to box and bruise easily.”

The LGBTQ+ Olympic medallist makes her pro debut on an all-female card at the Royal Albert Hall but says she is disappointed by the Saudi stranglehold on her sport

“I’m still deciding my nickname,” Cindy Ngamba says with a languid grin as she prepares for her debut as a professional fighter at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday night. Ngamba, who won the first Olympic medal in history for the Refugee Team at the Paris Games last year, is a sparkling personality and a boxer of vast potential, so it does not take her long to reveal her current favourite.

“On my gumshield it says ‘One in 100 Million’ so that’s a nickname I like,” Ngamba says. “It’s linked to the Refugee Team because I am just one in a 100 million refugees from around the world.”

In an extract from his new book, our correspondent relives in vivid detail being inside Isaac Chamberlain’s camp for a European title fight

Donald McRae has met hundreds of fighters over 50 years watching and writing about boxing. Sometimes interviews have turned into friendships. In his new book McRae relives his time inside the camp of one of his favourite boxers, Isaac Chamberlain, as Chamberlain fought Chris Billam-Smith for European and Commonwealth cruiserweight titles.

Bournemouth International Centre, Bournemouth, Saturday 30 July 2022

For more than 50 years I’ve revelled in the epic courage of boxing. But deaths, gangsterism and sportswashing have made it much harder to love

When I was a boy, living in South Africa, I fell for Muhammad Ali. As graceful as he was provocative, Ali amazed me with his uncanny ability, despite apartheid, to entrance black and white South Africans. He made us laugh and dazzled us with his outrageous skill and courage. I have followed boxing ever since, often obsessively, for more than 50 years.

In 1996, after I spent five years tracking Mike Tyson, James Toney, Roy Jones Jr, Chris Eubank Sr and Naseem Hamed, my book Dark Trade allowed me to become a full-time writer. I owe this gift to boxing but our relationship is not easy. Boxing is as crooked and destructive as it is magnificent and transformative.