WHEN Natasha Jonas pushed Katie Taylor to the wire in a 2021 โFight of the Yearโ contender, losing only by the narrowest of margins, she was, at the time, oblivious to the fact the performance would be both a blessing and a curse.
On the one hand, so thrilling was the fight, and so impressive was Jonasโ showing, many came away seeing the Liverpudlian in a new light, assuming a world title would one day inevitably be hers. Yet, on the other hand, given how dangerous Jonas appeared that night, and given how she so nearly conquered Taylor, the performance also gave prospective opponents every reason to avoid fighting Jonas in the future.
Since that night, alas, Jonas has fought just once [a points win over the 2-11-4 Vaida Masiokaite in November]. She has seen numerous rivals turn down fights with her and has even had to escape her tried and tested weight divisions โ super-featherweight and lightweight โ in order to seek opportunities elsewhere.
Now, at 37, and with time running out, Jonas looks ahead to a future as a super-welterweight.
โI said to Ben [Shalom, promoter] when signing [for Boxxer], I want to be a world champion,โ Jonas told Boxing News. โWhen we reassessed it in the new year, the landscape looked like this: Terri [Harper] had lost, [Alycia] Baumgardner looks like sheโs fighting [Hyun-Mi] Choi, Iโm not sure what Maiva [Hamadouche] is doing, Katie [Taylor] is going to be in two fights with [Amanda] Serrano, Chantelle [Cameron] is in the [Road to Undisputed] tournament, and [Jessica] McCaskill is chasing Katie. They are all gone. Those four weights are gone. I have no other option. How he did it Iโll never know, but Ben managed to pull it out of the bag for me to fight at 154 [pounds]. It was either fight there or fight no one.โ
Jonasโ first outing as a super-welterweight takes place on February 19 in Manchester. It will be a fight for the vacant WBO super-welterweight belt and it will be against Polandโs Ewa Piatkowska, 16-1 [4].
โThere isnโt much footage of her available, if Iโm honest,โ Jonas said. โBut sheโs fought at a heavier weight before and is naturally a little bit bigger. Sheโs 5โ9, so quite tall. Good reach, good long shots. But when you look at competition you always look at their faults and thereโs a lot of faults. Sheโll look at me and think the same.โ
As chief support to the overdue but still somehow compelling battle between Amir Khan and Kell Brook, Jonasโ fight against Piatkowska is a meaningful one and means more than just the belt on the line. It is, for Jonas, an opportunity to rediscover some much-needed momentum and also come away with a bargaining chip she can later use at the negotiating table.
โIโm high-risk, low-reward for a lot of girls,โ she said. โIโve not got a title or anything and youโd be surprised how many people donโt want to fight. Iโve chased a lot of people who are high up in the rankings in certain weight divisions and they donโt want to fight.
โIf I win this at 154, Iโve got something to bring to the table and offer to someone like McCaskill. Or I can say to Hannah Rankin, โOkay, do you want to unify?โ Win this and Iโve got another step. Right now, Iโm sitting here with no steps.
โIt is boring just waiting around and seeing what happens. I havenโt got time on my side to do that. Iโm not like your Sandy Ryans or your Ellie Scotneys, who have got loads of time. I donโt want to be boxing forever and time is running out for me.
โDonโt get me wrong, there are boxers like [Maria] Lindberg and [Cecilia] Brรฆkhus who fight into their forties, but I donโt know if Iโve got that in me. Iโve got a world title challenge in me and, if I win, a big fight against someone else. But I donโt know how long this can go on for. I donโt know how long I can keep putting myself through it, mentally more than physically.โ
With many of the first wave of UK female boxing stars now in their mid-to-late thirties, it is, for some of them, a time for reflection and perhaps even regret. Yet Jonas, still hungry for titles and still learning from rather than lamenting past mistakes, remains both ambitious and determined to be known for more than simply giving Katie Taylor all she could handle in 2021. That fight still irks Jonas, itโs clear, but โMiss GBโ is nevertheless backing Taylor to defeat Serrano in April and is in some ways grateful to Taylor, too, for teaching her a lesson.
โI do think Katie still wins, but I think itโs one of her riskiest fights,โ said Jonas, 10-2-1 [7]. โI think Serrano is all wrong for Katie. If you look at her amateur record, the people who beat her or pushed her close were all southpaws. In the pros itโs the same. [Delfine] Persoon was a tough, come-forward, non-stop fighter, and thatโs also what Serrano is. She does MMA as well as boxing and you can punch as hard as you want but thereโs nothing like a kick to the head. Sheโs tough, sheโll come forward, sheโll be aggressive, and sheโs a southpaw. Those things combined make her a problem for Katie.
โHaving said that, there isnโt a style Katie hasnโt fought before. She knows how to win close fights. Even in our fight, she won the fight in the last two rounds by throwing one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four a couple of times with 30 seconds to go. It ended up being round nine that let me down. But that was also experience on her part. That was a learning curve for me and I wonโt make the same mistake again.โ