MUHAMMAD Ali had his shuffle, Billy Joe Saunders looked into the crowd to see where his opponents’ missed punches landed – and Alice Pumphrey has her bow and arrow!
At 19 years old, Pumphrey is the youngest member of the Great Britain and England teams that compete at the World Championships in Liverpool – and surely the most mischievous as well.
Pumphrey is looking to win her second World Championship in the space of 10 months, having won the World Under-19 Championship last November.
She went on to make her senior debut for GB in the Boxam tournament in February – and pulled off a move that has since had 40,000-plus views on social media and left club coach Mohammed Amin Patel open-mouthed.
Patel described to Boxing News what Pumphrey calls her “bow and arrow.”
He said: “Alice spreads her arms out wide, reaches behind her back to pull out an arrow and then throws a screw shot.
“It was the first time I ever saw her do it [at the Boxam tournament]. She hadn’t done it in sparring and I don’t think she ever practiced it either.”
Pumphrey says she got the idea after watching a rugby player do a “bow and arrow” and added: “I saw a boxer do it on the pads as well.
“I always think that if a fight gets easy, I will do something different.
“I thought about maybe tapping my foot, but in the moment, I did the bow and arrow and now it’s what people talk about.
“Nobody was expecting me to do it – including me. When I got out of the ring and watched it back, I thought ‘what was I doing ?’
“Mo said to me: ‘Where did you get that from?’ and I said I didn’t know! He said it was brilliant and I should do it again.
“It got 30,000 views on my Instagram in no time. I do it for the crowd. It entertains them and they remember me.”
Pumphrey is unsure if the crowd will see her bow and arrow at the M&S Bank Arena.
“It just happens,” she said. “If I thought about it too much, I wouldn’t do it. I do it on the spot when my boxing is flowing.
“I box differently every single time I get in the ring. I can go to war if I have to, but I love making people look silly – make them miss and then make them pay.”
That style has taken her to European titles at Schools, Junior and Youth level at two weights.
Pumphrey is back at 48kgs in Liverpool, the first time she has boxed at the weight since winning European Schools honours in Georgia in 2019.
“Losing the weight is making me quicker and sharper,” said Pumphrey, who now lives in Batley after growing up in Blackpool.
She goes into the World Championships with only a handful of senior bouts behind her, but confidence is high after a winning run that stretches back four years.
Pumphrey has been unbeaten since joining Purge ABC and says the club revived her interest in boxing at a time when she was thinking about walking away.
“I was going through a rough time,” she said. “There was no boxing [during the Covid lockdown] and it was hard to stay in it.
“I lost my love for the sport. My dad [John] said: ‘You can’t throw this away. You’re unbelievable.’
“He said he would take me to any gym in the world to keep me in boxing and the only one I knew of was Purge.
“Dad said he would ring Mo. I did one session there and got my spark back.
“We were driving two hours there and two hours back and ended up moving from Blackpool to Batley to be closer to the gym.”
Patel remembers his first impressions of Pumphrey.
“Alice is only 5ft 2in and she looks really sweet,” he said, “but when she lets her hands go, she’s an absolute menace!”
Pumphrey admits her future boyfriend didn’t think she looked like a fighter, either.
“We got chatting when I was out celebrating winning the Worlds and when I told him I was a world champion boxer, he said ‘don’t lie!’,” she remembered with a laugh.
“Now he believes me, he loves it!”
Pumphrey might have been a footballer.
She was on the books at Manchester United before choosing boxing over football.
Her love for boxing goes back to watching the sport with her late grandfather when she was four or five years old.
“We watched [Ricky] Hatton and [Floyd] Mayweather and [Mike] Tyson documentaries,” she said.
“Grandad passed away before I started boxing. I know he would have loved to see me boxing.”
