Hannah Baggaley: “I’m not ready to quit now and fall at the first hurdle. I have got so much more to give to the sport.”

Hannah Baggaley: “I’m not ready to quit now and fall at the first hurdle. I have got so much more to give to the sport.”

The more you interview fighters, the more you follow and invest emotionally in their journey. You feel their pain and share in their nights of jubilation. You also see changes in them. Some of those changes might be relatively minor, others, far more significant. I interviewed Hannah Baggaley earlier this year, and while some things haven’t changed, her run of bad luck for one, some things most certainly have.

There was back then a restless fighter in many ways. Frustrated by endless fight dates falling through. That still very much remains, for one the unluckiest fighters in Britain today. Hopefully, her luck is turning. But some of that restlessness has now gone. A manic non-stop lifestyle that times threatened to engulf her. Hannah seems to have changed that aspect of her life. Even over Zoom, I knew I was talking to a completely different person from the one I spoke to earlier this year. Hannah told me the old life has been replaced by one of solitude:

“I’ve chilled out loads, I had to because I was making myself ill. I’m still very much on the go but nothing like it was. I don’t do as many interviews, I kind of stick to my normal 9-5 routine with my job. I don’t really do anything extra. I don’t go out and see my friends for coffee or anything like that. I don’t really go out of the area I live in. I work and go to training and really that’s it. Just me and my dog.”

The lifestyle may have changed in recent months, but some things never change for the Blackpool-born fighter. So many fights have been lost in time since Hannah decided to give everything up to chase her dreams in boxing. When the Queen sadly passed away last month all boxing was cancelled, including another fight Hannah had scheduled for September 10th. The day before her first fight since losing her unbeaten record in March, Hannah received the news that yet another scheduled fight would fall by the wayside. It was nothing new, but nevertheless, still extremely heartbreaking:

“It was especially gutting for me because since I turned professional I must have had around twenty fights cancelled, maybe fourteen in the last year or so, six before my debut. So it is very very frustrating. But hopefully, everything is for a reason.”

The financial aspects of fights being cancelled get little print. Often a small part of the story. Many times, a forgotten one. Training camps cost money. And plenty of it. Sparring partners cost, then you have nutrition to pay for, physio, time off from the day job, and it goes on. With so many fights falling through, Hannah knows better than most the cost of fights not happening:

“If you get sponsors for a certain show, the money they give you is circumstantial to the streaming site it is on, the dates, the location etc. And if the fight doesn’t happen you have to carry that fight over to your next fight. From March, I have had to carry on sponsorship monies I had got in March for the fight we were meant to have in May/June until now because of all the fights that haven’t happened. So it is financially very destroying. I have to work 9-5 because boxing just isn’t paying. Without that I wouldn’t be able to box, this would just be a very expensive hobby. At the moment that is what it feels like, a very expensive hobby.”

The financial implications are one thing, and the mental and emotional impact is another. It has got to the point where Hannah is now expecting fights to be called off:

“At first it was like an emotional rollercoaster because you get hyped up and then it didn’t happen. And then you think, right the next one will happen. You get hyped up, you hit the peak and that one doesn’t happen. So it was up down, up down all the time. So now after seven months, I have just got it in my head something will happen, something always goes wrong. So now I can’t get hyped up, I’ll believe the fight will happen when I have weighed in and I step through the ropes to fight.”

Hannah is seemingly ever-present at fight nights. You turn around she always seems to be there. It is that love for boxing which has undoubtedly helped her through the troubled times of late. I asked Hannah if she had any thoughts of quitting, and while the answer is a very firm no, you sense things need to change otherwise thoughts of doing so may come more into play:

“It’s not that I’ve really seriously considered quitting. It’s just financially how much longer can I keep doing this. I have to keep taking time off work. Then there are ticket sales, when shows get cancelled, the next time you have fewer ticket sales. So you go from selling 100s to selling a lot less which makes it harder to cover my opponent’s costs. It is those battles that make you think can I continue to do this forever. But my love for the sport doesn’t change.

“I am in love with the sport. I was never a boxing fan until I started boxing. I fell in love with the sport when I started doing it. I became obsessed and I do love the sport and if I wasn’t most people would have quit with the run of luck I have had in the last 18 months.”

The last fight was a defeat to Beccy Ferguson in March. There was talk of an immediate rematch, but the extended period away has lessened the need for revenge and redemption. The urge is now just to fight again:

“Because it has been so long there is no real emotion to that fight. If it had only been a few months ago I would have been I can’t wait to avenge that loss. But because it has been so long that is just a thing in the past for me now. It doesn’t feel real or that it has happened because it was so long ago. All I want to do now is get out there and fight.”

Hannah thought she did enough to beat Ferguson, but concedes it was far from her best performance, but without taking too much away from Ferguson, Hannah was ill in the days leading up to the fight and it is a fight that leaves many regrets:

“We thought that we did enough to win that fight. I thought I won three rounds out of the four, whether I am delusional or not, that is just my view. I am not saying it was a great performance because it was shocking. My trainer asked me to pull out of the fight on the week of the fight. I was full of flu, and I’d been sent home from work because I was so poorly. When I was doing my sessions leading up to that week I was just drained. It was me who decided to fight nobody else, so there is a little bit of regret on that part. I didn’t listen to my trainer and I will never make that mistake again.”

After having her first fight at super-welterweight, Hannah dropped down to super-lightweight for the loss to Ferguson, and despite suffering her first defeat there are plans to stay at that weight going forward. With all those fights slipping away from her, the move down is prompted by fighting in a division which is more heavily populated bringing with it more opportunities to fight. There is still some uncertainty about which weight fits her body the best, but in the short term, Hannah gets her wish just to be back in the ring once again.

Hannah returns to action on October 15th, and the defeat to Ferguson promoted many changes in training:

“I’ve changed everything. I always like to box long, but there are times that I like to stand and trade, but that isn’t the sort of fighter that I am. So I said can I try this style and if he thinks I am better suited to what we have been doing then fair enough. We tried it for a couple of weeks, boxing long, because I am a tall fighter. Arnie just said that is my bread and butter now. He said I have a really good jab and a good straight right. We have gone back to the drawing board because we needed to perfect everything anyway. I know I am just starting out in boxing, even when you are a world champion you still have to keep improving otherwise you just decline. Even when you win you still have to go back to the drawing board and think what can I do better. I’ve been working on my head movement, getting in and out of range without getting hit.”

Nothing but determined, Hannah has lost nothing of her love and ambition for her sport. Many would have long ago left for pastures new. You can’t help but root for someone who has overcome and given up so much to pursue her dreams. A good job and a life in Australia were left behind to return to England for a dream. A risk beyond any doubt, but there are no regrets. Only hope it won’t be for nothing. All the heartache and the loss in March haven’t watered down what Hannah wants out of the sport. One win, one defeat, that isn’t the statistic Hannah wants to leave behind. She wants more, and with the work she puts in, Hannah is likely to get far more. The last fight could in time, be a blessing in disguise for her. With lessons learned and a renewed focus, the Hannah Baggaley story is only just beginning:

“It’s hard to keep that tunnel vision when you have had all these setbacks. You have to remind yourself what you are doing it for and the life you have given up for it. I’m not ready to quit now and fall at the first hurdle. I have got so much more to give to the sport.”