Natasha Jonas: “I just want the big fights now. It’s about me now, I am not bothered what anybody else thinks.”

Natasha Jonas: “I just want the big fights now. It’s about me now, I am not bothered what anybody else thinks.”

Natasha Jonas closed out her sensational year in some style on Saturday night in Manchester. A fairytale climax to a year which promised very little, but delivered more than anyone could ever have imagined. The Canadian Marie-Eve Dicaire came to England with the IBF super-welterweight title around her waist, and despite her best efforts, found Jonas a little too much for her.

2022 started with no world title belts, but in three fights since February, the Liverpool fighter has now added the WBO, WBC and IBF titles to her resume, and the win on Saturday night also gave her the Ring Magazine belt. It is a quite remarkable story. Cast aside, thrown to the wolves last year in many respects before Boxxer and Sky came to her rescue. Jonas was down, make no mistake about that, before the call came from the new big-time boxing partnership. It came with a lucrative long-term broadcasting deal, and promises of a new start to her boxing career. Despite the numbers and those promises, Jonas told me over Zoom, it was still a big call to make:

“They had no champions. I was going over there as one of Ben’s big names. He had nobody for me to fight. The whole plan was to get me into a mandatory position for me to be able to get those big fights because once you are mandatory it makes it harder for them to avoid you. I knew going over it was highly unlikely I would get the Katie Taylor fight again. At the time she was the big money fight, for me especially. But Ben said I promise I will make you a world champion. It was hard to see how he would do that, but I took the gamble. I knew I would get paid a lot less if I had stayed with Matchroom and I felt I would always have been the B-side.”

There was a Matchroom offer on the table, including a rematch with Katie Taylor. But there was more money available with Boxxer/Sky, but money wasn’t everything for Jonas she told me:

“I wanted to be valued because I was more than just the B-side. I wanted to be more than that.”

Money was at the root of the on/off Matchroom/Jonas partnership in recent years. Jonas took the fight in 2020 with the then world super-featherweight champion Terri Harper for the opportunity and the chance to resurrect her career after her upset loss to Viviane Obenauf in 2018. Jonas felt the original offer was low, but it was reduced further because of Covid, and even her trainer Joe Gallagher didn’t want Jonas to take the Harper fight and the fight after that with Katie Taylor the following year.

“Joe didn’t want me to take the Terri Harper fight in the first place because he thought I was being very underpaid. He also didn’t want me to take the Katie fight either because he thought it was too low what I was being paid. I decided to take those fights.”

But the days of frustration and more are now firmly behind her. Boxxer and Ben Shalom have delivered on every single promise they made to Jonas. One year on, ‘Miss GB’ has gone from near boxing isolation to a fighter who now has a very big price on her head. Those who couldn’t say her name a few years ago, now can’t stop saying it. The hunter has now become the hunted. The price for her services has gone up considerably since the days of the take it or leave it perceived lowball offers. Her performance on Saturday will only have enhanced her status in the sport.

The performance against the much-bigger Dicaire was impressive in many ways. It was a tough fight, a physical one, but Jonas had a little too many skills for an opponent who never stopped coming forward in an attempt the change the course of the fight. Only in rounds 5 and 6, did the Canadian look like changing the narrative of the fight. But Jonas adapted and found another gear and overall she told me that she was pleased with her performance:

“For the first 4 rounds, I was alright. I was proud of myself. Then I had a bit of a lull. What it was, I was having to punch so hard all the time to keep her off me and make her respect me. Joe was saying you will have to hit her hard, but be smart about it, be quick and be hard otherwise she will just walk through you. But by round 5, she had worked out what I was doing, and she just changed her whole game plan and just came right at me. Joe said why are you trading with her, just move your feet and box her.”

It went the full 10 rounds, but Jonas won beyond doubt. Another title won. Another point made. Her rivals took note.

There has been much talk of a potential blockbuster fight against the American superstar Claressa Shields. The fight against Dicaire has told Jonas where she is and what she needs to do to have any chance against Shields:

“It’s given me that knowledge now of where I need to improve on. I would need to keep those first 4 rounds for at least 8. Claressa would weigh in at 154 but she would rehydrate to god knows what. The punch resistance, they are used to being hit by fighters who weigh 160-165, so someone punching them weighing 148 isn’t going to bother them.”

2022 was a busy year for Jonas and the immediate future will be a long-awaited and much-deserved holiday. But there is already one eye on the future. Jonas will look to return in March or April next year. The only question is who will it be against:

“I just want the big fights now. It’s about me now, I am not bothered what anybody else thinks,” Jonas told me.

The fight with Shields is clearly of interest. “I have nothing to lose fighting Claressa. Everyone will think I will lose anyway,” Jonas says. But with the American having PFL commitments in MMA, a fight with the self-proclaimed GWOAT will likely only take place towards the end of next year. That leaves Jonas with time to fill, and she already has her dream 2023 mapped out. Some names are obvious, some less so. That list of names Jonas gave me didn’t include her old rival Terri Harper. But Team Harper is pushing heavily for the fight. A six-figure offer has been made to Jonas by Matchroom, and at the time of writing, that offer is under consideration. Nothing more.

Jonas vs Harper is a big fight without any question, a rematch of their classic titanic but controversial fight in 2020. But it comes with complications. there is bad blood within the inner circles. With knowledge of the finer details of those issues, I can more than understand, the reluctance to fight Harper again. Some will judge that reluctance as trying to avoid fighting Harper again for other reasons. In truth, nothing could be further than the truth. Without the full facts, Jonas should be given the benefit of the doubt. If she doesn’t want to fight Harper again, that is her call. And that call should be respected. There are very valid reasons why some in the Jonas inner circle do not want her to take the fight with Harper. Without the full knowledge of the facts, judgement should be reserved if Jonas swerves the Harper rematch and goes elsewhere. The wounds are deep, it got personal, and it will take a lot of money to repair those wounds. Time will tell if the offer made on Wednesday morning can do that.

But Harper or not, Jonas has options and plenty of them. And some will surprise many. Some of those options are already in play. With only two or three fights remaining in her career, Jonas will not entertain routine defences or forced mandatories of her world titles if there are options elsewhere. Only two fights will keep her at super-welterweight, Harper or Shields. I am of the belief that Jonas will drop some or all of her belts if certain fights are forced on her. At 38, Jonas only wants the fights that make sense to her.

Jonas has made a success in making decisions that are not in line with public opinion. And those that are trying to make Jonas bow to public pressure to fight Harper are likely to be disappointed. If the fight with Harper does happen, it will be because Jonas wants it to.

Photo Credit: Lawrence Lustig/Boxxer