Mikaela Mayer: The Road To Redemption

Mikaela Mayer: The Road To Redemption

I last spoke to Mikaela Mayer just a few weeks removed from her heartbreaking gut-wrenching loss to her most heated rival, Alycia Baumgardner. It is an interview I am perhaps most proud of. It was delayed while Mayer regrouped to process and gather her thoughts. Make no mistake, there would have been many of them.

Mayer has never been short of words, although at one point during that interview, I managed that seemingly impossible task with one solitary question, something I might put on my gravestone, the man who rendered Mikaela Mayer speechless. Although I doubt anyone would believe it. Mayer wasn’t herself at first, the hurt and the confusion still extremely raw from her controversial and hotly disputed loss to her fellow American in October. Fighting her emotions, this was a different Mayer from the one I am used to speaking to.

I remember the first time I interviewed Mayer a few years ago, it was one of only two times I have been genuinely apprehensive, a little scared even about doing an interview. But a few minutes in as Mayer relayed her story in her patented manner, thoughts of ‘Scary Spice’ soon fell away. Multiple interviews later, I know what I am going to get. A plethora of headline quotes, trust me, Mayer says what she thinks. There is no filter, certainly not a noticeable one, and the interviews are better because of it.

But the interview in November was a little different. A little more fragile at first, but the old Mayer started to return as the interview progressed. Bit by bit, slowly but surely, the old Mayer returned. A realisation that the past can’t be changed, but the future can still very much be determined. Mayer eventually found the form of old.

Time may not have fully healed the wounds of her first professional defeat that saw her lose her unified world super-featherweight titles to Baumgardner in London, but there is an acceptance now to move on with life and her career. Mayer wants the rematch and badly, but Baumgardner appears to be going her own route. At least for now. But the money left on the table may well get Mayer her wish.

But for now, Mayer will go her own route also. A deal for her next fight is almost done, it could see a return visit to the UK, it will definitely see a move up to lightweight. Mayer will answer if Baumgardner makes that call, but the future career isn’t solely based on one fight. Mayer has options and plenty of them. An announcement on her next opponent is imminent, a smart choice, an obvious one even. A win gets Mayer back in the mix, and thoughts of making herself mandatory to Katie Taylor will undoubtedly be there as will, what is happening in the weights above.

There will be many moving parts that will decide what path Mayer will take over the next twelve months. She may well have to wait for the next big defining fight as those moving parts play out to their natural conclusion, and her old rival may be in a similar position herself. Mayer and Baumgardner could both be in limbo in the new year, and rather than do the routine of the ordinary, Baumgardner may decide to cash in before their feud fizzles out or circumstances and a surprise defeat leaves it dead in the water for good. Boxing history tells us, if you wait too long, things have a habit of not happening. Another little taste of the venom that is Baumgardner and Mayer shouldn’t be one of those things. It can’t be left as unfinished business. And that is most certainly what it is. Mayer won’t sit by the phone waiting for that call from her old friend, but almost inevitably, for many reasons, it will come.