Jade Pearce: “I absolutely loved it even in my first spar when I was battered from pillar to post, but I wanted to get back in there straight away.”

Jade Pearce: “I absolutely loved it even in my first spar when I was battered from pillar to post, but I wanted to get back in there straight away.”

There are still many problems in women’s boxing, despite its current boom period, that need to be addressed. Pay parity and more widespread mainstream investment especially in America and the current lack of depth in the female ranks to name but three. The first two of those issues probably have no easy fix in sight, but the third is already on the mend. Time will heal that open wound, the good times are still a relatively new thing, only really a few years in, but the sport is getting there. But as good as it is now if we fast-forward two years the sport will have a night and day look about it in comparison to where we are currently.

Unless common sense prevails, and in boxing, you never hold your breath on that, boxing will very soon no longer be an Olympic sport. While that will inevitably hit the unpaid ranks incredibly hard, the professional side of the sport will undoubtedly benefit. The amateur talent that has been targeting the 2028 Olympics will instead turn their attention to turning over and chasing the glories on offer in the paid ranks. One such fighter is Jade Pearce.

Jade 26, grew up in Middlesbrough and with fighting connections in the family home, a life with some kind of sporting endeavour was always likely. Her father John boxed in the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur and came home with a gold medal. But before boxing became her calling, it was the lure of other sports that initially grabbed her Jade told me over Zoom:

“I did swimming, athletics everything but the kitchen sink before I started boxing. I like doing sports because I am quite competitive, and when I did start boxing I carried on swimming for the cardio side of it.”

Jade wanted to box from an early age, remembering even when she was just a few years old her time in the sweaty gym her father would have frequented:

“I used to go down to the gym with my dad when he was still training when I was about two or three and I used to sit there and watch my dad train all day.”

But despite his own success in the sport, or maybe because of it and what he would have learned about the sport, her father had grave reservations about Jade following in his footsteps. As a consequence Jade wasn’t allowed to box until she was 18:

“I think because of my personality because with me it’s all or nothing, I wasn’t just going to settle for a casual interest I was going to give it everything because I was that way inclined. My dad knew how hard the sport was and it’s not like other sports where you just have to compete. You have to make weight and deal with having people talk down to you and the rest of it. I think it was the whole demeanour behind boxing and I don’t think at the time my dad wanted to be in that environment.”

But as with many, it was love at first sight for Jade with her new sport. The long wait to try her hand at boxing was very much worth the wait she told me:

“I absolutely loved it even in my first spar when I was battered from pillar to post, but I wanted to get back in there straight away.”

The lack of depth in the sport was problematic to Jade in her early days. Fights were hard to come by and when they did come, they were just hard. There was no honeymoon period or being allowed to learn her craft in a nice gentle manner it was all in from the get-go:

“I got thrown in at the deep end because I couldn’t get any fights. In my third fight, I boxed Ramla Ali in the ABA’s who was number one in Great Britain at the time, so it was sink or swim now and we are just going to have to go and go hard. I think at the time she’d had 33 fights.”

But in many ways it made Jade. There were bad times, and lean times, but also successful times. In 2019 Jade was a GB champion, an upset win over the talented Raven Chapman in the final is perhaps the highlight of her career so far, but another win around the same time now looks even better than it did at the time:

“In my first season, I had two fights and won them both. But after that, I realised I would have to take any fight I could get so I had a bit of a rougher spell. And then in my 4th season, I took some time out because I broke a bone in my foot. But then I reached the semi-finals of the ABA’s where I got beat by Amy Andrew but it was a close fight. But then I got a call because she didn’t have a British passport I think and because she had beaten me I got the call and went into the GB Championships in December and beat Raven in the final. And then the following March I beat Nina Hughes for the English title and then we went straight into Lockdown.”

But with a career seemingly flourishing into something special, disaster then struck. The Covid hit times were bad enough, but injuries would hit Jade even harder:

“I haven’t fought since Covid. When we came out of Lockdown and we started sparring again I snapped all the ligaments in my right thumb but I carried on training. But it got to the point where my right hand would get stuck inside my glove so I had to get it sorted. I had six months out because I was in a pot but I carried on training because I intended to go straight into the ABA’s when my pot came off so I was fighting with one hand tied behind my back. But then in my last spar before I was going to Scotland to fight I broke all the bones in my hand. I went to the hospital and they said the only way they could sort it was to fuse it, so obviously, I didn’t get it fused. And then two weeks later I slipped some discs in my back, so for the last 10 weeks I have been out again.”

You sense that the last few years despite the obvious frustrations that her career stalled to a juddering halt just when it was beginning to take off have only hardened the Teeside prospect. The likelihood is it has only made Jade more appreciative of what was nearly lost but also increased the ambitions of a fighter who seems determined to now make up for lost time:

“It has certainly tested my patience. But I knew in my head if I could battle through this when everything was going against me, then when it wasn’t it will be a lot easier for what I want to achieve. Pushing on and persevering and working around things, fighting with one hand or adapting my training because of my back and things like that. And when everything is plain sailing there will be nothing that will get in my way.”

For Jade, she will now have to adapt and put up with a certain amount of pain in her injured hand. The discomfort will not go away, but Jade has been told it will not make the injury worse. There is a plan, and her return to action could come at any time. Jade will be back inside a boxing ring certainly before April hoping to pick up where she left off in 2020, but with a little notice it could come even sooner:

“The aim this year is to get the ring rust off and get in as many fights as I can in the next 12 months and obviously win the ABA’s. And with them looking to take boxing out of the Olympics and then seeing girls who I have beaten doing well and winning things in the pro game and it’s pushing me to turn professional.”

Once the gloves are laced on again and Jade has had a few fights back, the offers to turn professional will soon follow. Jade will at some point in the next 12 months make that switch to the paid ranks. In some ways, Jade might be a forgotten fighter, but those wins over Raven Chapman and the now-world champion Nina Hughes highlight her undoubted talent. Those wins will form at least part of her narrative when she begins punching for pay. They are in truth, very good selling points. But regardless of those two wins, there is much more to come from Jade and she is likely to be another excellent addition to the ever-expanding professional ranks.