Mikaela Mayer: “I don’t see myself staying at lightweight for very long. But I have the opportunity right now at 135, and I am excited about that.”

Mikaela Mayer: “I don’t see myself staying at lightweight for very long. But I have the opportunity right now at 135, and I am excited about that.”

In many ways, it felt like old times. In an interview with Mikaela Mayer a few years ago, I spent a large part of it in much amusement as Mayer chased one of her dogs around the garden. Moose was trying to escape for pastures new through a hole in a fence. Thankfully, Mayer won that little battle. Earlier this week, it felt like deja vu. The same dog was on the loose once again. Mayer had prematurely uttered the word park, and Moose decided not to wait for our interview to finish. Or, more accurately, start. Eventually, Moose turned up, and it seems, he always does. He likes the attention. And the drama.

It wasn’t the only familiar theme that had returned. I have interviewed Mayer three times since the American lost her world titles and her unbeaten record to her most heated rival last October. A few weeks after a defeat that left her in mourning, trying to process her grief, I spoke to a still very delicate and emotional former world champion. A little bit of the old Mayer returned as the 30-minute or so Zoom interview wound down. Two further interviews later, the old Mayer was more or less back. But there was that nagging feeling that a small percentage was still missing from her arsenal. Mayer needed a fight to finally extinguish any lingering demons from what happened last October in London. Now she has what she needed.

When Moose had finally settled down, if a little impatiently, Mayer could focus on our 4th interview in the space of a few months. As if she hasn’t suffered enough. Two weeks removed from her first fight back, a dominant points victory over the late tough substitute Lucy Wildheart, Mayer was finally 100% back to her former self. It was the final piece of the therapy jigsaw. All the demons punched out of her body. The Mikaela Mayer show is back on the road again. But not without a little bit of drama. Moose would have been proud.

Mayer was scheduled to fight Christina Linardatou and when she woke up on the day of the weigh-in, she still thought Linardatou would be in the opposite corner. Even when she left the fight hotel to weigh in, nothing had changed. But that was when the drama started, Mayer told me over Zoom:

“I was just sitting there waiting to weigh in, and my manager said the fight’s off.”

At that moment, literally minutes before she was due to weigh in, that bombshell must have left the former Olympian cursing her luck on British soil once again. Last September, again at the weigh-in stage of Fight Week, Mayer learned her fight with Alycia Baumgardner was off due to the sad passing of the Queen. But Mayer told me it was something she took in her stride:

“It wasn’t that stressful, to be honest. The first thing that came to mind was I’m going to leave London again without a fight. I thought there was no way, but then my manager said we have a replacement for you. We assumed that they knew about this and that I was one of the last people to know there was a problem. They had reached out to Lucy Wildheart to make sure she could be ready and make the weight. They said I could watch some tape on her, I just said I’ll take the fight. I am not leaving London again without a fight.”

It was another boxing episode that leaves you just shaking your head. Linardatou has fought in the UK before. Her eye condition was nothing new to the British Boxing Board of Control. Fighting with a permanent lens as a result of an operation to remove cataracts for her entire career, it was something that could and should have been resolved relatively quickly. The fight being pulled so late in the day is a hard one to defend, especially, as Mayer found out later that the rules have been changed since the Greek fighter last fought in the UK:

“Apparently they have changed the rules. You used to be able to fight with that type of lens in your eye. But now they have found out it could cause you to go blind. So those types of lenses are illegal now in the UK, I don’t know about in America, but certainly in the UK. She might be able to fight in another country, but it depends on the commission.”

To add to her woes on the day, Mayer was scheduled to make weight before 2pm, but she had to wait until Wildheart had reached the fight hotel, which was three or four hours later:

“That was the frustrating part. I was supposed to weigh in at 1pm. But they wouldn’t let me weigh in until Wildheart had got to the hotel. They said we had to weigh in at the same time. So I had to sit around in the hotel until 5 p.m., waiting for her to get to the hotel so I could weigh in. Even though I was coming in 5 lbs heavier, it just allowed me to put on some more muscle in camp. So the weight cut was exactly the same. I still had to cut the weight, I just came into Fight Week a little heavier. I was definitely dehydrated and hungry. Waiting another few hours definitely wasn’t planned.”

It was, in many ways, a must-win fight for Mayer. Two defeats on the bounce would have been a serious setback to the career of a fighter who has hopes of winning world titles in multiple weight divisions in the next few years. But Mayer was free from any doubts, even with an opponent who she knew little or nothing about. Her confidence was unflappable:

“I felt really calm going into that fight. The whole Wildheart thing didn’t throw me off at all. There was something free about not knowing anything about my opponent. Back in the amateurs, you are thrown opponents at the last minute, and you don’t get to study them, but as a professional, that is the first time it has happened to me. Coach Al is very strategic. He always has a strategy, and he always makes me study tape. But it was kind of like fuck it, I am just going to be myself and not overthink anything. I just felt very calm going into that fight.

“I never thought about what if I lost. I am always confident going into a fight, I know if I let my hands go I can’t be beat. I just have to trust in my training camp and do what I have to do. I’m not someone who stresses or overthinks and not knowing anything about my opponent allowed me not to overthink.”

Mayer will admit herself there has been a fragile nature to her in the last few months, a fighter trying to process what had gone wrong in her last fight. The grief as Mayer labelled it, was harder to deal with when she still firmly believes she did more than enough to beat Baumgardner last October at the O2 Arena in London. But the pain from that bitter defeat has now subsided, and the win over Wildheart got her the WBC Interim lightweight title, and with it, almost certainly the mandatory contender status will be hers in the coming months. Something which is certainly softening the blow from her previous fight:

“I’m back to my old self, it obviously sucks what happened. But I still have a lot of opportunities and with me being the Interim champion I know I will have a big fight at the end of the year.”

Wildheart, to her credit, came into the fight very late in the day, but still made every round competitive, but lost by scores of 98-92, 100-90, 98-91. Scores which reflected accurately what we saw in the ring. Since the fight, Mayer has been on her travels, but she finally managed to rewatch the fight back the day before our interview:

“I finally watched it back yesterday. Before I watched it Coach Al called me and told me you have to stay at the end of your jab, you were jabbing beautifully, but when you stopped jabbing you got caught with a couple of punches on the way out. He said I had to stay on the jab, and when I watched it back he was right. I start off ok and then I get a little impatient. But when you only have two-minute rounds you don’t have time to be patient or over-strategic, I know I have to let my hands go. I did some really good work to the body and I started to catch her with some big hooks in the last round and blood started flying everywhere. If I had got another minute or another few rounds you’d have seen the fight take a different turn.”

Mayer will probably concede she stayed at super-featherweight too long, chasing undisputed. But if any solace can be taken from the loss to Baumgardner it prompted the American to finally move up in weight. The 5′ 9′ frame always had the look it needed additional poundage. The extra five pounds have transformed her look, and the fighter herself is pleased with how she looked and felt in her first fight at lightweight:

“I felt good at the new weight. I definitely look bigger. I watched it back, I looked big, especially around my arms and my shoulders. I felt my shots were a lot harder and not just touching or points scoring. I am not a one-punch knockout artist and I probably never will be. I overwhelm my opponents, I like that about myself. I felt good. It was still a big weight cut though and I don’t see myself staying at lightweight for very long. But I have the opportunity right now at 135 and I am excited about that.”

The second fight at her new weight will be in the summer back in her native land, possibly on a female double-header featuring her Top Rank stable mate Seniesa Estrada:

“I want my next fight to be in the summer because I want to have three fights this year. I want to stay busy so it’s possible I could have two fights before I am mandatory for the winner of Katie, Chantelle and Amanda. That puts more risk on the line but I want to get paid, stay busy and fight.”

Mayer might have to be patient in the coming months. Katie Taylor steps up to 140 to challenge Chantelle Cameron for her undisputed world titles later this month, and how that plays out will likely determine where Taylor goes next. A rematch with Amanda Serrano at Croke Park has been mooted after the Cameron fight. But complications are likely in making that fight happen. Chantelle Cameron might be the biggest of all those complications. But at some point, Mayer will enter the fray. If she keeps winning, Mayer will be the mandatory challenger for Taylor or whoever holds the world lightweight titles by the end of the year. And when the mandatory obligations come into play, Mayer as the WBC mandatory, will be first. The rematch with Baumgardner looks highly unlikely to happen this year. Mayer has moved on and won’t go back down. Baumgardner will need to come up. Mayer will almost certainly need a world title to tempt her fellow American you feel. But as ever, money could be enough to make it happen. At some point, it should.

From the depths of despair, Mayer has ridden out a desperate time in her life. Make no mistake, it hit her beyond hard. But like her ever-faithful Moose, Mayer is back.