Louise Orton: A New Beginning

Louise Orton: A New Beginning

When Louise Orton turned professional in 2019, it took three years before she made her debut. And it will have been twenty months until Orton made her second ring walk this coming weekend.

On Saturday night at the iconic York Hall in London, Orton will finally get her career up and running again. The Polish fighter Bojana Libiszewska will once again be in the away corner on UK soil. In many ways, Orton will be extremely grateful that she will be. Even this training camp wasn’t without drama. The original opponent, Bec Connolly withdrew through injury leaving Orton fearing history would again repeat itself. The search for a new opponent was successful in the end, but it cost her money. And emotionally, Orton could have done without it. Thoughts must have lingered to ‘Here we go again.’

I have previously labelled Orton Britain’s best-kept-secret and also Britain’s unluckiest fighter. An endless stream of potential fights that came without reward left the former amateur star on the brink of walking away. A potential sponsor that was supposed to be the dream ticket turned into a nightmare scenario that could very easily have seen Orton lost to the sport forever. She lost her way. She lost her fight. But denied the fights inside the ring her talent deserves, Orton eventually found the fight from within to slowly claw back her enthusiasm and love for the sport again. Maybe even for life itself.

It’s been beyond hard for Orton. The finer details of her story have been told enough times on this platform. We don’t need to go there again. It is now time to move away from the frustrations and the horrors of the past. Orton just wants to look forward to what lies ahead. 

Orton is realistic in the short term. But equally, ambitious for the long term.

“No matter what people say, boxing is a business. The promoters are in it for money, so I think for me, I have to prove that I will make them money and to do that, you have to perform, win fights and be appealing to watch,” Orton told FightPost earlier this week.

“Give me a year at most, and people will have noticed me and know my name. Hopefully, we can start progressing with promoters, but at the minute it’s a case of staying busy. I want to be the best and to do that I need to be active, so in the short-term, I’m not even focussing on promoters, it’s a case of fighting as regularly as I can, and once I do that and I build up a record and get my name out there, hopefully, they will come knocking for me.” 

It’s been a long time coming for Louise Orton. She would have thought many times that it would never come. But Saturday night will represent many things in her life and career. Bojana Libiszewska will be in the opposite corner, but in the last few years, Orton has overcome far bigger obstacles. There will be no complacency, but Orton hopes that Libiszewska will be just the beginning. A new beginning. 2019 was a year of big dreams. 2024 should be where those dreams finally become a reality.

“Everything feels perfect now, and it’s like everything that happened has led me to the place where I am meant to be.”