Melissa Takimoglu: “Mikaela Mayer has so much more to offer the sport regardless of how she does on Saturday night.”

Melissa Takimoglu: “Mikaela Mayer has so much more to offer the sport regardless of how she does on Saturday night.”

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Melissa Takimoglu has been described as a boxing tour de force. The Top Rank publicist for the UK, who resides in an industry that still needs to fully press the update button on equality. Boxing is getting there. Slowly. In truth, way too slowly. Melissa is in many ways speeding up that process.

Her own life has been tough. Beyond tough. Maybe that’s why she has survived so long in a sport that isn’t for the faint-hearted.

In the early days, she dabbled in the music industry. Melissa then set up a cleaning business. In some ways, the perfect life for what was to come working in a sport that often isn’t so noble.

Boxing came into her life. She initially thought it was barbaric. Her opinion slowly changed. But the new mindset on the sport that would define her life would later be tested to the core. Another story for another day.

Melissa started at the bottom, formed Melt PR, and tirelessly worked her up through the ranks before signing an exclusive deal with Top Rank a few years ago. But those early struggles operating in a man’s world haven’t been forgotten. Things have thankfully and belatedly improved of late, but there is still much work to do for true equality.

“It’s a difficult position to be in. It’s 2024, and women are still massively struggling when it comes to these things,” Melissa told me over Zoom just a few days away from the Top Rank fighter Mikaela Mayer challenging Natasha Jonas for her IBF world welterweight title. “I’m behind the scenes. I don’t have to deal with public backlash. Mine is a little different, more in the business of boxing. Walking into a room full of men, in the early stages of my career, having to fight to be heard. It was always difficult to find your own identity. Confidence and fear have a lot to do with that as well. If you lack confidence, you will not push as hard, will you? Luckily, I have lots of female friends now in boxing in all different areas of the sport. Even the heroes working in the offices that deal with the credentials and the ticketing. There are so many women who work behind the scenes. But I still look at boxing and think there are still not enough women in the sport. I don’t get it. I still don’t understand it. It may look like a dream job from the outside, but getting here was bloody hard. Staying here is even harder. Getting more women into the sport is difficult, but it is changing. But only changing at a very slow rate.”

Her schedule is relentless, especially in the lead up to a big fight like the one on Saturday night in Liverpool. But as the clock ticks a little closer to the first bell, that schedule eases somewhat.

“The week before a fight week is probably the busiest time,” Melissa says. “You are dealing with travel and strategy, making sure you have spoken to the broadcasters for all their asks and needs. The Fight Week schedule is obviously the bible. I have to make sure that the Fight Week schedule is accurate. You’ve now got social media, which is a factor. So it is all the planning for Fight Week. When fight week comes, it is actually a relief. But it is a different kind of tiredness then. The phone is just constant with everyone wanting or needing something. You are busy managing all these elements, but the week before is just insane.”

Melissa has built a strong working relationship with Mikaela Mayer. One that is built on trust and no little friendship. Their paths eventually crossed though working in the same working environment.

“I used to see Mikaela in the corridors, and I thought Top Rank have got a female fighter, but who takes care of her,” Melissa told FightPost. “I was too scared to ask because she is American. Why would she want to work with me? But it turns out she felt the same way. We have a female publicist, so why are the two women not working together.”

Melissa saw that her fighter would be perfect for the UK and the Sky Sports machine. From a PR perspective, she is a dream, and she can fight. With a still restrictive US market in regards to the female side of the sport, Mayer found an adopted home in the UK for her many talents. Her publicist knew Mayer had a natural place to grow her profile on UK soil.

“Mikaela came over to the UK to do some punditry work, and Sky just fell in love with her. She’s now had three fights over here, and Saturday will be her fourth one.”

There is an obvious connection between the two trailblazers of their craft.

“We are two women who have connected because we both understand what it takes to be where we are,” Melissa says of their relationship. “We connected on that. She is very business savvy. We have found that balance now. She knows she can reach out to me if she needs advice. But when the time comes to be professional, I am so on my game face.”

There have been difficult times in that working relationship none more than that night at the O2 Arena in London in October 2022. A fight with anger, bitterness, and hate at the core of the build-up. Alycia Baumgardner beat Mayer via a hotly disputed wafer-thin points decision that left Mayer a broken fighter.

“To this day, I have not watched that fight back,” Melissa told me about the fight that left her fighter wondering how and why it had gone so badly wrong for her. “When we left the arena, she was horrifically crying in the changing room. It was devastating. I was gutted. I said to her, “Learn from this, don’t leave it to the judges.” I felt it was unfair. I felt that she did win. But this is her path. It’s her destiny. It was just meant to happen regardless of whether we like the decision or not.”

The moments after were beyond difficult. Melissa trying to find the words to comfort a fighter who was now in the early stages of her ‘grieving’ period.

“Sometimes saying nothing is more. It’s just being there and supporting her.” Melissa said of the hours that followed that heartbreaking, shattering defeat.

“When a fighter loses, everyone just goes about their business. People don’t care. They just walk off. But because I care so much about what I do, it affects me. But I have to keep myself together for them.”

Mayer eventually found what she needed over the months that followed. But this observer has noticed a definite change in the American in the multitude of interviews we have done together since that fateful night in London. A change that isn’t lost on Takimoglu also.

“I have noticed a change because she has grown a lot in the time that I have known her,” Melissa relayed to me. “But I still think that there is so much more to come. Mikaela has so much more to offer the sport regardless of how she does on Saturday night. She has matured, and I love how smart she is with her money. She is so giving and so appreciative of her team.”

This Saturday night offers Mikaela Mayer a chance of redemption. An opportunity to reclaim what was lost against Baumgardner all those months ago. A new beginning at a new weight. A weight that Melissa feels we will see the best of her fighter.

“Mikaela is very comfortable at this weight. Very comfortable. When I saw her on Tuesday morning in person, she had a glow about her. Her eyes are sparkling, she’s bright-eyed, focused, and relaxed.”

There will be nerves and plenty of them in Liverpool on Saturday night. Neither fighter or publicist wants a repeat of fifteen months ago. Another reversal and Melissa Takimoglu will know her job in the immediate hours that follow will be extremely difficult. Impossible even. A win over Jonas in her hometown, and Mayer and Takimoglu will then take their working relationship to another level. A golden future that will include multiple more visits to UK soil. Never has the difference between winning and losing been so pivotal.