Harli Whitwell: “I want to be more active this year. Last year, I only had two fights, and I just want to progress with each fight.”

Harli Whitwell: “I want to be more active this year. Last year, I only had two fights, and I just want to progress with each fight.”

Harli Whitwell left the amateur ranks behind in 2022, and very quickly, the unbeaten super-featherweight prospect is learning that the professional ranks rarely run in straight lines.

I last spoke to Whitwell last October. It was a few days removed from what should have been her fourth professional fight. But when her scheduled opponent withdrew from the fight just hours before the first bell, Whitwell and her team were left with no time to find a replacement. All the hours of training camp were then left with no reward.

“Obviously, it is horrible for any fighter,” Whitwell told me over Zoom. “But it happens all the time, and I think a lot of people just get used to it. But I was gutted, and you do feel like I have done all this work for nothing. But all the sparring you have done all goes on to the next fight. I kind of just carried on with my camp. I wasn’t training as hard as I was. Over Christmas, I slowed it down a little bit and picked it up again in the new year. I didn’t lose any fitness, and if anything, it made me fight a lot better last month. I felt I was like continuously on it. It wasn’t a waste of a camp because I was sparring with the likes of Ellie Scotney and Shauna O’Keefe, which was a really good experience and without that, you are just sitting around waiting for a fight you are starting from scratch again. It was fine in the end and led to an even better fight on a Top Tier show. It was amazing, really, and came close to topping my debut. They do their shows really well. I loved it, and so I can’t be disheartened.”

Thankfully, that fourth professional has now come. Last month at the Brentwood Leisure Centre, Whitwell scored an impressive 6th and final round stoppage over the Polish import Angelika Oles. A performance that not only highlighted her continued improvement but even more so, her potential and what is to follow. Make no mistake, Whitwell is a seriously impressive prospect.

“It was good, but I was trying too hard to get the stoppage again,” Whitwell says of her latest win, which very nearly finished in the opening six minutes. “In the third round, it nearly ended, but then it got to the point where she was just covering up, and I was finding it hard to draw anything from her. So I was kind of just chasing her about it, and then at the end, because she wasn’t doing anything, the ref decided enough was enough and stopped it. She was busted up with her nose, and she just wasn’t throwing anything back.”

The win over Oles, and the manner of it, was another little indication of just how far Whitwell could go. A performance that indicates Harli Whitwell could go a very long way in the sport. But even more encouraging is that the fighter is never satisfied with her work. A sign of someone who will not rest on her laurels and will continue to keep on improving.

“I am the biggest self-critic,” Whitwell told FightPost. “As soon as I come out of the ring, I am not happy with my performance. But everyone else says that was my best performance to date after each fight. So sometimes I have to look more at the positives instead of the negatives. We are obviously trying to iron everything out, but I do think my last fight was the best performance so far. I just found it a little bit harder because there wasn’t much coming back, so it was hard to my my openings. I was a little bit non-stop, and we are trying to get me out of fighting too much, so I am boxing more and picking my shots a little better.”

Whitwell does seem to be a fighter who has the talent to grace any stage at some point in her career. The bright lights of Sky, TNT Sports, and DAZN look set to be in her future.

“That is definitely where I am aiming to be,” Whitwell says of fighting on that kind of platform. “But I am only 23 and I have got my whole career ahead of me and I don’t want to end up taking anything silly and say doing a Sky show and then not performing and then they drop me and then forget about me. I am just building my career slowly, but that is where I am aiming to be. I am still a baby, and I just want to get some more experience first, and I don’t want to take any stupid fights that I am not ready for. If I was 30, it would be different, and I would be rushing my work a bit more. I turned over at the right time. It’s just the best time to turn professional. We just want to take things nice and easy, but if the opportunities come, we will take them depending on if the fights are at the right time.”

Whitwell will fight again on April 27th, again in Brentwood on the impressive Johnny Fisher Top Tier shows. Fight number five will be against another Polish fighter in Karina Szmalenberg.

“It will be my first eight-rounder, and I think the more rounds there is, it will be better for me. Hopefully, I will get a step up in opponent, and I can show off more of my skills. It will be good to get out again, and I want to be more active this year. Last year, I only had two fights, and I just want to progress with each fight.”

On the same card is Louise Orton, another unbeaten fighter who could one day fight Whitwell, and it is a fight that is very easily worth having the British title on the line. A fight that is of interest to Whitwell down the line.

“I am still getting more experience at the moment, but that is definitely a fight that is down the line. I am willing to fight anyone for the right money, the right title, and everything else. But it is the type of fight I am willing to take.” 

Harli Whitwell has the look of a serious prospect. At 23, she has her whole career ahead of her. A fighter who is level-headed enough to know that there is no need to rush. But from what we have seen so far, those bright lights will surely come, and maybe even quicker than even Whitwell thinks.