Roha Hudson: “At the end of the day, it was down to me. I just didn’t show up.”

Roha Hudson: “At the end of the day, it was down to me. I just didn’t show up.”

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. A professional debut long in the making. It was intended to be a showcase of what was to follow. A fighter turning over after an unbeaten amateur run that brought National honours. Big things were expected. The fighter herself expected them also.

That long-awaited professional debut ended in despair, defeat, and plenty of regrets. In her hometown, Roha Hudson suffered an unexpected defeat on her maiden ring walk.

The Polish import Esta Konecna upset the home favourite 39-37 on the referee’s scorecard. There was no dispute. Hudson knew from the very early stages that it wouldn’t be her night.

It was the morning after when I caught up with a beyond-emotional Hudson over Zoom. A lesser fighter. A lesser person would have made her excuses and cancelled the interview. She deserves immense credit for not doing so.

I found a fighter still in some form of grieving. Someone still trying to process how and why it had all gone so badly wrong after all the pre-fight hype that promised plenty. There were no visible signs of battle, only the mental scars that can’t be seen.

“Some people around me have said it was the nerves,” Hudson told me. “But I don’t think it was that because I am a very confident person, and I enjoy it, and I thrive off a crowd and showing off. So, I don’t think it was that. Was there too much to think about? Maybe. I didn’t have my head coach there. So, I had a completely different corner team. My coach was in London for another fight. So I couldn’t have him in my corner. Jon Pegg, my manager, was in my corner, and he is amazing. But it’s never the same. But I don’t think it’s that. I think it was purely down to my performance on the night.

“I changed my style completely on the night. I am a back-foot fighter, and I tried to stay on the front foot as much as possible, but I just couldn’t land anything. My head had just gone.”

It wasn’t a fighter looking to put the blame on anybody else. Hudson accepts responsibility for many things, even the fact that a pre-fight chest infection should have resulted in her debut being postponed. But the lure of a debut in her old hometown in Coventry on a big GBM Sports show proved too big a temptation.

“I was on antibiotics two weeks ago for a chest infection, and I was in bed for four days and out of the gym for a week. I lost 4kg in that time. This is the sort of thing you can’t say pre-fight in interviews because it looks like you are making excuses. You just can’t mention it. I wouldn’t even write about it on my Instagram. I couldn’t breathe in the corner, and I panicked because I couldn’t get any air in my lungs. I wasn’t listening to my corner team because I was just trying to breathe. But at the end of the day, it was down to me. I just think it was my performance. I just didn’t show up.

“My coach wanted to pull me out. It was me who wanted to fight. I didn’t think I would get on a platform this big again for my debut. The last thing I wanted to do was pull out of the fight. I just felt that I wouldn’t feel it on the night. They wanted to pull me out, but it was my stubbornness. I didn’t think it would affect me, but I don’t think it was just that. It was a combination of things, but obviously, it was on my mind going back to the corner and trying not to cough. My mind just wasn’t in it. Normally, I am so clear and so technical in there, but I wasn’t. I have never ever boxed like that before in my life.”

Hudson knew at the end of the opening two minutes that her night would end in defeat.

“When I got back to my corner at the end of the first round, I looked at Jon and said shit. I just knew. In my head, I felt like I lost every second of every round. I just didn’t show up.” Hudson says of her professional debut that ended nothing like the way she expected it to.

It was an emotional Hudson who had bravely agreed to speak to me just a few hours after losing to Konecna. There were tears and plenty of them as she was recalling her horror night in Coventry.

“I didn’t have the easiest of fight camps, with being poorly and only having three rounds of sparring in this whole fight camp,” a tearful fighter said. “I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done it. I do regret it now. But if I had pulled out, I would probably have regretted it even more. But it’s done now. I can’t go back now only forward.”

Hudson has overcome adversity many times in her life before. A defeat inside a boxing ring, you sense will just be another little obstacle to climb.

“100% it will motivate me,” Hudson told me. A little bit of the fighter I have spoken to previously slowly returning. The tears still flowed, but a little spark of determination had started to flow back. “I am so passionate about it. I travelled down to Coventry five times just to see my face on that billboard because, to me, it was like wow. I woke up this morning crying because I felt I had ruined my life. In my head, if I can’t beat her, then who can I beat. But now that’s gone. It will motivate me. I’ll get a rematch straight away with her. I need it.”

Hudson will hope it’s just a little bump in the road. If she gets her rematch and wins, her debut will be forgotten, and her career can then start again.

“I won’t let it define me, and I think I will make a strong comeback,” Hudson says. “In my head, I think I was born to be a star. I am going to go straight back into the gym, and I will put things right.” 

Once the dust has settled, her thoughts also, Hudson will be back. A learning process behind her, mistakes rectified, the Telford fighter can come again. A defeat doesn’t have to be the end. Roha Hudson is likely to be a fighter who will tell us exactly that in the coming months. As she says herself: ” Another day we fight.”