Rhiannon Dixon: “As the opponents get better and better, I am proving that I belong at this level, and on Saturday, I will prove that again.”

Rhiannon Dixon: “As the opponents get better and better, I am proving that I belong at this level, and on Saturday, I will prove that again.”

It was just a few hours removed from another training camp being completed when Rhiannon Dixon dialled in for her latest media obligation. But this was no ordinary training camp. Her next fight carries a little more significance. Another bauble to add to her ever-increasing collection. 2023 brought Commonwealth and European honours. But on April 13th, Dixon will hope a belt of even more importance will soon be hers.

The unbeaten Warrington lightweight hopeful returns to the same Manchester Arena where she made her Matchroom debut a few years ago to challenge the once-beaten Karen Elizabeth Carabajal for the vacant WBO world lightweight title.

“Training camp has gone really well,” Dixon told me over Zoom. “Everything has been massively stepped up. We thought we were fighting in December or January, so it’s been a long training camp as well. But I like these long camps because I feel as though I can learn more. It is hard to make progression in eight short weeks. I’m one of those people who likes staying in the gym. I like being around the gym atmosphere. I like learning.”

Dixon turned professional in 2019 and has quietly amassed nine wins without a single blemish since she left her white-collar routes behind to join a new unforgiving world. Dixon was then a full-time pharmacist. Long days on the wards of an NHS hospital were supplemented by honing her craft in the gym in her spare time. But as her career advanced, things started to change.

The former world champion Anthony Crolla joined the set-up in lockdown times. Eddie Hearn noticed and signed her up, and when Paul Ready and STN Sports started to handle the management side of things, Dixon was able to go full-time.

As her career grew, her confidence grew with it. The most important fight of her life is one that, in many ways, she appears ready for.

“I was more nervous when I first got with Matchroom and in my fight in Spain,” Dixon says of her moment of truth on Saturday night. “It was like the ringwalk and all the media stuff that got to me. But now I am coming into my own and feeling more confident now. The way I am performing in the gym as well. I am just getting this confidence where I feel as though I am ready for this step up now.

“I feel as though I am a completely different person to the one even from a few months ago. I think the Vicky Wilkinson fight was maybe a changing point. I like having these long camps because I feel as though I am learning all the time. As the opponents get better and better, I am proving that I belong at this level, and on Saturday, I will prove that again.”

Karen Elizabeth Carabajal (22-1) will head to Manchester with plenty of ambition. Her world title ambitions almost certainly need a favourable result. After suffering her only career defeat to Katie Taylor in her previous world title opportunity, the Argentinian will know it’s probably a case of now or never for her. But her British opponent hasn’t left anything to chance in her pre-fight preparations.

“We have watched loads of footage of her. Dom (Senior) is very meticulous in that sense,” Dixon told FightPost. “He will watch a lot of fights and different things and then come up with a game plan. Then we’ll watch it together with Anthony, and then we’ll do a session around what we think will work. This is about the time when I think I know her personally because I have seen so much of her.”

But Dixon knows her opponent will be equally prepared.

“She has known about me for a long time, since December. So I expect her to do as much research about me as I have done about her.”

A victory over Carabajal will propel the career of Rhiannon Dixon to a new dimension. Unification fights could be in the offering for next year, but her promoter Eddie Hearn is already looking at an established in-house fighter for her next fight if the Warrington fighter is indeed crowned a world champion at the first time of asking on Saturday night. Hearn has mentioned that the two-weight world champion, Terri Harper, as a possible opponent for her first defence.

“A fight with Terri would be really good,” Dixon says of that potential fight. “I really like Terri, and I really like Stefy Bull. But that is a good domestic fight. She has a lot of experience and brings a massive crowd to Sheffield as well. But I feel ready for those types of fights. If you are at world level, you have to prove that you are at world level.”

Dixon is proud of her white-collar roots, despite some suggesting that she would have been better served going the traditional amateur route instead.

“Someone came to the gym and said,” Imagine where you would be if you had started boxing when you were younger.” But to be honest, I wouldn’t give up the way I have come for the world. I have got so many life experiences in different aspects. I have been to university. I have worked in a hospital, and that puts things into perspective because that is a matter of life and death. I have got a different kind of mental resilience.”   

That low-level introduction to the sport doesn’t appear to have held her back. A natural athlete, Dixon has learned on the job. But learned she has. A handful of white-collar fights, all wins, and those nine unbeaten professional fights have taken her this far. It is unlikely to end here. She says she is still a baby in the sport, and her prime is still to come. But Carabajal took rounds off Katie Taylor, and her record indicates that she will be no pushover.

But there is something about Rhiannon Dixon that makes you think that she won’t be denied on the biggest night of her life. Dixon turns 29 a few days after her fight with Carabajal. Those birthday celebrations you sense will start early.

Photo Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing