Nina Hughes: “I want my revenge against Cherneka, and I want the belt back.”

Nina Hughes: “I want my revenge against Cherneka, and I want the belt back.”

By Cameron Black

Nina Hughes has reiterated her intention to rematch Cherneka Johnson after a controversial first fight between the two back in May.  

Hughes thought she had successfully defended her WBA World Bantamweight belt when the ring announcer called out her name. However, after some long deliberation, the decision was awarded to Johnson in a somewhat anticlimactic manner.  

The Brit described the moment, a rarity that you don’t often see in boxing.  

“When we were in the ring, no one explained anything, then we suddenly got the announcement, and I’m being dragged back to the centre. The scores got reannounced, and I just knew then what was going to happen.” “It’s obviously really disappointing what happened, all the controversy occurred, yet we genuinely still think we had won the fight. To lose in that way is a hard way to lose.”

What baffled Hughes even more was the judges’ scorecards, with one judge (Katsuhiko Nakamura) scoring the first three rounds in Johnson’s favour, despite the stats suggesting that Hughes was comfortably ahead. The former champion suggested that judges should at least be questioned on their choices in a sport with such huge stakes.  

“I feel like the judges need to be able to justify and explain. There’s no comeback on them, and that’s a bad thing for boxing. Hughes told me over Zoom. “They need to be able to explain how they got to that decision, especially when his score was that bad. If they had me losing a close, then I would have understood it, but it was just so all over the place. It felt like they were playing catchup to make the fight closer.”  

Hughes reflected on her first appearance fighting in Australia, too, with both good and bad things to be had about the experience.  

“I took it as a whole experience to enjoy, to fight on a Lomachenko undercard in front of 15,000 people. It was a really enjoyable experience.

“But there were so many little things during the build-up, though. we got told there were three Australian judges we thought were being stitched up. It was initially to be all New Zealand judges, but they changed it to Australian to be “neutral. They eventually agreed to change two of the judges, although they didn’t appoint British judge Steve Gray because they didn’t realise, he was available.”  

If that wasn’t enough to deal with, Hughes was also told there would be no drug testing before the fight.  

“We got told the day before, even though the WBA said it was mandatory, it just opens doors and tells you go and take what you want. They didn’t want to pay for VADA. We were battling all these things that should have already been sorted.”

Despite all the issues, Hughes insisted that she was a “strong character and it is what it is.”  

Whilst Hughes was quick to brush off all extra concerns, she insisted that the rematch is what she wants next.  

“We’re waiting for the rematch; we’ve appealed for it. Three out of the five neutral judges had me winning. They’ve made me next in line. We can’t have it straight away because it was specially made, so I didn’t have to fight my mandatory. Cherneka needs to fight the mandatory (Jamie Mitchell) in the next 120 days.”

Hughes made it clear that she would be rooting for Cherneka should she face Mitchell. Having already beat the latter (in which she was a massive underdog), Hughes wants vengeance and the opportunity to right the wrongs.  

“I want my revenge with Cherneka. The Mitchell rematch doesn’t bother me. I want my belt back, and it’s also a bigger fight to sell.”

When questioned further about the difficulties of selling fights, Hughes went into detail about how it’s not as simple as it appears.  

“Half of the problem is selling these fights to the big promoters. Without them, there’s no money to pay for them. When I was with Matchroom, they didn’t want to put the fight on. That’s why it got left for so long.”

Hughes also added that women’s boxing has taken a hit in interest, and she believes the introduction of Saudi Arabia into the sport has attributed to these difficulties.

“I think it’s taken a big hit to women’s boxing and lower level boxing. If you don’t come under them big fights, where do people start? Female boxing was on the rise, and now it feels like there’s less interest, and it’s gone downhill.  It all comes down to the promoters and whether they want to do anything, or they’re solely bothered about the bigger fights.”

With the support of Saudi Arabia, the sport has finally seen a multitude of big fights that fans have been eagerly anticipating for years, although it appears the external impact of these “priority” fights hasn’t yet extended to female boxing, which shouldn’t be the case.

Hughes explained that the airing of some great female fights in lockdown motivated her to turn professional, even after having two kids and getting married.  

“Lockdown happened, then I saw all the female fights. The likes of Shannon Courtenay and Ebanie Bridges, I saw them and thought I could beat them. If I don’t give it a go, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. If I don’t get anywhere, I can accept I’ve done it. I just thought sod it, I believed I could win a world title, but I never thought I’d get here. I kept believing in myself and was lucky enough to get an opportunity.”

Hughes’ story is one of inspiration and motivation but perhaps it hasn’t yet received the recognition it deserves for a variety of reasons. But it still has chapters to go, and it will make it all the sweeter if she can add another world title to her collection.