Beyond The Ropes: Rhiannon Dixon

Beyond The Ropes: Rhiannon Dixon

‘The snakes and ladders on the board represent the ups and downs in life, and the game teaches players that success and failure are both part of the journey.’ An online reference to a time-honoured board game that all too often resembles what we see inside a boxing ring.

Fortunes can change incredibly quickly in boxing. The difference between winning and losing can greatly alter the trajectory of a career. Careers can end with the stroke of a judge’s pen or the swing of a fighter’s arm.

Terri Harper knew her fight with Rhiannon Dixon last September could have been her last. At just 27, the sports grim reaper was hovering. A one-sided mauling at the hands of Sandy Ryan six months earlier left the Denaby fighter on the brink. The love for the sport dwindling. In many ways, it was a fight for survival. We now know that Harper did indeed survive. The love is now back. Her immediate fighting future saved, if not definitively secured. What a difference one solitary fight makes.

But what of the loser on that pivotal night. Rhiannon Dixon headed into the first defence of her WBO world lightweight title unbeaten in ten fights. Dixon had her future seemingly all mapped out. A big betting favourite to hammer the final nail into the boxing life of Terri Harper. Caroline Dubois and Beatriz Ferreira were more than mentioned for 2025. Dixon was on the up. Harper was all but out. One foot in the retirement door. Dixon was expected to slam that door firmly shut. Of course, we now know that Harper had other ideas. Rumours of her demise were greatly exaggerated.

It was always a fight with extreme jeopardy for Rhiannon Dixon. Those pre-fight odds always looked a little off. Harper still at an age where her peak should still be ahead of her. Too much was being made of those three rounds with Sandy Ryan back in March. Without that fight on her resume, Harper, you’d suspect, would have been the strong betting favourite in September. Although you’d also suspect the Dixon team would have looked elsewhere for a first defence if they hadn’t seen Harper staying on her stool after six painful and humbling minutes with Ryan that in truth, couldn’t have gone any worse for her.

In an ideal world, even with that information, Dixon would still have been better served, finding a softer opening defence of her WBO bauble. Ideally, her crowning as a world champion would also have come much later. A fighter still learning her craft. After nine fights, another couple of learning fights would have completed her fighting apprenticeship. Sometimes, you need the rounds and the experience that comes with that extended time in the ring. Dixon fought Harper with just sixty-four rounds of professional experience behind her. For balance, Harper had almost twice as much ring time. And against much tougher opposition. The Denaby fighter had reached seventy professional rounds back in August 2020 when she fought Natasha Jonas in that brutal fight at the height of the Covid pandemic.

But when those world lightweight titles started to splinter last year, the opportunity to become a world champion was just too good to turn down. Opportunities rarely come at the right time. Opportunity knocked. Rhiannon Dixon answered. Nobody can blame her for that.

The win over Karen Elizabeth Carabajal in Manchester last April was hard-earned. A little mid-fight crisis was overcome. A good win, but that showed there was still work to do for the Anthony Crolla-trained protege. The Argentinian was an ideal opponent with or without a world title on the line. The world title added shine to the resume of Dixon. A glint of gold that was perhaps beyond even the most wildest of her ambitions when she turned professional in 2019. But that ten-round points victory effectively ended her boxing apprenticeship.

That perfect world that doesn’t exist could still have afforded a couple of ‘softer’ options so she could fully graduate. But that world title propelled her into a world she wasn’t quite ready for. Without any amateur experience whatsoever and only a handful of fights on the unlicensed white-collar circuit, Dixon still needed a little refining. It’s extremely difficult to do that with a world title around your waist. Especially on her side of the sport. You either move quickly. Or you don’t move at all. Even more so in 2024. Very much a year of stagnation for women’s boxing.

The fight with Harper was always a roll of the dice. A gamble that seemed as though the odds were greatly in favour of the Warrington fighter. But it still looked as though all concerned were banking that Harper was indeed on the slide. In fairness, that was how it looked. But on the decline or not, with another fight or two under her belt, Dixon would have been far better placed to beat an opponent who was so much more experienced than her, and several levels above any other fighter Dixon had previously faced. By the way, that’s not a criticism of the matchmaking because it was most certainly a risk worth taking. But it was a gamble nonetheless. It was always going to be a case of who was catching who at the right time. The fight with the now three-weight world champion just came a little too soon for Rhiannon Dixon. It was eerily similar to what Harper herself experienced herself at the hands of a perceived washed-up Natasha Jonas in 2020.

2025 now looks very different for Dixon. The loss to Harper has pushed the former white-collar fighter back into the mix. Ideally, a couple of fights with fighters just below the elite of her division before another assault on the world title comes her way. Carabajal was perfect for her. A fight or two with someone similar and a little better would give Dixon what she lacked against Harper.

Dixon was far from disgraced against Harper. Experience was the key. Harper had it. Dixon lacked it. The fine margins that are often the difference between winning and losing. Dixon would have learned far more against Terri Harper than she would have against her previous ten opponents put together. Enough to reverse what happened in September if the two should meet again this year? Quite possibly. Win or learn as they say. Rhiannon Dixon would have learned plenty from her first professional defeat.

Despite that defeat to Harper, the story of Rhiannon Dixon is still one of success. And crucially, there is hope for more. One defeat doesn’t define a career. In this case, it could make it. A new beginning for a fighter who has defied all realistic expectations of her.

You can tell a lot about a fighter in defeat. Does it hurt enough? Do they make fake excuses that just signify denial and delusion? Are they good enough to make adjustments and come back better? The signs on all fronts for Dixon are positive.

“I’ve tasted being a world champion, and now it’s been taken away from me. I am more motivated than ever to get that back,” Dixon told me a few weeks after losing her unbeaten record to Harper.

“I just think I went in with the wrong mentality,” Dixon also said in the same interview. Words that say she knows where she went wrong against Harper and that she is prepared to do what is required to get back what Harper took from her. There is every hope that Rhiannon Dixon will do exactly that in 2025.

Photo Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing