Rhiannon Dixon: “I want to be a two-weight world champion.”

Rhiannon Dixon: “I want to be a two-weight world champion.”

It was a painful night in September for Rhiannon Dixon. An unbeaten world champion with real momentum and a seemingly mapped-out future. Terri Harper was the first defence of her WBO lightweight title. A fighter that was vastly more experienced than the former white-collar fighter, but also one that was percieved to be on an irreversible slide. One last throw of the dice for the two-weight world champion. But also a gamble for the reigning champion. A case of who was catching who at the right time. At the Canon Medical Arena in Sheffield we found the answers that we needed.

It was Harper who used her greater experience to outpoint Dixon over ten hard rounds. The Denaby fighter left the ring a three-weight world champion. Dixon left that same Sheffield ring contemplating many things.

A period of reflection followed for the Warrington fighter. But nearly four months on from her first professional reversal, a new beginning is ahead of her.

“I think it’s opened up more options for me,” Dixon told me over Zoom. “I also think it will make me a better fighter in the long run. I think I have been set on just going one way. If I had won the fight with Terri, I would then have gone in with either Caroline Dubois or Beatriz Ferreira.”

Despite the reversal against Harper last September, Dixon was far from disgraced. There was even a big moment in the 6th round when Harper was noticeably hurt and appeared to be unravelling. But Dixon couldn’t find the finishing punch and Harper recovered to make sure of the decision with the strong finish that might just have saved her career.

But Dixon is reflective and honest about that night.

“It’s probably the experience that I needed, having just those seven white-collar fights and just ten professional fights and then going in with a two-weight world champion. But it’s changed everything and has made me just want it more. I don’t think I fully appreciated winning the world title in April. I think I was more down on myself, thinking I could have done this or that. I need to enjoy and appreciate my achievements a little bit more. When I won the world title, I wasn’t even happy with that because of how I fought. I didn’t even celebrate the fact that I came from white-collar and became a world champion.

“But it was a fight that I went into genuinely believing I would win. It was just me severely underperforming. I never felt out of my depth. It was me. I have never boxed as shit as that before. We ignored everything that I did well, and I went in there trying to change my whole style, and when it wasn’t working, I didn’t have that experience to change. I didn’t adapt, and that’s a lesson learned.

“After the fight with Terri, I was questioning myself. I put everything into every camp, and I was thinking what had gone wrong here. It was just what happened on the night, and I had to come to terms with that. We sat down as a team and looked at what went wrong and how to make sure it didn’t happen again.”

The defeat to Harper has left Dixon making new plans. It’s given her an opportunity to refine her craft and look at her options outside of the lightweight division.

“Maybe I just stayed at lightweight because it was comfortable for me,” Dixon relayed to FightPost. “I started winning titles at lightweight, and that was the trajectory I started to go on. I have kind of been winging it in some ways. Even before I won the Commonwealth title, my manager Paul Ready said to me that if things opened up at super-featherweight, would you be open to doing it. I have just been making lightweight easier and easier.”

Dixon will return in March and at her new weight. A move to super-featherweight that could place her in direct line for a fight with Alycia Baumgardner. But far more likely, she could be in prime position if as expected, Baumgardner vacates her titles seeking pastures new.

“I am really excited to see how I feel,” Dixon says of her challenge. “I want to be a two-weight world champion. I want to enjoy it as well. I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself before because I thought I had to hit a certain standard. When I look back on my career, I don’t want to think that it was a really sad time and think why did I put so much pressure on myself. I want to get back to enjoying boxing again.” 

Rhiannon Dixon will look to put the Harper disappointment well and truly behind her this year. In many ways, a new stage of her career begins in March. The ‘lightweight’ door hasn’t been totally closed. Thoughts of revenge will never leave Dixon. A rematch with Terri Harper will never be far from her mind. The right offer could also tempt Dixon into that much-talked about all-British showdown with Caroline Dubois.

But you sense Dixon could also be a real player at 130. If Baumgardner does move on and up, the world super-featherweight titles will undoubtedly splinter. It’s not that hard to envisage Dixon fighting for and winning one of those titles.

Photo Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing