Beyond The Ropes: Sadie Thomas

Beyond The Ropes: Sadie Thomas

Sadie Thomas started boxing when her side of the sport was in a totally different place. A time when apathy and indifference were commonplace. Acceptance and appreciation were nearly ten years away. The Hartlepool-born Thomas was one of the early trailblazers. You could say she was from another time. But at only 26, and despite being away from the ring for five years, her time might come again.

“I was in primary school, and there was a boy that started to go to the local boxing gym,” Thomas says of how she first got into boxing. “I was always a sporty kid and thought I fancied giving that a go. I told my dad when I got home, and he said, “I’m not taking you halfway across the town to something that you won’t enjoy.” But I said we don’t have to. There was one just down the road where the boy from school went. He took me thinking I wasn’t going to like it, but there I still was ten years later.

“I was always competitive and enjoyed doing different sports when I was a kid. So boxing was just something new, I guess. Something else to try on my list.”

“It also gave me discipline,” Thomas adds when I ask her what boxing gives her. “Something to work towards every single day. Whether you are at the beginning of your career or further, it gives you goals to set and that motivation and discipline that comes from boxing.”

When Sadie Thomas started her boxing journey, women’s boxing was still not in the Olympics. A time when the female side of the sport was still searching for identity and so much more.”When I was eleven and still boxing, there weren’t many other girls doing it. That was around 2011, so obviously, the sport has come on a lot since then. When I first started, there weren’t that many girls around. I had my medical, but I didn’t box for a year, so I had to have another medical because there just wasn’t anyone else around to fight.

“The perception was very different back then. You wouldn’t think twice about there being a girl at the gym now, but you would back when I first started. You would then be the only girl at the gym. Some girls would come in, but they wouldn’t stick at it. But loads do now, which is nice to see.”

Thomas had twenty-nine fights as an amateur. But that very first ring walk is still fresh in the memory bank.

“It was at a Working Man’s Club in Hartlepool,” Thomas says of her first taste of inside the ring action. “The Headland Boxing Club used to have their home shows there, and I was so nervous. I think you try too hard as well at that age. I don’t think you know what to expect when you have your first fight, no matter how many spars you have had. Back then, you’d only train three times a week. Now, you would have to train virtually every day, and that shows just how much the standard has gone up. Everyone is so much fitter and stronger now. It’s massively different from what it was back then.”

There are some quality names on the resume of the 26-year-old. Harli and Shona Whitwell, Hannah Robinson, Ellie Scotney, and others demonstrate the type of top-class opposition that Thomas was mixing with.

“I ended up having really good fights with Shona and Ellie, actually,” Thomas told FightPost. “Scotney has always been on a different level. She’s cut from a different cloth, I think. I boxed her when I was in my first year as a Youth, and she was in her second year. I think they got a shock at how good my performance was against her. She won clearly, but it was still close. But I got on the England team off the back of boxing her.”

“I was probably one of the fighters in the background in the beginning,” Thomas says of her time in the England set-up. “But in my second year as a Youth, it really came on for me. I was glad because I was training my heart out, and then I got selected to go to the European Championships and the Youth Commonwealth Games. They were two weeks apart, so they decided you couldn’t go to both, so because the Commonwealth Games was so prestigious, I went there.”

Thomas was a Youth Champion, a Youth Tri-Nations Champion in those twenty-nine fights, as well as representing her country. Despite the success, a couple of defeats still run deep.

“I lost to Hannah Robinson in the Elite Championships in 2018. After I lost to Hannah, I trained for 365 days because it broke my heart. I think Hannah is a few years older than me, and we had sparred quite a lot. She was a good friend at the time, and I found it hard to fight her. I think we both found it a bit weird, to be honest. I probably didn’t box as well as I could have because of that situation.

“The following year, I boxed Louise Orton in the semi-finals, and it was a really good fight. I thought I had won the first round, and the other two rounds were close. But Louise won, and that was another fight that broke my heart. After I had lost to Hannah, I really put the effort in for the full year, and I really believed it was my time to shine after that. I could probably still cry over it now, I think.”

It was a combination of work and study that led to Thomas walking away from the sport, although the intention was always to return at some point.

“When I left school, I was still boxing at the time, but I had gone to college to do engineering. I ended up doing an apprenticeship, and they put me through to do a foundation degree. So I was working full time, studying, and training full time. So I just thought I would have a break while I was doing my degree. When you get to a certain level in boxing, you can’t just put 50% in. You need to put 100% in, and I just couldn’t give that to my boxing at the time. So I thought I’d have a rest and a break while I do my degree.

“It was never really intended to be this long, though, to be honest. I still think about coming back to boxing even now. I would still like to come back. After I took that break, Covid happened. If that hadn’t happened, I would probably have got back into it. But I had a lot going on in my life. I had stopped boxing, and I was doing my degree. But then my brother committed suicide, and then in 2021, my dad died. It was a constant cycle of close family deaths. Then, I gave birth to my daughter in August 2023. I finished my degree when I was pregnant, but with motherhood and so many other things going on in my life, I just haven’t found time to get back into boxing.”

Despite not fighting herself, Thomas is still somewhat living the boxing life.

“My partner is a boxing coach, so I am still heavily involved in boxing,” Thomas relayed to me. “He’s got a pro stable called Tenacity and is currently training Gemma Richardson. Gemma has been living with us, so I have got to do some training with her, helping out on her runs and stuff. I think it’s just getting back into it. You know how hard you have to train and you just have to do the training. It’s finding that dedication again I guess.”

It is perhaps that day-to-day continued involvement in boxing that keeps Sadie Thomas having those thoughts of putting on the gloves to rekindle her love for competitive action once again.

“I would love to have a fight as a professional,” Thomas told me. “But I would have to go back to being an amateur again, so just to get my feet back into it. But honestly, I would love to. I say it all the time. I would love to make a comeback, but in reality, when you have got everything else going on in the background, it’s not that easy. But don’t rule out me coming back.”

Thomas is only 26. Yes, there are work and family commitments. In truth, substantial ones. But she is at an age where her time could quite easily come again. You sense Sadie Thomas has unfinished business with boxing and that she would like some kind of closure to her boxing story. As she says herself, don’t rule it out.