Rhiannon Dixon: “I’ll fight anyone. I want to get back to world level as soon as possible.”

Rhiannon Dixon: “I’ll fight anyone. I want to get back to world level as soon as possible.”

“I’m allowed to walk without my crutches now,” the opening words of Rhiannon Dixon. A simple response, but equally a sign of significant progress of an injury that forced the cancellation of her ‘comeback’ fight in March. A broken bone in her foot derailed the return of a fighter looking to be a two-weight world champion.

“I started doing hill sprints, and my red zone runs were also hill sprints. So I think I was just doing too much running and being too heavy.” Dixon says of what caused the injury that subsequently required surgery.

“I’m still getting a bit of pain,” Dixon adds. “I get pins and needles if I have been on it for a long time. It was last Friday when I was allowed to go full weight bearing. But my physio and consultant said don’t just get rid of your crutches. Use them sporadically. So I’ve been training without them and walking around with them after training. But it’s getting better now.”

The last few weeks have seen the former world lightweight champion wearing a protective boot. But her training hasn’t stopped. Just adjusted. Clips of her sitting on a box working the pads have done the rounds. With full weight bearing, training will only intensify in the coming weeks as her return to the ring edges ever closer.

“I hope to be back fighting sometime in the summer, around August or September,” Dixon told me. “I am trying everything I can. As soon as I was told I could put my weight on it again, I was on the bike. I have been doing the pads today.”

After losing her WBO world lightweight title and her unbeaten record to Terri Harper last September, Dixon was scheduled to make her return last month. The first tentative steps on the road to a world title at a second weight.

“It was so frustrating having to pull out of the fight,” the Warrington fighter relayed to me. “I was so annoyed and disappointed with my last performance. It was a chance to get the ball rolling again. So, to be told just four weeks out from the fight, that it was a really bad injury and the injury needed surgery, I was just gutted. It was disappointing, but there was nothing I could do in that situation.”

Dixon will return at super-featherweight later this year. A new weight that holds no fears for her. “There was never ever a problem making weight. Ever since I got with Carl Evans, my nutritionist, he said I should be fighting at super-featherweight. But I was getting opportunities at lightweight.”

“I’ll fight anyone,” Dixon says. “I want to get back to world level as soon as possible. I need good learning fights, because I skipped a chapter. I only had one eight-rounder, and then I went straight to ten-round title fights. I obviously learned a lot in those fights, but I still believe I missed out on a lot of learning because I was catapulted into those title fights.”

The word that was a common theme right through our Zoom interview was enjoy. Always incredibly self-critical of her performances, Dixon couldn’t really appreciate what she had achieved. A handful of white-collar fights and just ten fights as a professional, she had no real right to be winning world titles. But she did.

“I feel like I didn’t appreciate winning the world title,” a reflective Dixon told me. “I was always thinking about what’s next. Who’s next? Even when I won it, I couldn’t even enjoy it. I was just thinking, is it Caroline Dubois next? I was always focused on what the next goal was, and I didn’t really enjoy that moment. I then went straight into the fight with Terri. A fight I genuinely believed I could win. It didn’t work out for me, but I will have to live with it. But I will learn from it. But this time, I just want to enjoy it. I think last time I took it for granted a little, when people asked me what it felt like to be a world champion, I said it doesn’t feel like anything. I just want what’s next. The next time I’m a world champion, when I win a world title, I am going to enjoy it and act like a world champion and not like an underdog all the time.”

The injury has obviously delayed her hopes of a second reign as a world champion. “I thought I would be a world champion again this year. But with my foot, it has kind of set me back a bit. I might now only get two fights in this year.”   

Rhiannon Dixon turned 30 earlier this month. A new decade has begun. Another stage in her boxing career also. The American Alycia Baumgardner holds all the belts at 130, but at some point in the next twelve months, Baumgardner will surely seek pastures new, and her undisputed baubles will splinter, and Dixon, after a couple of fights, could be perfectly placed to fight for one of those vacant titles. An unlikely story could have a little more glitter added to it at some point in 2026.  

Photo Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing