Nina Hughes: The Last Dance

Nina Hughes: The Last Dance

The recent retirement call Nina Hughes made always had a touch of the inevitable about it. The last dance against the Kenyan Nicholine Achieng summed up much of the latter part of the career of the former WBA world bantamweight champion. In simple terms, it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Achieng, a fighter with an unflattering record of (4-11-1), gave Hughes a tough night at the office last Sunday at the York Hall. Hughes scraped home by a solitary point. A close call, and Hughes had to pick herself off the canvas to record her seventh and final professional victory. The manner of that victory convinced Hughes her time was up.

Hughes thought she had one big fight left in her. Unfinished business with Shannon Courtenay was on her mind, but the close call against an opponent who wasn’t supposed to push her that hard told Hughes everything she needed to know.

‘Halfway through the fight, I realised something. I didn’t really want to be in there. The hunger and desire just wasn’t there like it used to be.’ The words of Hughes in her emotional and honest retirement post.

Hughes also cited her inactivity over the last few years, which cost her career momentum and so much more. That famous win over the American Jamie Mitchell in 2022 to win the WBA bauble was a career highlight. Eddie Hearn and Matchroom came calling. It looked like a move that would take Hughes to another level. In truth, it did anything but. A proposed fight with Courtenay never happened for a variety of reasons. Ebanie Bridges, the IBF champion at the time, was another fight Hughes chased. But it didn’t quite happen for Hughes. There was only one fight under the Matchroom banner, a routine defence of her world title against Katie Healy, before a somewhat frustrating parting of the ways. Hughes didn’t have time to waste. That period of her career was very much a missed opportunity. It cost Hughes time that she couldn’t get back.

Two fights with Cherneka Johnson followed her Matchroom exit. Two fruitless trips to Australia. Hughes was more than unlucky when she lost her world title to Johnson in 2024 in highly controversial circumstances. I had Hughes winning, but the judges disagreed. The rematch in March was far more conclusive. It was surprisingly one-sided, and Hughes admitted to me that she was likely to retire. But Hughes gave it one last go before the acceptance came that her days in the sun were now over.

At 42, Nina Hughes can walk away with her head held high. After turning professional in 2021, time was perhaps her toughest opponent. Hughes was 39 when she beat Klaudia Ferenczi on points at that iconic York Hall. Where her professional career started was where it ended. But Hughes made the best of that limited time. A win over Tysie Gallagher that earned her the vacant Commonwealth bantamweight title in just her third fight. A victory that looks even better now. Just two fights later, Hughes travelled to Dubai to beat Jamie Mitchell in a massive upset. It should have brought more, but the politics of her sport sadly conspired against her.