Shannon Rose: “Boxing gives me a lot of discipline, drive, and courage.”

Shannon Rose: “Boxing gives me a lot of discipline, drive, and courage.”

Many fighters find boxing after trying their hand elsewhere in the sporting landscape. Shannon Rose is another to add to that list. The Australian was just looking for something different. She found what she was looking for in boxing.

“I started boxing about five years ago,” Rose told FightPost over Zoom. “It was just out of wanting a new hobby. I previously had a dance career and started teaching dancing, and then I realised dancing was just work. So, I thought I would try something new. Boxing was something my brother was taking up, and I very quickly fell in love with it.”

With a family connection to her sport of choice, it was always perhaps somewhat inevitable that the 26-year-old would go down the same path. “My family had a previous history with boxing; my grandfather was a professional boxer,” Rose relayed to me. “When he was younger, so I thought it was something I could potentially pursue. I dabbled with training for a while, and then moving interstate gave me the opportunity to take my boxing further and start my professional career, and then I went all in.”

The Warrnambool-born fighter recently had her first taste of ring action. Last month, Rose made her professional debut. A losing effort over four hard and competitive rounds against the unbeaten Alana Moussa at the Melbourne Pavilion, Kensington.

“It was good,” Rose says of the fight with Moussa. “It was definitely an experience. When I got offered the fight, I was actually training in bodybuilding. I had moved interstate, so I thought I would give boxing a little rest, and I was bodybuilding. So, I had to quickly turn that all around and go into a full fight camp. It was quite intense, just thirteen weeks trying to get ready for a fight. It was my first time stepping into a boxing ring competitively. It was a big eye-opener, but I loved it. I loved being under the lights. I loved being in the ring and hearing the crowd. I loved everything about it.

“It was a good thirteen weeks. Training multiple times a day. But then, to get inside that ring and see what I was able to do in such a short period of time, I am now excited to see what I can achieve continuing on from the last fight.”

Despite the reversal, the middleweight hopeful has no plans to walk away. If anything, it is the complete opposite. “I would love to get back in there. Having that first fight taught me what adrenaline does during a fight. It obviously changes the way everything feels, both mentally and physically. Getting in there and getting that mad rush is addictive.

“I have just moved to the Gold Coast so I can continue boxing and have more access to sparring. I have just started with the Opetaia Boxing Club in Bundall, and they have taken me on as one of their fighters. We are pretty much going back to the drawing board, training, and working with new coaches. We’re going back to basics, all old-school. Hopefully, we’ll get another fight soon, but we are not in any rush at the moment with all of the changes.”

Rose is still relatively new to her craft. But already, there are ambitions of fighting on the biggest stage possible. “Long-term, I would love a big-name promotion to take me on and become one of their fighters. But at this stage, it’s about becoming that full-time athlete. I am training full-time, so I am getting my feet back on the ground, and hopefully, I can work my way towards a big-name promoter.”

“It is hard,” Rose added when I enquired how difficult it is to make ends meet as an aspiring full-time boxer. “I was a hairdresser, but now, I am doing a little modelling on the side, so that is allowing me to do boxing full-time.”

The harshness of her sport doesn’t seem to deter Rose. “Boxing gives me a lot of discipline, drive, and courage. But discipline is the number one, I would say. You have days when everything is hurting, and the training feels like too much, but you have to keep coming back and turning up for sessions and keep doing what needs to be done.”       

Shannon Rose can be immensely proud of her story so far. The professional debut didn’t go her way, but there is context to that defeat. A limited time to prepare, in many ways, Rose was up against it. But her performance gives her hope that next time it will be very different.