Maiseyrose Courtney: “It’s not that there isn’t anyone to fight. Nobody seems to want to put the fights on. That’s what the problem is.”

Maiseyrose Courtney: “It’s not that there isn’t anyone to fight. Nobody seems to want to put the fights on. That’s what the problem is.”

Maiseyrose Courtney had legitimate reasons for losing to Jasmina Zapotoczna last year. A fight that cost Courtney plenty. It cost her a shot at the European title. The unbeaten record was lost with it, but maybe it was the momentum that was lost that hurt Courtney the most. 

There were no excuses made, even though she could have. Courtney took the first defeat of her professional career with grace, class, and humility. A refreshing change from the usual avalanche of excuses that follow a defeat. “It happens. She beat me on the day,” Courtney simply said when I asked her about that fight last year with Zapotoczna. “She outboxed me. I wasn’t myself, and you just carry on.”

“You know what professional boxing is like,” Courtney added when I stated the obvious and said that defeat had cost her around a year of her career, just when she was on the verge of fighting for major titles. “As soon as you get a loss on your record, people think that’s it. You are done. But if anything, I have had more backing than I had before, from people who want to see me do well. But certain people can lose interest. It’s probably the best and worst thing that could have happened to me. It’s easy to be on a pedestal, thinking I will do this and do that. But then the reality of boxing and life happens, and then you get smacked in the face.”

Courtney has always held incredible self-belief, and the loss of her unbeaten hasn’t affected it.
“It didn’t affect my confidence in my boxing,” Courtney says. “I would say it didn’t affect my confidence in my ability either, because I knew I wasn’t 100%. I know I can do better. You would rather be in that position than go in there and be absolutely outclassed and not be good enough. That’s more heartbreaking. If anything, it gave me a slap around the face to sort myself out.

“In boxing, you have to turn up on the day, and if you don’t, you get beat. I made subtle changes, and I am now training solely with John Ryder. We work well together.”

Courtney was matched hard from the start of her professional career, but the defeat to Zapotoczna has seen a significant drop in the standard of opposition in her two fights since the fight that cost her so much momentum. The sort of opponents that Courtney could have fought in the first few fights of her professional career. “It’s really annoying,” Courtney says of those ‘comeback’ fights. “But if you look at my career, other than my first fight, maybe, I have never boxed a journeywoman. They kind of threw me in at the deep end. In my last two fights, I have had two six-rounders against proper journeywomen. But it’s good, because once you win again, people forget you have lost. And once people forget you have lost, you forget you have lost as well. It will always be there, of course, but the ball starts rolling again. I am just waiting for an opportunity and for someone to say yes to fight me for a title. That’s half the battle, really, waiting for people to pull their finger out of their bum and say yes to fight me. I’ll fight anyone. I have got nothing to lose now.”

Courtney says she will fight anyone, and she’s certainly in a division that has a plethora of options waiting for her. But with apparent waning interest from the bigger UK promoters, fights are incredibly hard to come by.  “At the moment, women’s boxing in the UK is the worst it has ever been,” Courtney says of the current situation. “There is no interest in it. There are very few UK shows to get on. It’s hard for a woman to box in Saudi. It has become a bit stagnant in the UK, I think boxing overall has in the UK. It is at a bit of a weird point.”

With no fight on the horizon, I asked Courtney if staying motivated was hard. “A little bit,” Courtney replied. “I haven’t got a fight date anytime soon. I have just had an injury, so that makes it ten times harder. So, at the moment, I am trying to make sure everything is perfect before we get going again. I tore a tendon in my hamstring in the first week of training camp. I was supposed to be fighting on May 17th at the Copper Box on the Johnny Fisher Dave Allen card. I’ll be ready for September, but if somebody told me I had a fight in two weeks’ time, I would have a go.

“It’s not that there isn’t anyone to fight. It’s just getting it sorted. Nobody seems to want to put the fights on. That’s what the problem is. Every female fighter I have spoken to recently is in the same boat.”

Courtney is correct when she says there are plenty of potential opponents out there for her. Chloe Watson, who also lost her unbeaten record to Jasmina Zapotoczna, is one of those options. It’s a fight that could already have happened.

“The day I boxed Jasmina was the day I was supposed to fight Chloe Watson, but she pulled out to have a warm-up fight. But then I took the Jasmina fight as a warm-up and kind of shot myself in the foot. Chloe called me out recently on social media, but not once have they contacted us about the fight. If they had reached out about a fight, she would know there are no dates, and she would have known I had been out injured.”

The Commonwealth flyweight champion Nicola Hopewell holds an amateur victory over the John Ryder-trained fighter, and Courtney has made no secret of her desire to get that win back in the professional ranks. Hopewell will challenge Marie Connan for her IBO flyweight bauble in July. Courtney has eyes on the winner. “I was actually supposed to fight that Marie Connan, but I would fight the winner of that one.”

“I would love the rematch with Jasmina,” Courtney added when I asked her if she would entertain another fight with the only fighter to have beaten her. But another domestic rival could also be in the immediate future of Maiseyrose Courtney.

“Laura Pain is something else,” Courtney told me. “She has been offered a fight with me. She said no in about 2023. I think when I was 3-0 or something, saying she wasn’t ready, which is fair enough, and it is a good thing that she is being looked after. Then she said no again because of an injury or something, and no, again, more recently because of another fight, and then two weeks later, she was saying that she wanted to fight me. So I don’t really understand it if I am being honest.”

“Ideally, the first one I would fight for a little sharpener is Laura Pain,” Courtney says of whom she would prefer to fight when she returns to the ring later this year. “Then I would fight either Chloe or Jasmina, but I think Chloe would be a good one because the winner would deserve the rematch then. I obviously think I would win and get the rematch, and then onwards and upward from there. I could win the European and then work my way up to mandatory and then fight for the undisputed world titles.”

Courtney was once a promising footballer. A pacey left winger, who had Crystal Palace chasing her. But an invitation to go for trials coincided with her being selected for England in the very same month in the sport that would define her. Despite all the recent turmoil, Maiseyrose Courtney can still appreciate what boxing gives her.

“If you take away the business side of boxing, it is the most beautiful thing in the world,” Courtney says about her sport of choice. “It’s so simple. Boxing takes away noise. If I am in a boxing gym, nothing is going on around me. You just get lost in that moment. I am not worried about anything else. It’s about why you started boxing and not where you want to get to or where you are now. I started boxing when I was 7. I didn’t have to start boxing; I did it because I love it. It’s easy to lose that mentality as you get older, when it becomes a job and people are putting targets on your back. I do it for that, really, and making sure the 7-year-old Maisey carries on doing what she loves.”

Photo Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing