Hannah Robinson: “I just want to walk away from the sport knowing I have done everything I can.”

Hannah Robinson: “I just want to walk away from the sport knowing I have done everything I can.”

It was the day after for Hannah Robinson. Less than twenty-four hours removed from her latest ring appearance. Robinson improved her resume to 5-0 on Saturday night with a commanding six-round points victory over the always reliable Beccy Ferguson.

Robinson was unmarked, showing no visible marks of her trade as we connected over Zoom. But inwardly, the body can feel a little different. “You feel quite tired because you don’t really sleep well the night after a fight,” Robinson told FightPost. “I am a lot better now. After my debut and the fight after, I didn’t sleep at all with all the adrenaline. You are still on a kind of a buzz and in and out of sleep. So the next day, I am always a bit tired. You can’t help thinking about the fight. It is also a big drop. A bit of a release after being in camp for 8-10 weeks.”

The win over Ferguson was another little step forward for the former two-time National amateur champion. “I am really pleased with my performance,” Robinson said of her previous night’s work. “I wanted to just relax in this fight. In the last two fights, it’s taken me two or three rounds to release my shoulders, get into it, and start using my reactions. It’s mad advice, but my coach said for this fight, I don’t want to see you with your hands up. I like to box with a low guard, but sometimes when I am a little nervous and I revert back to what I was taught in my amateur days, keeping my hands up, I get hit more because I can’t react. So he said, “I don’t want to see you with your hands up, I want to see you loose, on the balls of your feet, and reacting to what you see.” I did that, and after the first round, I knew I was loose, and I was ok.”

Robinson scored an early knockdown on her way to recording her fifth straight victory in the professional ranks. “I dropped her in the 2nd round. I timed my left hook well. She’s a southpaw, and she was kind of pawing out with her lead hand, and I came over the top with my left hook. That was working throughout the fight. She is a tough girl; I knew it didn’t really hurt her. It was just a left hook that was well-timed and knocked her off balance. So I knew she wasn’t hurt-hurt. It wasn’t a going for the finish sort of thing. Beccy is a tough girl, and you can tell when she is hurt because she comes at you with a few shots.”

Those five professional victories have all come on points, but once she starts fighting over eight rounds and more, Robinson believes she will get some inside the distance victories. “I think the stoppages will come when I do more rounds,” Robinson says. “I think I’ll be able to time them better as I get more relaxed. I don’t think it will come with raw power; it will be because of my speed and my timing.”

After a frustrating start to her professional run, with just two fights in 2024, Robinson has found more regular ring activity this year. The progression is obvious. “I had a slow start. I waited ages for my debut, and then the next one was a while after that. But now I am back training from home, and I have got that momentum behind me; I am improving in each fight now. I am showing more of my true colours now in each fight. I wanted to show what I am like in sparring on the big stage. I feel like I am doing that now. I have got the confidence to do that now. I think I will just keep getting better now.”

Robinson seems to be in a good place. Happy and content with life and how her career is going. The life of a professional boxer looks to be suiting her well. Life as an amateur boxer, especially one who competed at the highest level, can be brutal at times. A regime of constantly having to stay near your fighting weight can leave a severe toll on a fighter, physically and mentally. Robinson had those issues in her amateur days.

“They weigh you every day. You always have to be down on your weight, within a certain percentage of your weight, or it rules you out to be selected for certain tournaments. But you don’t know when those tournaments are. So it’s quite a competitive, stressful environment. I was always battling to be on weight. It’s definitely not healthy. There is a lot of stress which you don’t realise until you leave. You don’t realise how much stress you are under. My menstrual cycle stopped when I was on GB. I had low estrogen and stress fractures in my spine, which were caused by my low estrogen, as a result of over-training and under-fuelling. It took a lot of readjusting, but I am eating so much better now. I am in a good place now.”

Everything seems to be falling into place for Hannah Robinson after a frustrating 2024. After a little time away from the rigours of training, the 31-year-old will have fight number six before the end of the year. “I am back out on the 22nd November,” Robinson told me. “Hopefully, this one will be an eight-rounder. Next year, I want to be challenging for a title. So get an eight-rounder in next, and then challenge for a title in my first fight of 2026. We want someone who will bring a fresh set of challenges that I will learn from. We want someone who will come and have a go.

“I definitely want to challenge for some sort of title next year, either a British or a European. Even by the end of next year, if the opportunity presents itself and I am in the rankings, I want to challenge for those world titles, either by the end of next year or the year after.”

Robinson is moving into the next phase of her career. The next twelve months should see the North-East fighter move into the title picture. The business end of her career. A fighter who is comfortable fighting at either lightweight or super-lightweight. Robinson certainly has plenty of options going forward. There is even hope Robinson can land on an MVP card at some point in 2026. The unbeaten prospect once told me that she didn’t want to look back on her career and have regrets. That viewpoint still stands.

“I just want to walk away from the sport knowing I have done everything I can,” Robinson relayed to me. “I am lucky I have found a passion in life, doing something that I love. I want to do it as long as I can and do it to the best of my ability.”     

Photo Credit: Andy Futers