Mikaela Mayer: “Coach Al has given me structure and allowed me to pursue my passion. He believed in me and never wanted anything from me. He just did his best for me.”

Mikaela Mayer: “Coach Al has given me structure and allowed me to pursue my passion. He believed in me and never wanted anything from me. He just did his best for me.”

It’s been a sixteen year working relationship. They came together in a different time. When the perception of women’s boxing was very different. Apathy. A lack of acceptance. Mikaela Mayer and her veteran and loyal coach Alfred Mitchell have formed a seemingly unbreakable bond.

“If you have read a few things, you will know I wasn’t going to work with Mikaela because she was a girl,” a brutally honest Mitchell told me over Zoom. “I came up with Joe Frazier and Jimmy Young and all those fighters. But she ended up being a hard worker, and she worked harder than 99% of the men. I am getting to like the women; there is no ducking like the old days in the 60s and the 70s when I came up. They didn’t duck anybody. They wanted the best fights so they could have that legendary name. But now, the men just duck each other. They are looking for the big paydays and the easy fights.”

The long relationship between fighter and coach has blossomed in so many ways since their initial introduction all those years ago. “You have to have that trust in your coach,” Mayer relayed to me. “Coach Al will tell me, he will shoot it straight. He’s certainly not worried about hurting my feelings.”

“Mikaela understands me,” Mitchell added. “She knows me. I will be honest with her, and I will tell her the truth. That’s important in any relationship.”

Mayer has represented her country in the 2016 Olympics and subsequently became a two-weight world champion in those sixteen years they have worked together. A resume that includes classic fights with the likes of Maïva Hamadouche, Natasha Jonas and Sandy Ryan. But there have been setbacks along the way. One heartbreaking moment stands out.

“The lowest point in my career, period, was losing to (Alycia) Baumgardner in 2022,” Mayer says. “It was so devastating to me. I always tell people if I didn’t have someone like Coach Al, who had been with me from the beginning, a good, strong team and a good promoter to help move me, I don’t know if I would have got out of it. It was hard to get through.”

Mayer has been a part of some of the greatest female fights of the modern era. A fact not lost on her coach, but her resilience also impresses Mitchell. “Mikaela has never been in a bad fight. A lot of people thought that in her two defeats, she won. I thought in the Natasha Jonas fight, I thought Mikaela won that fight easy. A lot of people would have quit, but Mikaela just kept stepping up. I have seen her mind mature.”

“The Hamadouche fight,” Mitchell adds when I enquire about his personal high point in their time together. “I will tell you why. Mikaela came out of her regular style of boxing and moving to fight toe-to-toe, and then she came back out in the later rounds to start boxing her and backing her up. It showed that she wasn’t a one-trick pony; she could do everything.”

Mitchell, who will turn 82 in a matter of days, has been in the sport for over sixty years, both as a fighter himself before moving into a subsequent highly successful coaching career. The veteran coach has been an important part of the life of Mikaela Mayer. The former teenage rebel who found a cause and a life in boxing is fully appreciative of what Mitchell has given her. “I was 19 when I met Coach Al,” Mayer says, “I was still young, doing all these crazy things, dating stupid guys, and doing stupid stuff. I was away from my family for a long time when I started with Coach Al, so he was like a father figure to me. Coach Al has given me structure and allowed me to pursue my passion. He believed in me and never wanted anything from me. He just did his best for me. It was a genuine relationship there. We both loved boxing, and we wanted to be the best at it. It’s natural and genuine.”

The working relationship will take it’s next chapter this week. The 35-year-old will look to add a world title in a third weight division when she challenges Mary Spencer for her WBA world super-welterweight title in Montreal on October 30th, in a fight that also has the vacant WBC and WBO 154 baubles on the line. Alfred Mitchell will again be in her corner. Inside and outside of the ring, that is unlikely to change.