Mikaela Mayer: “There is a way to get me to Wales to fight Lauren Price, and it is a big number.”

Mikaela Mayer: “There is a way to get me to Wales to fight Lauren Price, and it is a big number.”

Life is very different now for Mikaela Mayer. Once starved of options. With no world title to her name, she was viewed as a fighter who was high risk and low reward. But Mayer kept knocking on the doors of opportunity, and when Sandy Ryan was tempted to defend her WBO world welterweight title last September in New York, she was back in the game and in a position of control. Mayer beat Ryan on a majority decision; six months later, she removed all doubt with a much clearer victory in Las Vegas. Mayer now had leverage.

With an undisputed fight at welterweight with Lauren Price not currently available to her, Mayer looked around for something else. The former unified world super-featherweight champion found what she needed at super-welterweight. On October 30th, Mayer crossed the Canadian border to challenge Mary Spencer for her WBA 154 bauble, and with the vacant WBC and WBO baubles also on the line, Mayer was now in full belt collection mode.

Mayer won a wide and dominant ten-round points decision over her incredibly brave Canadian opponent. “I watched the fight back last night, and I do look really strong,” an unmarked Mayer told me over Zoom.

“I look really healthy, even though 154 is not my weight. I still kept my speed and my strength. I was in kill mode. I remember thinking before the fight, I usually go in feeling my opponent out, using the jab, but I thought fuck the jab, I am going straight for the right hand. I did stay behind my double-jab throughout the fight, which I liked, but I wanted to land big shots because that is what we have been working on. I wanted to show my strength. I knew she was the bigger fighter; I didn’t want to be in there for ten rounds. I didn’t know how I was going to feel. In the first round, I did feel her power, and I thought I was definitely at 154 now. But that helped me stick to my game plan. You don’t want to stay on the outside at the end of someone like that. I didn’t want to stay at the end of her punches, so I just bit down and kept going forward. That’s what I love to do. That’s what I do best, and I was happy with my performance.”

A reflective Mayer looked back on that time in her career when her career was in a period of stagnation. A gut-wrenching, heartbreaking defeat to her bitter rival, Alycia Baumgardner, in 2022, left her on the outside looking in. “It was so hard on me because I was thinking, did I mess up my entire career.

“Boxing is so unforgiving because one loss, one little slip-up up can change your whole trajectory, and it did for me. But the type of person that I am, the fighter that I am, I didn’t let it discourage me, or get to me. I am back on top, and I feel better than ever. I didn’t expect my career to go this way, but I am content where it is, and I have learned a lot along the way. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s a great story. If I did have to hang my gloves up tomorrow, I would be proud. I think I have solidified my legacy in the sport. But that’s on paper; in my heart, there are still things I want to do in boxing. I definitely want to go undisputed, and I have a chance to do that in two divisions. I have no choice but to keep going and to finish this out.”

“I want my story to set a new standard when having a boxing career,” Mayer added. “One fight, one loss, shouldn’t end your career. It takes a lot of work to come back and get back on top. You have to have good people around you and stay strong mentally. It’s not easy. You have to block out the noise. I am proud of where I am now, and I want people to know that you can come back. A lot of people counted me out, so for me to come back this hard and this improved. I am 35, and fighting better than ever. I feel better than ever. There is no timeframe; people want to put a timeframe on our careers and tell us what to do and when to do it, but no, it’s up to you as a fighter. I think I am proof of that, and I hope that is good inspiration for everyone coming up.”

Despite moving up to 154, Mayer won a world title in a third weight division with relative ease. Mayer credits her trainer and a hard, gruelling training camp for her latest victory.

“Would I be able to carry my strength through ten rounds?” Mayer asked herself. “I do feel stronger, but it’s carrying more weight and more muscle, and those muscles need oxygen. But I was able to hold it out. I credit this to Kofi Jantuah. I have been in the gym for a long time. A long six months. I have got so much better. I knew the work we have been putting in has taken me to a whole new level. I give Kofi his props. He has pissed me off. He has no sympathy for me; he doesn’t think I work hard. I say I’m dead, I’m done, and he says I haven’t done shit. I feel like I was being gaslighted. But he kept pushing me and pushing me. Kofi brought out the best in me.

“Kofi had me working the left hook so much in camp. I didn’t start doing that until later in the fight, but when I did, Kofi was right. I was swinging the right and the left. Big hooks because she was open.”

With options in two separate weight divisions, thoughts now turn to what’s next. “My preference is whatever fight we can get done,” Mayer told me. “Lauren Price says she wants a tune-up fight early next year. That would normally bum me out, because I don’t want to wait, but I have this option at 154 also. It’s just important for me to stay busy. I want to fight early next year, and if Lauren Price wants a tune-up fight, that means I have to fight Oshae Jones.”

Jones is the IBF world super-welterweight champion, the one belt Mayer needs to complete her collection at her new weight. But Mayer and Jones are friends.

“Not good,” Mayer says when I ask how she feels about fighting someone she is close to.
“I love Oshae. I consider her a really good friend. We have had a lot of great times together. I still have to talk to her, to see where her heart and head are in that. But us women have to do what we have got to do. I think it is a great opportunity for both of us. We will get paid, and hopefully, she is on board, so we can get that done. If Lauren isn’t ready until the summer, then hopefully, Oshae is ready early next year.”

Mayer isn’t completely against the idea of going to Cardiff to fight Lauren Price, but she wants to be financially rewarded for doing so. “There is a way to get me to Wales to fight Lauren Price, and it is a big number. That’s on Ben Shalom. Otherwise, I don’t think my team will go for that, unless there is an incentive.”

“It sounds like Lauren doesn’t want to come over here, because we did have that fight done for last July, and whatever terms her team negotiated for her, she wasn’t down for it. I don’t know what part of the deal she specifically didn’t like, but they decided not to do it. Whether it was because it was in America, or the money wasn’t right, I don’t know. But from what I have collected online, it seems like she doesn’t want to fight over here. But, I get it, so where can we fight where it is neutral? If she wants a homecoming fight in Wales, she needs to beat me. She has to beat me first, which I don’t plan on letting her do. I think she would be happy if it were in London. I don’t want to fight too hard. I am easy to work with. I have always been game to go to someone’s home turf. I am not sitting here saying it absolutely has to be here in America, or I am not fighting her. But we will negotiate the best terms possible for us.”

Mikaela Mayer is back in pole position. On the front row of the grid. It looks highly unlikely that Lauren Price will be next; a summer showdown between the pair is far more realistic. An undisputed clash with her friend at 154 appears to be the fight that will get over the line early in the new year.

Mayer has shown impressive resilience over the past few years since Baumgardner took away so much from her in London. A broken fighter, who picked up the pieces of her career, and one who never stopped believing that things would change. She was right. They did.