Ellie Bouttell: “I rate Fran very highly. I am excited to fight her.”

Ellie Bouttell: “I rate Fran very highly. I am excited to fight her.”

Ellie Bouttell is about to have the biggest fight of her career to date. The Nottinghamshire-born 29-year-old will travel to the Copper Box Arena in London this Saturday to take on the unbeaten Francesca Hennessy in a final eliminator for the WBC world bantamweight title. A fight of real importance to both fighters and their world title aspirations.

Bouttell, also unbeaten, was on the other side of the world when we connected over Zoom. “China is half my home, really,” Bouttell told me over Zoom. “I went to school here for a while; my dad worked in China when I was growing up. I did a couple of years in high school in Beijing when I was 15. I carried on studying Chinese at university. I kind of fell in love with the language. I wanted to speak the best level of Chinese I possibly could. The best way to do that was come back to China. I have spent a lot of time over here. The rest of the story has sort of unfolded from there.”

Boxing wasn’t her first sport. “Powerlifting was the first sport I got into,” Bouttell says. But the sport she now resides in, somewhat by chance, found her. “The first time I walked into a boxing gym was when I was at university. It was like a random choice. It was something to do to improve my cardio. I walked into the university boxing trials, thinking I would give this a go. I completely fell in love with boxing. That was when I was a lot younger. The first time I put on a pair of boxing gloves was when I was 21. I tend to take things to an extreme level, I guess.”

The bantamweight hopeful was just a few days away from the long-haul travel that awaited her. “It’s a long flight. Fifteen hours,” Bouttell said. Clearly not looking forward to the journey back to the UK. But time spent in the sky has a potential golden reward for her. “I am excited. a new chapter. All my fights have been in Asia so far. Coming back to the UK will be a whole different arena, and I am really excited for it. Nervous, obviously. It’s a step up for me. But I am ready.”

Bouttell is now eight fights into her professional career after a 22-fight amateur run that included winning the Winter Box Cup. She turned professional in 2023 with a split draw on her debut, but has won eight fights since, including a win in December against Chisakan Ariphipat that earned Bouttell the WBC Far East super-bantamweight title. But despite the unbeaten start to her professional career and a lofty world ranking, Bouttell is still going under the radar and isn’t yet known to the boxing masses. “Hopefully, it’s an advantage,” Bouttell says. “It’s the way the world works. You have social media channels, and the way people get their information and follow the athletes. Until now, I have been operating in an Asian sort of sphere. I am intrigued by what the aftermath of this fight will look like.”

Hennessy and Boutell could have fought already. “We were actually offered the fight in October, but the timing wasn’t quite right. I was back in the UK for my brother’s wedding, and I didn’t want to take a fight at short notice. I just said to them, stay in touch, we would love this fight, and they reached out again. A lot of respect to Fran Hennessy’s team because they could have picked an easier opponent. Fran wants to challenge herself, and that is the sign of a great athlete.”

“I rate Fran very highly,” Bouttell added. “I am excited to fight her. The better the opponent, the better it is for me. I am in this for the long run, and the thing that drives me is to box to the very best of my ability. Boxing allows me to push myself. I am looking forward to the fight and seeing what it brings out in the both of us.”

Despite being the selected opponent for the fighter in the ‘home’ corner, the odds are close enough to suggest a competitive fight. Bouttell is the betting outsider, but not by much, and she is confident of upsetting the odds. “You should be confident of victory, going into a fight. I feel the same way going into this fight as I do all my fights. Anything can happen, and I respect my opponent, and I don’t treat anyone lightly. I am looking forward to seeing what I can deliver on the night. Boxing is an entertainment sport, and the more someone pushes you, the more entertaining the fight is.”

A victory of Hennessy could catapult Ellie Bouttell to a world title fight, something that has been the aim for a long time. “I put myself through hell in fight camps. The reason we do that is that we always aimed to fight at a world level. Winning a world title would be a great thing to deliver to my team.”