Kofi Jantuah: “It will be interesting, but I see Mikaela dominating Chantelle. Maybe even stopping her in the later rounds.” 

Kofi Jantuah: “It will be interesting, but I see Mikaela dominating Chantelle. Maybe even stopping her in the later rounds.” 

The fighting career of Kofi Jantuah ended seventeen years ago. Born in Ghana, Jantuah built up a more than solid career, including a couple of attempts at winning a world title. But once his gloves were hung up, a brand new career began. “I stopped fighting in 2009, and then I transitioned into training the following year,” Jantuah told me over Zoom.

The three-division world champion Mikaela Mayer is now part of his stable. Mayer and Jantuah hooked up just before the first fight with Sandy Ryan in 2024. Mayer was already twenty-odd fights into her career when she started working with Jantuah. Despite being a former unified world super-featherweight champion, Jantuah saw plenty of room for improvement with his new fighter.

“When Mikaela came, she already had a pedigree,” Jantuah told me. “But she was lacking certain technicalities. My main thing with a fighter is that they can do different things in the ring. Not just one thing. I train fighters to be diverse. To move forward. Move backwards. Fight when they have to. I am more of a technical person, so that my fighters can be perfect on many different levels. To adjust to different styles and to throw punches in different situations. These days, you don’t see a lot of that. I train my fighters to understand boxing.”

“Mikaela was a one-dimensional fighter,” Jantuah added. “If you look at her fights, she liked to be on the front foot, just coming. If you box someone who is good and able to move and hit hard, that is a danger. A front-foot fighter. Not very defensive. When I first started training her, I tried to change her, but it’s hard because when they have been fighting a long time, they are set in their ways. So, gradually, I started to make her more balanced and not just lean on one side. Do something that she isn’t used to doing, move back, move her head, slip, and jab. Don’t just fight, work on her boxing ability. Gradually, she started to understand that.”

Mayer has become a much better all-round fighter under Jantuah. The American has talked about how much harder she is punching now. “Power is my expertise,” Jantuah says. “To be effective, you have to get someone’s attention in a fight. If you throw 100 punches when someone is right in front of you, it means you don’t know how to sit down on your punches or rotate to get an effective punch. So I worked on that with Mikaela. I put her through the drills, and she started to understand it.”

The first training camp for the pair was a crucial one. Mayer had lost controversially to Alycia Baumgardner and Natasha Jonas, and Mayer knew she couldn’t afford a third career defeat when she challenged Sandy Ryan for her WBO world welterweight title in 2024. It was an embryonic partnership, and Jantuah was careful not to change too much too soon.

“The first Sandy Ryan fight, we spent about two months together. The plan was to outwork her. Outmanoeuvre her. In that short space of time, it was hard to enforce too many changes that cloze to a fight. I wanted her to avoid more punches and be a bit more of a counterpuncher.”

Mayer beat Ryan on a majority decision in September 2024, but won far more clearly in the rematch six months later. Jantuah, after two wafer-thin defeats, wanted Mayer to leave no room for doubt in future fights. “For the second fight, I knew what Sandy was bringing. We now knew what she was capable of. We prepared for that, and it made a big difference in the second fight.

“I told her that in some of her fights, she allowed her opponent to hit her back a little too often. So it looks like it’s more even. A back-and-forth type of fight. So they could give it to her opponent. When I started training her, she was coming off those two losses. She did well, and they could have gone her way. But they didn’t give it to her. I told Mikaela I don’t want any close fights. We will go into fights where everyone can see that you won. You have to make it clear. You don’t score points and then give them back. You have to hit them and not let them hit you back. In the second Sandy Ryan fight, she overwhelmed her with volume and power.”

Mayer hasn’t recorded a stoppage victory since 2019, something which her coach wants to change. “I am now working on her to close the fight. So that when she hurts people, she will be able to finish them.”

Jantuah and Mayer have spent three training camps together. The two fights with Sandy Ryan and the one with Mary Spencer late last year in Canada. A victory that gave Mayer a world title in a third weight category. But Jantuah wants even more from his fighter.

“Mikaela has a lot of room to improve,” Jantuah says. “She is adapting to a lot of things I am teaching. Before, she was just fighting. But now she understands every move she makes. That is allowing her to adjust to the things that I have been teaching her.”

Mikaela Mayer will return to UK soil on August 29th in a big world super-welterweight showdown against Chantelle Cameron in Birmingham. Cameron is a former undisputed world super-lightweight champion and is the only fighter to defeat Katie Taylor in the pro ranks. Cameron has to be respected, but Jantuah believes that Mayer will not only win, but will do so inside the distance.

“I have been studying Chantelle a lot,” Mayer relayed to me. “She is decent, but right now, Mikaela is on a different level when it comes to the technicalities and the boxing. It will be interesting, but I see Mikaela dominating Chantelle. Maybe even stopping her in the later rounds.”   

Time will tell if Jantuah is proven right in Birmingham. A fight that has three 154 baubles on the line. But win, lose, or draw against Cameron, Kofi Jantuah, alongside Al Mitchell, has got Mayer in the form of her life. And if Jantuah gets his way, Mayer will get even better.