Shelby Lee: “I am very happy with what I did in my amateur career. I achieved quite a lot, and I am ready to do that as a pro.”

Shelby Lee: “I am very happy with what I did in my amateur career. I achieved quite a lot, and I am ready to do that as a pro.”

The professional ranks will get a little deeper in the coming months. Another elite female talent will be making her professional debut before the year ends. After a 35-fight amateur career that included winning two national titles, a gold medal at last year’s Haringey Box Cup, a silver medal at the European championships, and a plethora of other notable achievements, a new world is awaiting her. Shelby Lee has signed with Johnny Clark of Top Tier Promotions, and her decision to leave the amateur ranks behind has been a long time coming.

“I wanted to turn pro a while ago,” Lee told FightPost over Zoom. “A lot of people around me were turning pro. I know it’s a hard game, same as the amateurs. But I wanted to give it a shot. I felt as though I was ready. I went into my studies and did four years in university. So I dedicated all that time to building up in the amateurs because I couldn’t give any more training time. But once I had finished my studies, I felt ready to go. I had been in the amateurs a long time. I have been training since I was 7, and fighting since I was 10.”

The 23-year-old is satisfied with her amateur accomplishments, despite a feeling that she could have won even more titles. “I would love to have achieved more and been more into the GB team. I had a bit of bad luck through Covid, and it put me back a bit. When I was studying, I had a few bad decisions. But I am very happy with what I did in my amateur career. I achieved quite a lot, and I am ready to do that as a pro. I was kind of losing the joy in the amateurs in the end.”

“I feel the whole amateur game has changed,” Lee went on to say. “Taking decisions from kids. I am an adult, but seeing kids get robbed bugged me more. We can deal with it a bit better, but I fell out of love with it because the whole thing changed. I was ready to turn over and do something different.”

The application to turn professional has started. The next Top Tier show is scheduled to be at the end of October; Lee is hoping her British Boxing Board of Control license will be approved in time to allow her to make her debut at the York Hall. Lee will fight in and around the light-flyweight or flyweight divisions. At flyweight especially, Lee will have options available to her domestically.

Lee is likely to find herself in title contention reasonably quickly. But she understands it needs to be at the right time. “I want to be moved fairly quickly,” Lee told me. “I feel I can move fast. But I have no need to rush it. I am in boxing for the long game; I don’t want to be out of it by the time I am 27. I’ll probably be like Floyd Mayweather and still boxing when I am 40. I’m only 23; I don’t have to rush. I can take my time. I don’t want to shoot through too quickly. I want to learn. I want to do everything the right way.”

“Ellie Scotney is a big inspiration to me,” Lee added. “I know that is a long way ahead, but seeing her go undisputed, someone I boxed alongside in the amateurs, achieve such great things, is just amazing.”

It was perhaps always somewhat inevitable that boxing would be a part of her life. “I come from a travelling family, so boxing is in the family,” Lee relayed to me. “My two elder brothers boxed. My dad taught them how to box, just mucking about with them at home. When I was 7, I was begging to go. They looked at me as though I was a little princess. I was told when I was 10, I would be taught how to box. On my 10th birthday, I rang Gary, my current coach, and asked if he was going to teach me how to box. And that was that.”

Boxing has dramatically changed the course of Shelby Lee’s life. Without it, her life could have been very different. “It is my life. I see kids who I grew up with just get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. They do the same thing every single day. I am not like that at all. Everything I have done in boxing has sent me down a different path. I didn’t get into trouble. I didn’t go down any dark path. I was too busy training and competing. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

Shelby Lee could be one of those dark horses on her side of the sport. It could be another masterstroke of a signing for Clark. Megan Redstall, another flyweight, is part of the Top Tier family and is coming off a career-best win over Maiseyrose Courtney. Lee will hope her career follows a similar path to Redstall in the coming years.