Mikaela Mayer: “I want Chantelle next. Let’s finish what we started.”

Mikaela Mayer: “I want Chantelle next. Let’s finish what we started.”

It was another night of disappointment on UK soil for Mikaela Mayer. A third straight defeat in world title fights in England. What happened previously in London and Liverpool occurred again in Birmingham on Saturday night against Chantelle Cameron in their world super-welterweight unification showdown. Cameron defeated Mayer on points in a thoroughly absorbing ten quality rounds.

“I’m ok,” Mayer told FightPost over Zoom. “I’m good. I have so much experience losing now,” Mayer smiled as she uttered those words. “But before, I let the lights turn off, and I go into my shell, and I got depressed. This time, I forced myself to make that post on Sunday. Make a post, get back out there. And it helped so much. It shows I wasn’t hiding.”

“I felt bad,” Mayer says of her post- fight reaction when she exchanged heated words with her opponent. “I didn’t want to respond that way. When the decision was announced, and they brought me the microphone, I told myself to say I was excited for the rematch; I would watch the fight again, and I would give myself an honest opinion. But then I heard her talking shit on the mic; it made me mad. It triggered me. She was talking shit, and I lost my cool.

“My corner was acting like I had won. I thought I had won, but I knew it was close. But with my corner saying I had won, then ok, I had won. I wasn’t going to go on the mic and say I beat her. I was going to say I would go away, watch the fight, give myself an honest opinion, and fix my mistakes. But when I heard her talking shit, it pissed me off so much. She was saying I played with her. She didn’t play with me. It just pissed me off. So when I woke up, I knew I shouldn’t have acted like that; I was wrong in how I acted. But in hindsight, if you watched it, it was Chantelle who was acting like a fool. Like she swept the floor with me. She didn’t do that.”

We spent nearly thirty minutes on Zoom on Monday evening. Only forty-eight hours removed from that defeat at the hands of Cameron. Mayer was in a reflective mood, still trying to process why and how she suffered her third career defeat.

“The whole camp we were boxing, boxing, boxing,” Mayer told me. “The game plan was off. I don’t think we worked enough on the inside. We worked more on the boxing, but I knew the fight would go on the inside. But you still have to train it. I was in limbo with what I was going to do. Either box her or bang with her. I know I can do both, but you still have to practice it.”

Mayer landed in the UK late on Monday evening of fight week. While adjusting her body clock, Mayer had to endure a relentless week of never-ending media obligations. But the American didn’t offer that as a possible reason for her setback against Cameron. “There are no excuses there. I felt fine.”

But Mayer thinks ring rust might have played a part. It was her first fight in ten months. “I thought about that,” Mayer says. “Maybe there was. The game plan doesn’t matter so much, because I usually let my hands go and fly free. There was a little too much hesitation on my part. Maybe that’s ring rust. I don’t know because I have never had it before. But the hesitation might be a component of ring rust. That might have been what cost me in the first half of the fight.”

“I have a new coach; I have learned so much, but it’s how I put it together,” Mayer went on to say. “I just didn’t put it all together. I didn’t put it together the way I wanted to. Like I say, I was in a bit of limbo. Should I be advancing? Should I be boxing? I am learning so much. I feel better than ever. But you have to practice those things. I feel like I am reborn. But I need to practice more of what I’m learning. It wasn’t my best night. I have all the tools; I just have to figure out how best to use them. It was a strategy problem.”

The loss to Cameron, Mayer doesn’t put down to underestimating her opponent. “No, she wasn’t better than I thought. The only thing that surprised me was that she didn’t pressure me as much as I thought she would. I thought she would be more in my face.”

Mayer is already in rematch mode. Already thinking of what to change for the contractual rematch. “I have to go and rewatch it, and fix the little mistakes. I worked a lot on my boxing in this camp. I am usually a good inside fighter, but I didn’t really have any inside sparring work. I looked past that, because I know how to do that. So we didn’t really work on that. Chantelle probably won on the inside, and that’s my game. That’s where I do my best work. I have to remember my roots. Do different things. We are not that far off. Little strategic changes.”

Mayer and Cameron are due to fight again. The obligatory rematch clause was in play. Immediately after the fight, both fighters expressed a desire to do it again. But Cameron and Claressa Shields have already exchanged pleasantries on X, suggesting that they could fight each other next. “The rematch is so set in stone,” Mayer relayed to me. “She can’t dodge it. Claressa can fight the winner. But Chantelle and I will probably end up doing a trilogy.”

Mayer understands boxing doesn’t run in straight lines, and knows things can change. “Ideally, I want to honour the rematch and fight Chantelle again,” Mayer added. “But if she doesn’t want to fight me and fight Claressa, I would obviously try to get that Lauren Price fight. I will leave that up to my team. But it will either be Chantelle Cameron or Lauren Price next. But I want Chantelle next. Let’s finish what we started.

The first fight was fought over two-minute rounds, but Cameron has already said any rematch would be over three-minute rounds. A stipulation that Mayer would agree to. “If she wants to vacate her WBC belt, we’ll do three-minute rounds. I don’t give a fuck. I am not scared of doing three-minute rounds; I just didn’t want to vacate my WBC title. I didn’t want to just give up that title for the first fight.”

In many ways, Mikaela Mayer has been here before. Coming off a defeat, hoping the rematch comes her way. For entirely different reasons, Mayer never got a second fight with Baumgardner or Jonas. She hopes now that it really is third time lucky.

Photo Credit: Most Valuable Promotions