Natasha Jonas: “In the moments after losing to Obenauf, we were both crying in the car on the way home. I know he felt it as much as I did. Joe just cares.”

Natasha Jonas: “In the moments after losing to Obenauf, we were both crying in the car on the way home. I know he felt it as much as I did. Joe just cares.”

It’s been 25 years since Joe Gallagher started training professional fighters. It’s been a journey full of world champions. The former Ring Magazine Trainer of the Year has enjoyed an almost constant stream of success over the years.

The two-division world champion Natasha Jonas has been a constant in the Gallagher Gym since she returned to the sport in 2017. Jonas had retired after a highly successful amateur career, but decided to turn professional at the age of 32.

“When I was coming back into boxing, I didn’t know how good I was,” Jonas told FightPost as to why she chose Gallagher to guide her pro career. “I needed someone who had taken fighters past the point that they thought they could reach.”

Gallagher has trained the likes of Callum Smith, Liam Smith, Anthony Crolla, Scott Quigg and many others over the past two decades. A stable with a never-ending supply of world champions. “I think his biggest strength is his attention to detail,” Jonas says. Which explains why so many fighters turn to Gallagher.

A defeat can often prompt a fighter to look elsewhere for a trainer. It’s always seemingly the coach who gets the blame when a fighter suffers a loss on their resume. But Jonas, despite several defeats along the way to her world titles, always stayed loyal to Gallagher.

“In the moments that it hasn’t gone right, or it hasn’t worked, it was through no fault of Joe’s,” Jonas says of why she never left Gallagher. “It was things that I hadn’t done properly. We were both on a journey together. We were both learning. Some people think that they have been there, done it, and know everything. And that they don’t have to keep updating their knowledge and taking on new information that will help them get better. Joe is continually trying to improve himself. He has targets he wants to reach. It’s not only about the fighter reaching their targets, but it’s also about Joe reaching his.”

Jonas was unbeaten in 2018, and apparently on her way to a showdown with Katie Taylor when she suffered a shocking stoppage defeat to Viviane Obenauf in Wales. A time in her career that is still vivid to the Liverpool fighter. “In the moments after losing to Obenauf, we were both crying in the car on the way home. I know he felt it as much as I did. Joe just cares.”

That defeat to the unfancied Obenauf was expected to be the end of the Natasha Jonas story. But Jonas regrouped with Gallagher still by her side and won multiple world titles in her career. Jonas unified in the welterweight and super-welterweight ranks, before losing her welterweight titles to Lauren Price in March of last year.

But before that glorious Indian Summer in her career, things were a little different for her. After failing to get her hand raised in world title fights against Terri Harper and Kate Taylor, Jonas was in a case of now or never when she moved up to super-welterweight to fight Chris Namus for the vacant WBO 154-pound title early in 2022 in Manchester. A third setback on the world stage would have left ‘Miss GB’ with no choice but to walk away with her career unfulfilled. But Jonas made it third time lucky when she stopped Namus in two rounds, a moment that stands out for both trainer and fighter. “I think Joe felt the pressure as much as I did. We were both just relieved when I finally won that world title.”