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On Friday night at the Royal Albert Hall, there is a genuine super-fight between two British women when world champions Lauren Price and Natasha Jonas meet.
They will split a record purse for British women in any fight; the money they receive for their triple-title welterweight championship fight will probably be the third-highest purse ever paid to women. It will be history in that beautiful ancient venue.
It took a lot of years for women to get close to earning a million dollars for a fight. The first million-dollar fight between two women was meant to happen 20 years ago.
Christy Martin and Lucia Rijker finally agreed a complicated deal to fight in July of 2005 in Las Vegas. The deal, brokered by Bob Arum, meant that both would be guaranteed $250,000 and the winner would get an additional $750,000, and that made her a million-dollar lady; the film Million Dollar Baby was due for DVD release just a few days before the first bell.
Arum knew a trick or two or three. Rijker played the baddie in the film, the former German prostitute with a love of illegal punches in the boxing ring. It was a simple sell, trust me. Martin was fighting for Hollywood and American pride.
They were the biggest stars in the sport, different in so many ways. It was the grudge fight for real credibility that the sport needed. It was an ugly build; Rijker remained composed and said that the media loved Martin for her “dirty mouth”, and Martin went over the front foot with the insults and called Rijker “a steroid d***”. The truth is that they were both 37, the fight had been planned since 1998, and they had clashed several times. On one occasion in 2000, at an open training session, Rijker ended up with clumps of Martin’s hair in her fists.
Before the planned 2005 fight, Rijker was unbeaten in 17 contests with 14 knockouts and would never fight again; Martin had fought 50 times and was past her best, but still the sport’s No 1 female fighter. And then, with eight days left before the bell, Rijker was injured, and the fight was off. Martin still believes that Rijker was scared – it makes no difference, we lost the first million-dollar fight, and the sport needed it. Women’s boxing was an unholy carnival of lingerie models, kickboxers, cheerleaders, famous daughters and thugs back in the Nineties.
After Martin and Rijker vanished in a bad puff, it took another 17 years before Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano crashed through the seven-figure barrier when they sold out Madison Square Garden in 2022. The pair made even more last November in Texas, in their rematch; a third fight in Dublin this summer would break all records.
Price and Jonas are, I believe, now in third place on the cash list and their fight is exceptional.
Jonas has won five different versions of the world title at two weights and lost in fights at two other weights. She was a 2012 Olympian; she then retired and watched the 2016 Olympics from her house. She returned to the ring and fought her way up from nowhere. At one point, Jonas had won nine of her first 12.
Price won Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021, turned pro and in May 2023 won the first British women’s title fight in professional boxing history, becoming welterweight champion and the first woman to receive a Lonsdale Belt. She won the WBA welterweight title last year in just her seventh fight, and has never lost a round in eight professional bouts.
The winner remains in the race to get the call for Taylor’s last dance at some point this summer. It will probably be Serrano, but stranger things have happened. Taylor narrowly outpointed Jonas in a world title fight in 2021; two judges separated the pair by just one point on the night. Also, Taylor against Price would be Olympic gold vs gold, and that is still rare in the boxing business.
On Friday night, which is an all-women’s bill, the pair will be led to the ring through a corridor of the best female boxers from then and now. Price is 10 years younger, Jonas has 10 more years of experience; if either one wins easily, it will be impressive.
The Jonas and Price fight is everything that looked impossible back in the bad old days when Rijker and Martin talked about fighting, slapped each other and threw insults about. The noisy sidelines back then, with Arum and Don King goading the pair, added to the fight’s freakshow feel.
This is real, two of the best, both champions at the same weight and fighting inside an iconic venue. There is a rumour that Martin will be ringside and that would be fitting, a woman from boxing’s dark ages watching the golden future.
