Caroline Dubois steeling herself for double celebration

Caroline Dubois is planning a combined celebration of her 24th birthday and the first defense of her WBC lightweight title.

At the Park Community Arena in Sheffield, England, on the undercard of Callum Simpson-Steed Woodall, she will fight as a world champion for the first time.

Saturday is also her 24th birthday, and became even more significant when the WBC elevated her to the status of its full champion.

Where once Dubois was becoming frustrated with Katie Taylor retaining the undisputed lightweight title, she can make a statement as a champion for the first time against Canada’s Jessica Camara. Dubois – who takes confidence from the fact that Muhammad Ali and George Foreman are also Capricorns – in the event of victory can also lay the foundations for the most successful year of her promising career.

“It’s a nice little birthday present,” she told BoxingScene. “I get to kill two birds with one stone. Do a nice little celebration – afterwards I’ll be able to go somewhere nice to eat and hopefully somewhere with my family and friends.

“In terms of fighting on my birthday, it’s not really an issue. It’s just about locking in a little bit, because there ain’t no way [I can accept it if I] put on a bad performance. I need to put on a good performance for the fans, and now for myself. 

“It’s actually been very low-key. Obviously Shane [McGuigan, my trainer] and the people from the gym I train at, they all know it’s my birthday. But no one else really knows that. Maybe I’ll make a big deal of it.

“I know quite a few January fighters. George Foreman, Muhammad Ali are January babies. We’re winter babies, so I guess we have to be a little tougher to get through the year. There’s something about, I guess, January people – we just have that tendency to be confident walking around. We’re tough people. We’re born in the winter months and we always know how to make things happen. 

“We train hard, we train diligently and we’re good fighters. We’re very good fighters. I’m blessed – there’s so many other fighters I look up to born in the same month. It’s a nice little touch.”

Dubois was asked if she considered herself champion once the WBC installed her at its recent convention, or whether she will only do so if and when she overcomes Camara, 36, in the ring, and she responded: “I fought really good opponents. Maira Moneo was the interim world champion, and we were trying to get the WBC title on the line for that fight, but Katie Taylor was holding it up. It’s annoying, because I know that she, in her head, had no intentions of coming back down. It was just a little mess-around that she and her team were doing. It was annoying, because that fight could have been for four world titles, so going into that, I saw [the Moneo bout] as a world title fight, you know what I’m saying? 

“When I won, it was like, ‘OK, I’ve beaten the interim world champion; I know Katie’s going to vacate.’ I didn’t really see it as anything else. I saw it as a world title fight, and I was just preparing correctly.

“Everybody wants to win their world title in the ring, but I’m gonna defend the belt, I’m gonna unify the division. Undisputed is happening, so there’s no rush – we’re gonna get those big nights. We’re gonna get those tough, grueling fights where you know you’ve been in a fight and when you win and you get the belts, it’s like, ‘Yeah, I got this – I deserve this.’ So there’s no rush for me. I’m gonna get it. I’m excited.

“It’ll be good. It’ll be great to get my first world title defense out the way. I don’t want to be arrogant or disrespectful, but I’ve never really focused on world titles. I’ve always focused on being involved in big fights. Being involved in the kind of fights that get your blood racing and your energy high; you’re nervous and you’re excited, and you’re feeling the attention and you’re feeling the pressure. Those fights – those are the nights that are really gonna mean something. Those are gonna make me feel, ‘Wow, I did something.’ Winning the belt is just a bonus. It’s recognition; it’s the accolade. It’ll always be the fight that gets me going.”

Declan Warrington has been writing about boxing for the British and Irish national newspapers since 2010. He is also a long-term contributor to Boxing News, Boxing News Presents and Talksport, and formerly the boxing correspondent for the Press Association, a pundit for BoxNation and a regular contributor to Boxing Monthly, Sport and The Ring, among other publications. In 2023, he conducted the interviews and wrote the script for the audio documentary “Froch-Groves: The Definitive Story”; he is also a member of the BWAA.