Dubois Has An Eye On A Potential Undisputed Fight With Ferreira

Trainer Shane McGuigan said Caroline Dubois will have her eye on newly-minted IBF lightweight champion Beatriz Ferreira after the Brazilian won the vacant crown with a Yanina del Carmen Lescano.

McGuigan, who has always championed Dubois’s prospects, can see the two meeting in the future, although Ferreira’s attention will now switch to the Paris Olympics, where she is a gold medal prospect.

Asked whether the Brazilian was in Dubois’s sights now, McGuigan said: “Of course she is.

“Anyone with a belt, Rhianna Dixon… She [Ferreira] looked good in spells and bad in other spells. I think Beatriz is going to the Olympics, I think she has a good following in her country and [promoter] Eddie [Hearn]’s trying to box her over here to get her relevant over here and that performance she put on does make her more relevant.”

Ferreira was on the NextGen show headlined by Peter McGrail against Marc Leach, and she took a couple of rounds to find the measure of her Argentine foe but then commenced an aggressive beatdown until the fight was stopped. 

“Obviously having a world title belt is exciting, so it justifies it being a unification fight, it justifies it being the one, even for the undisputed if Katie Taylor’s never going to come back down to lightweight,” McGuigan added.

Taylor fights Amanda Serrano in July in Texas and is unlikely to return to lightweight as she prepares for the closing stages of her magnificent career. But if she did, McGuigan said Dubois would be ready.

“Caroline beats them all. She beats them all. I know she does, but that [Ferreira] would be one of her hardest fights.”

Dubois could next be out on the Selhurst Park show headlined by her stablemate WBO cruiserweight champion Chris Billam-Smith, who meets the only man to have beaten him in the pros so far, Richard Riakporhe, as the main event in the soccer stadium that is home to Crystal Palace on June 15.

Promoters Boxxer had hoped to put the announced fight between Adam Azim and Harlem Eubank on the show, but it is thought Sky Sports may want that as a co-headline bout for another bill later in the summer.