Natasha Jonas hopes her final chase includes closer with Katie Taylor

The route may have been complicated at times but Natasha Jonas has always had a clear idea of where she was headed.

Jonas became the first British female boxer to compete at the Olympic Games. She became a professional after taking time away from the sport to give birth to her daughter and then maintained her self-belief to win a world title at the third time of asking. Jonas, of Liverpool, has always had a target or goal to focus on. 

The IBF welterweight titleholder knows that she is coming to the end of her career but isn’t quite sure how the curtain will come down on it. 

Jonas (15-2-1, 9 KOs) signed a long-term promotional deal with Boxxer in November 2021, and with Sky Sports throwing its considerable weight behind womens’ boxing, the pieces seemed to be in place for Jonas to finally capitalize professionally and financially on years of hard work. 

The following year, she leapt up from lightweight to junior middleweight and stormed through the 154-pound division, collecting three world title belts and the British Boxing board of Control’s Fight of the Year award. She also became one of the faces of Sky Sports’ boxing coverage.

Since then, Jonas has appeared on the network much more regularly as a pundit than as a fighter. She made a solitary ring appearance in 2023 – stopping Kandi Wyatt to win the vacant IBF title – and has fought just once so far this year, forcing herself to a brilliant split decision victory over Mikaela Mayer in January.

When she left the ring in Liverpool that night, Jonas did so with a career-defining victory under her belt and the praise of her promoters and Sky Sports ringing in her ears. She couldn’t have been better positioned to choose her ideal exit route from the sport, but she has been following an endless series of diversions ever since.

“You’ve always got a target on your back when you’re a world champion, but six or seven months out of the ring is too long. It was the same previously before that,” Jonas told BoxingScene.

“I had such a big and successful 2022, I thought, ‘Right, this is it. I’m gonna get the ball rolling.’ It just flops in the biggest sense of the word. I perform better when I’m active. These big lulls and waiting around isn’t good for any athlete – not just me.

“It’s not the fighters. It’s the business side of stuff that’s the delay. If we could have had the Mikaela Mayer rematch in May, we would have. We were half hoping it’d be June, at the latest. It doesn’t happen. She agrees, I agree – you’d think that would be the hard part – but we both agreed our terms right away.

“Boxxer said they couldn’t do it, we go somewhere else. We go to Top Rank, they say, ‘Yeah, we can do it, but it’s going to have to be on a Queensberry show.’ We take it to Queensberry, and they’re like, ‘No.’

“I think there were intricate details about clauses on rematches and who gets options. To be fair, I made that sound simple, but it was a bit more complicated.”

Jonas is aware of her position in the sport. She was one of the trailblazers who set women’s boxing on the pathway to its current lofty position – or, at least, last year’s lofty position – and has established herself as one of the most well-known and popular female fighters in the sport.

Unification fights with the likes of WBO welterweight titleholder Sandy Ryan and WBA titleholder and Ring Magazine champion Lauren Price may look like natural, all-British affairs, but Jonas believes that she has earned the right to finish her career on the biggest stage possible rather than playing her part in a passing-of-the-torch ceremony.

There does seem to be an unspoken truce between the fighters. Jonas is content to let the younger generation fight it out between themselves whilst they appear to hold her in high enough regard to let her see out her days against the fighters she helped build the sport with – rather than calling her out and trying to further their own reputations using her name.

“I just think there’s maybe a bit of respect,” Jonas said. “If you’re good enough, then you let your boxing do the work and eventually you can’t be avoided. At the same time, you have to take your opportunities when they come, so if you get that big opportunity, you have to take it. I just think that that’s more the case.

“There are eras for everybody. The next generation down is not my era. It’s like somebody going to the Olympics now, turning over and shouting out Lauren Price. You’re not her era. Do your own thing first, and if you’re good enough you’ll get to the top and get the chance to fight her. There’s kind of like generational boxing that makes sense. That’s probably why we never got [Carl] Froch against [Joe] Calzaghe. It wasn’t his generation of fighter, if that makes sense.”

Jonas would love the green light to begin one final chase.

Undisputed junior welterweight champion Katie Taylor beat Jonas in the quarterfinals of the 2012 Olympics and then squeaked past her again when the pair met in a rematch for the undisputed lightweight title in 2021. 

Taylor, who is 38 herself, will be quietly plotting her own way out of the sport. The multi-weight world champion is tied into a delayed but lucrative rematch with Amanda Serrano in November and will then need to decide what to do. 

Should Taylor beat Serrano for a second time, a long-awaited rematch with Jonas and the chance to become a welterweight world titleholder would suddenly become a very attractive proposition. As would a high-profile trilogy bout with her heated rival Chantelle Cameron. As would a long-talked-about “event” fight at Croke Park. As would well-deserved retirement.

Jonas doesn’t want to fade quietly away, but she faces a frustrating wait to find out if she will even become an option for Taylor.

“There’s also a chance she might not win,” Jonas said. “Do they then have a third fight? Probably. It’s commercially viable for both of them to do that. I can’t remember what the fee was, but it was a lot of money for any fighter, let alone a female fighter. Even though I don’t think it’s beneficial for Katie to keep waiting, I understand why she has. She’s not gonna make that money anywhere else. As much as it’s frustrating for me, it’s not about me. She’s got to do what’s best for her. I get it.

“Just one win. I’d be like, ‘I did it. I can hang up now.’ To be fair, even if she won, I’d be like, ‘Do you know what? I tried that many times, and she’s beaten me that many times – she’s just better than me.’ It’d just be drawing a line in the sand.”

If she can’t draw that line herself, Jonas will let Father Time do it for her. 

“I really didn’t want to be boxing into next year, but that doesn’t look possible anyway, so that’s already broken. But definitely before my birthday. Definitely before 41.”