FORMER US OLYMPIAN and 8-0 prospect Mikaela Mayer says she remains on a collision course with Katie Taylor, but that she wants time to further bolster her profile and accolades in order for their prospective fight to reach its full potential.
Mayer, half of whose victories have arrived inside the distance, earned an eight-round points win over Vanessa Bradford two weekends ago, dropping her foe with what Taylor later described to The42 as “a cracking right hand” en route.
The Bray woman went on to say of Mayer that the 28-year-old Top Rank fighter is “coming along nicely”, and that a fight between them is “another big one for down the line.”
We told ya'll about that @MikaelaMayer1 right hand! #CrawfordBenavidez pic.twitter.com/TuwPqsXu2J
— Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) October 14, 2018
Mayer agrees that sometime in 2019 would be the best landing spot for a scrap versus Taylor, with whom she has never shared the ring despite both fighters having occupied the same division as amateurs.
Mayer turned pro as a super-featherweight, and wants to clean out the 130-pound weight class in order to build momentum and bring more to the table when she moves up to lightweight in pursuit of Taylor and others — a sentiment previously shared by Taylor’s manager, Brian Peters.
“I mean, it’s going to happen,” Mayer told ESPN’s Ariel Helwani of the inevitable showdown.
It’s going to happen. It just needs to happen at the right time, because it would be a shame if the world wasn’t watching.
“It’s too soon now, because I’m still able to make 130 [lbs], she’s fighting at 135. I’m going to take the belts at 130, take that division while I still can, and then sometime next year I’ll move up to 135 and start fighting the girls there.
“And I think it’ll be great because we’ll both be champs, we’ll both have belts.
It’s definitely big. She has a huge following in Europe, a huge following in Ireland. Top Rank is building my profile in the United States. I think it’s going to be an exciting fight.
Mayer also offered her thoughts on the state of women’s professional boxing in what many — but not all — consider the dawn of a golden age for the female side of the sport.
Asked why female fighters are only now beginning to occupy prominent slots on boxing telecasts — Taylor was the co-main event on DAZN last Saturday, for example — Mayer didn’t share a great deal of sympathy for many of the fighters who, over the last couple of decades, haven’t quite broken into the mainstream.
Instead, she credited the influx of top amateur talent since the reintroduction of women’s boxing to the Olympics for the professional sport’s recent upturn.
“Honestly, there was a lot of female fighters but not all of them were ESPN-worthy,” said Mayer. “Not all of them were worthy of getting signed by these major promoters. The talent level wasn’t always there.
“And people want to argue that, ‘Oh, we haven’t gotten the attention,’ but not everybody deserves that spotlight.
The talent pool is a lot deeper now. These girls coming into the pros have actual skill. These girls coming into the pros have had over 150 amateur fights — I had almost 150 amateur fights. The girls that were pro back in the day didn’t have that.
“That’s why I can go up against girls who are 20-0 now, and still look way crisper and more skilled than them — because I have so much background and experience in the amateurs.”
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