Mikaela Mayer: "I've already had a setback and lost a year of my prime. And that sucks. For me to get back into position, I can't lose this fight."

FightPost: MMA & Boxing News

Dec 31

There are many untold stories in fighter hotel bars and lobbies after a big fight night. The winners are in full celebration mode, a few drinks too many, their guard is lowered, and words are said that hopefully stay out of the public domain. But the losers often retreat to their rooms and their own private thoughts. Those closest to them will be in consoling mode, trying to find the right words when, in reality, there are none. There will be tears and plenty of them. Not many spare a thought for the loser of a big fight. Their suffering will be in solitude. A future changed or even decided by the stroke of a judge's pen.

Mikaela Mayer never once thought she would lose to her rival Alycia Baumgardner. After 10 absorbing rounds in October 2022, she was convinced that she hadn't. However, two judges somehow saw it differently. Mayer was a fighter who had her future seemingly all mapped out, but by a wafer-thin highly controversial points reversal, she was the fighter who retreated to her hotel room. She wasn't alone, but she most certainly would have felt that way. Trying to process what had gone wrong for her, and how could it have gone so wrong. The crowd booed. And heavily. But it changed nothing. Mayer had to face up to the fact that her world super-featherweight titles and her unbeaten record were now a thing of the past. The future had suddenly changed. In her darkest moments, Mayer probably doubted if she still had one.

Mayer wasn't visible in the early hours of the following morning in an eerie hotel foyer. Her best friend Ginny Fuchs, herself a winner earlier on the card, had just left Mayer in her hotel room. As I asked Fuchs how her friend was feeling in her darkest hour, I thought how could Fuchs really celebrate her own victory when her thoughts must have been with her friend. Mixed emotions for her and equally for Mayer.

I saw Mayer the next morning in the now deserted hotel. It was an awkward conversation. I was clumsy. She was polite.

"I won the fight. I didn't lose that fight." There were more hard words in a hard unforgiving sport. Words that most will have sympathy with. It changes nothing. Harsh but true. There is no magic pill, only a bitter one that can't be swallowed.

This wasn't the same fighter I had interviewed countless times previously. That Mayer always breathed fire and a million headline quotes. The fighter I saw on that Sunday morning was a broken one. While many celebrated and reflected on a famous night. An all-female card on the night that removed all lingering apathy about the women's side of the sport. But Mayer couldn't celebrate. She called it her grieving period. In many ways, that was exactly what it was. A long period of mourning had begun. Mayer had demons to extinguish that only seconds on the clock could resolve.

It took time. And plenty of it. But the American eventually found herself. The old Mayer slowly returned. Her words were a little more deliberate. A little more thoughtful. The venom was missing. A few weeks after that painful night at the O2 Arena in London, we spoke again.

"It was really, really hard. It's like you are just sitting there thinking wake up wake up. This can't have happened, and you want to redo it. You have to sit with the feeling that you can't do it again. It's over. Even if you disagree with it and that you got robbed, you can't change it. There is no going back. And that is a really hard thing to come to terms with." Mayer told me back when the inner pain just couldn't be hidden. An acceptance that she couldn't go back. But still struggling to move forward.

"I have never really experienced it at this level before. I've lost in the amateurs, but even losing in the Olympics didn't feel like this. I feel I am in my prime, and this was everything I worked for. Even as a world champion, you don't always get the respect and the shine that you deserve, and this was the fight to get that, and I wanted to come out on top." The words of Mayer were beyond honest. Her fight at that very moment was trying to hold back the tears that wanted to flow. I knew I had to tread carefully. But even at her lowest, you knew she was already plotting her return.

"I'm no stranger to perseverance. That was the first tattoo I got." Mayer showed me the words perseverance tattooed on her left arm. "That has always been my life and my career. It sucks that it has happened like this, but I still feel I am one of the best female boxers out there. I am still in my prime, and I still have so much more to prove.

The loss to Baumgardner pushed Mayer down the boxing pecking order. She had to be patient in her rebuild. The year that followed saw two stay-busy fights. Lucy Wildheart and Silvia Bortot served a purpose. Nothing more.

"The last two fights didn't inspire me. It wasn't my best year for me. It was a slow year for me." Mayer says of 2023. But it wasn't a total washout. The former unified world super-featherweight champion needed that time. The fragile fighter needed the clock to tick by enough for the old Mikaela Mayer to return.

An extremely short stay at lightweight against Wildheart was followed by a realisation that the doors would open up a little quicker at welterweight. Natasha Jonas was quickly locked in as the target.

"I need someone like Tasha to bring out the best in me. I don't have a grudge against Natasha Jonas. She just has something that I want." Mayer relayed to me. A fight of convenience. For both.

The IBF world welterweight champion was ringside in Manchester when Mayer faced Bortot in September. You didn't need a crystal ball to know who would be next. Both fighters only had eyes for each other. Even boxing politics couldn't deny us this fight. In truth, they made the fight themselves. They have similar stories. Jonas and Mayer have many things in common. Both have recovered from the depths of despair. Not just in boxing, but in life itself.

The last world title fight Mayer had was full of mutual hate. Make no mistake, the beef with Baumgardner wasn't manufactured. This time, it will be different. There is respect, and plenty of it, between champion and challenger. But Jonas, Mayer will hope is the final piece of her therapy jigsaw.

"I've hated the fights that I have been in during the last year. I want to be in big fights like this. Tasha will bring the best out of me. You will see the best of us both."

The fight with Jonas in Liverpool on January 20th will give Mayer an opportunity for redemption. A win would give her back much of what was lost just over a year ago.

"This is my chance to be a world champion again, which is where I believe I belong and to get the ball back in my court because the last year has been slow and boring."

Mayer knows she needs that IBF bauble for leverage. The wishlist of opponents to close her career out with will remain in play. Chantelle Cameron, Sandy Ryan, and others will have Mayer on their radar. She will have something that they want. Lose to Jonas in her hometown, her career will likely take a different path. At 33, Mayer can't afford another year in the cold. She knows it might not quite be all or nothing for her in Liverpool. But it isn't that far removed from that against Jonas.

"I am confident of winning. I have to win it. I believe I am the more skilled fighter and that I will come out on top. But I have to win it. It will be career-ending for me if I don't. The career I want will be lost. The career I envisage for myself will be lost if I don't beat Tasha. My legacy and getting the big fights that I really want. I don't want to catch another loss, I don't want that for my career. I've already had a setback and lost a year of my prime. And that sucks. For me to get back into position, I can't lose this fight."

The loneliness of that London hotel room back in October 2022, Mayer hopes is not replicated in Liverpool come the early hours of January 21st. The American wants it to be different. She wants to be a world champion once again. Her immediate fighting future probably hinges on a victory in that old, unique fighting city. Win and her year is already mapped out. Lose and the phone will go quiet. High risk, low reward, brings a long period of silence and avoidance. Natasha Jonas will have sympathy on that score. They have both been a resident of the who needs her club.

World titles have lost their meaning in recent times. But to Mayer, it is everything.

There's a line in a Hue & Cry song from back in the day that probably reflects where Mayer is right now. Suffocated by her own ambitions.

'I want a life that's bigger than me.
But I'm crushing myself to death.'

The ambitions of Mayer have always been extremely lofty. Even back on that cold October morning, when Baumgardner and two judges had taken away so much, Mayer was still talking about fighting Katie Taylor and enhancing her legacy. With the greatest respect to Wildheart and Bortot, you can imagine the indifference Mayer would have had for those two fights. She wanted more. Much more. Jonas gives her exactly what she has craved since that night at the O2 Arena.

The mental scars of her only professional loss will still linger somewhere deep within. Mayer will remember what happened on that fateful night as that first bell nears. She will glance at the three with the mighty pen and think, "Not this time.''

"I don't care if I think I am winning by a mile. I am going to continue to put my foot on the gas. It is a reminder that you never know what the judges are seeing." This time, Mayer intends to leave no doubt.

Photo Credit: Lawrence Lustig/Boxxer