Georgia O'Connor: A fighter who just wants to fight. Why is that so difficult?

FightPost: MMA & Boxing News

January 30

Five days a week, Georgia O'Connor trains. Seven days a week, she hopes the call comes that she has a fight incoming. But that call or the first bell that she craves so much doesn't come. She doubts it ever will.

O'Connor is a frustrated fighter. There are thoughts of giving it all up and walking away. The former Team GB fighter still puts the hours in. But there is no reward. No end product for all that time and work spent in the gym. O'Connor still hopes 2024 is the year it all changes. But her patience is waning. And quickly. But in truth, she has been beyond patient. Her sport has failed her.

The previous twelve months saw inactivity and plenty of it. A few fleeting fight dates came and went without that first bell ever arriving. Different reasons. But the same end result. Possible fight dates in August, September, and December came to nothing. A fighter who just wants to fight. Why is that so difficult?

The talent and potential are obvious. O'Connor is unbeaten in three fights as a professional. In the unpaid ranks, she was a five-time National Champion. O'Connor also won gold at the 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games and medalled multiple times elsewhere on the world stage as an amateur before she turned over in 2021 with real and genuine expectations of a golden future in the paid ranks.

"I was a three-time national taekwondo champion, undefeated in kickboxing, but my heart has always been with boxing," O'Connor told Sky Sports just before her professional debut. That love affair with her passion is being tested to the core.

Once the Boxxer and Sky Sports relationship ended in 2023, there was real hope that the hook-up with Jamie Conlan and Sam Jones would be her new beginning, the move that would reignite her faltering career which had stalled in recent times. But still, O'Connor waits. And waits. Her career is no further forward than it was this time last year. If anything, it is now in regression.

"I just want to be happy. Getting out there inspiring others," O'Connor told me last June. But seven months on, she is still in the land of hope and no glory. O'Connor isn't happy with the way her boxing career is going. Far from it. Happy elsewhere in her life, boxing, the only missing piece.

A little scroll on Boxrec and a listed date in March might offer some semblance of hope, but O'Connor told me that she is unaware of any such fight. You can understand why O'Connor is where she is right now with her feelings of indifference to the sport that has been part of her life for so long.

The unbeaten super-welterweight turns 24 in February and should be looking ahead to a career of real promise with titles at the forefront of her thoughts. A talented fighter like O'Connor, at her tender age, should not be thinking of retirement just because she can't get a fight. Why does boxing treat its talent with such disdain? Make no mistake, the Georgia O'Connor story is no isolated case.

O'Connor hasn't fought since October 2022. The historic Boxxer all-female card that highlighted the incredible progress of women's boxing. O'Connor boxed on the show and impressed in her dominant win over Joyce Van Ee over four rounds. Yet that talent is now being wasted while she sits and waits on the sidelines, hoping for a call that never seems to come. She will glance at social media and see her friends, her fellow fighters, post regularly about upcoming fights, and the Durham fighter will wonder why can't that be her. Why, indeed?

But despite those thoughts of walking away, O'Connor still wants to inspire others that they shouldn't give up on her dreams. The hope is that Georgia O'Connor doesn't give up on hers.

Photo Credit: Lawrence Lustig/Boxxer