Rhiannon Dixon: "I'm really excited for the fight with Terri. It's a very good fight. But it's a fight that I know I am ready for, and I think I have been ready for it for a long time."
"It is mad to think how far I have come," Rhiannon Dixon told me over Zoom. From a humble beginning, she is now a world champion after her win in April over the experienced and tough Karen Elizabeth Carabajal in Manchester.
It's a boxing career that started in the unregulated world of white-collar boxing. A far cry from the bright lights that she now resides in. A journey that started in 2019, live on Channel 5, Dixon was in a very different place back then.
"When I first turned professional, I was still working full-time as a pharmacist. So it was just a case back then of seeing how far I could go with it. But it got to a point where I could stop working and then thinking that I am now a full-time athlete and what I should do with it."
Dixon had only a handful of fights on the white-collar scene. All wins, but without any kind of amateur background, it was difficult to see the Warrington lightweight progressing too far in her sport. Dixon is proud of her journey. She doesn't hide away from it. It's a little sign that there is more than one way to reach the pinnacle of a sport. However, the newly-crowned champion of the world is respectful of gaining amateur experience before entering the world of professional boxing.
"I think having an amateur background and getting the experience is important," Dixon told me. "Obviously, the depth of female fighters in white-collar isn't anywhere near the depth it is in the amateur ranks. All the fights there seem to be 50-50 fights, but in white-collar, most of the fights are actually quite one-sided. I have proven that you can get into a sport late and do well. But I wouldn't advise people to go the same route as me."
The early days were hard. Learning her craft was anything but easy. Early sparring sessions with the likes of Stacey Copeland and Kirstie Bavington is where Dixon realised what she had let herself in for.
"That was like a massive reality check," Dixon says of those early sparring sessions. "When I first started sparring with female professionals like Stacey and Kirsty, I knew this was a lot different from sparring with some of the lads in the gym. It was at that moment that I thought I needed to start taking this more seriously now. I knew I needed to get more and more experience by sparring some of the top professionals. I then sparred with Natasha Jonas for the first time, and since then, I have always had some pretty good sparring."
Unbeaten in ten fights, and with Commonwealth, European and World honours to her name, Rhiannon Dixon can look forward to some very big nights. Unification fights could be hers if she wins her next fight. But there are no fears for a fighter who believes she has now served her fighting apprenticeship.
"That's what you have built yourself up for," Dixon says of what potentially lies ahead. "Going from winning the Commonwealth, then the European title, and now that I am a World Champion, it is only big fights from now on. People used to say that these types of fights were so far away. But now I am in these big fights, I want to be in them for a long time."
But before talk of unification fights and more, Dixon has a big all-British showdown to focus on first. Next month, Dixon will head back to Manchester to defend her WBO lightweight bauble against the two-weight world champion Terri Harper.
"I'm really excited for the fight with Terri. It's a very good fight, Dixon told FightPost. "She is definitely my best opponent so far. But it's a fight that I know I am ready for, and I think I have been ready for it for a long time.
"Within the landscape of women's boxing, you don't know where everyone will be in six-twelve months' time because everyone is moving up and down the weight divisions all the time. The fight with Terri wasn't even on the radar. But when it got mentioned to us, I knew it was a good fight and one that I really wanted."
Last time out, Harper lost in a heavily one-sided fashion to Sandy Ryan in a failed bid at the WBO world welterweight title. Ryan was favoured to win, but the manner of the victory was more than surprising to many. Harper was stopped after four rounds and she simply couldn't handle the relentless marauding pressure of the impressive Ryan.
In some quarters, Harper is at the last chance saloon stage. A narrative that seems incredibly harsh on a fighter who has won world titles at two different weights, and at 27, is the younger fighter by two years. You could even argue that her peak years are still ahead of her, and this observer thinks it's more a matter of finding the right weight division for her frame rather than her being a faded fighter. But Dixon is ignoring all the outside noise around her opponent and is preparing for the best version of Terri Harper ahead of their fight on August 24th.
"People are talking about her as if she is 38 or 40, but she is actually younger than me. Terri was quite young when she turned professional and signed with Eddie, so she has been on the TV screens for a while."
The one worry for the Harper faithful might be her having to shed all the additional muscle that she has accumulated over the last few years while she campaigned at 154. The fight with Ryan was at welterweight, but it still leaves the Denaby fighter with another twelve pounds to lose to make the lightweight limit. But for the reigning WBO champion, making weight holds no such worries.
"I make weight very easily," Dixon says. "I always have, but more so now because I have a nutritionist on board. I have perfected making the weight now. But I can imagine it being hard for Terri. Natasha Jonas and Mikaela Mayer say to make welterweight they have had to put muscle on to bulk up to that weight. But then, to have to take it all off, it could be an issue. But it's an opportunity for Terri to be a three-weight world champion, so why shouldn't she take it. You have to take the opportunities when they come."
Dixon knows a win over Harper would represent her greatest achievement to date. The early odds have the Warrington fighter a very strong favourite to retain her title over her more experienced opponent. A glowing tribute to just how far Dixon has come in just a few years in the sport.
But for all that Rhiannon Dixon has achieved, you sense that she is only getting started. Boxing is everything to her. And something that she plans on doing for the next decade.
"I want to be in the sport for ten years, and people say don't you want kids, and I say no because I like what I am doing. I'm living the dream where I am at right now."
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