The British boxer on making history, stepping up to manage men in the ring and how she overcame football heartache to realise her sporting ambition
Natasha Jonas has recorded so many historic milestones as a woman in boxing that it seems strangely jolting when she remembers a time that her appearance in the ring was greeted with disdain. Last month she made yet more history when she became the first black woman to be granted a managerial licence in British boxing. It maintains the trend that began when Jonas was selected to represent the first women’s team to box for Great Britain in 2009.
Three years later the Liverpool fighter became the first British woman to box at the Olympics Games. Then, in 2022, she became the first woman to win British boxing’s Fighter of the Year. Now, reflecting on her new managerial role while she continues boxing as the current IBF welterweight title-holder, Jonas recalls an amateur tournament when she was part of a mixed GB team that boxed against the United States in the same year she made her international debut.