Part One: An Olympic Classic
The decibel level inside London’s Excel Arena on August 6,
2012 was recorded at an eardrum-piercing 113.7 as 10,500 fans were whipped into
a frenzy for the Olympic women’s boxing quarter-final match in the lightweight
division. To put that into some kind of perspective, this sustained fever pitch
caused by a clash between a pair of former footballers who were now two of the
United Kingdom’s most highly-touted amateur female fighters—in the exclusive
company of Savannah Marshall and Nicola Adams—was louder than the takeoff of a
turbo-fan aircraft.
Katie Taylor, Ireland’s budding superstar from Bray in
County Wicklow, skipped past the first bracket thanks to having earned a bye at
the World Championships in Qinhuangdao, China where she defeated Russia’s Sofya
Ochigava. Representing Great Britain, meanwhile, Liverpudlian southpaw Natasha
Jonas advanced by taking three of four rounds from Quanitta ‘Queen’ Underwood
of the United States, cruising to a decisive 21-13 victory in her opening bout.
“On another day, Ireland would be cheering for GB and GB
would be cheering for Ireland,” said Jonas, who was the first British female
boxer to qualify for the historic 2012 London games. “We were rivals once we
stepped into the ring and the crowd had to choose who they wanted to win.” It
wasn’t open to debate that Katie was the clear choice among the fans from the
Emerald Isle before the opening bell. But, when all was said and done, Natasha
would earn their respect. “I think the whole of Ireland hated me for like two
days and then after that fight the whole of Ireland loved me.”
Katie Taylor compared the rambunctious atmosphere to
“feeding time at the zoo” in her 2012 book My Olympic Dream. “It seemed
as though everybody was rattling their cages and making as much noise as they
could,” she wrote. Outfitted in red gear, Katie was the first of the combatants
to make her ring walk as Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” the bombastic anthem that
has long been a staple at massive sporting events, blasted through the Excel’s
PA system at full volume. But you wouldn’t even know it.
The crowd noise was so deafening (quite literally, as it
exceeded the tolerable human threshold), you could only just faintly make out
Freddie Mercury’s sing-along vocals or Roger Taylor’s trademark drumbeats with
which spectators always enthusiastically clap and stomp in unison. This
assembly of boxing fanatics required no arena-rock musical accompaniment. Not
when they came prepared to create their own berserk soundtrack. “I had barely
taken a few steps into the auditorium when the crowd exploded into life,”
Taylor reminisced, “and while I wasn’t to know at that point, it would soon
become a familiar experience the whole way through the week.”
Taylor and Jonas had an unenviable task ahead of them in
producing an exciting scrap that would justify the raucous enthusiasm that
greeted them. Not to mention the pressure which was already present in knowing
that the winner was guaranteed to take home at least a bronze medal. The
challenge was not only accepted but exceeded. “The fight itself was cracking,”
Katie recalled. “The best I’ve been involved in for a long time and a real
hurricane of a contest.”
Soccer chants spontaneously reverberated throughout the
stadium at the end of round one which saw Katie assume and maintain control of
the bout’s first two minutes, bouncing on the balls of her feet, scoring from
various angles behind her left jab and returning to her corner with a 5-2 edge
over Jonas.
As she used her footwork to her best advantage in an attempt
to weather Jonas’ sudden onslaught, Katie tumbled onto the canvas thirty
seconds into the second frame while dodging a body shot. No contact was made
and it was clearly a slip. The Kazakh referee rightfully ruled it as such.
Moments earlier, Taylor had gotten her first taste of Natasha’s power when she
was backed up several steps courtesy of a right hook that was set up by three
straight jabs.
Not only did Taylor have her hands full dealing with a
sharper and more offensive-minded Jonas in the second round, she was left to
her own devices, strategically speaking, due to the fact that the pandemonium
in the stands was such that she was unable to hear the instructions being
shouted from ringside by her father and then-coach Peter.
Instinctively, however, Katie was well aware that she needed
to do more than merely batten down the hatches. She had to find a way to make
Natasha’s aggression somehow work against her and swing the momentum back in
her favor. Easier said than done, as the crowd noise continued to amplify
beyond anything you would expect at a rock concert.
“I don’t think the officials fully understood what was
happening because they had never seen anything like it at an amateur boxing
tournament before,” remarked Taylor, who was cautioned repeatedly throughout
the proceedings by the referee and the faithful legions of Irish fans let him
hear about it every time.
Katie was caught by a lead right while in retreat, then had
her head snapped back by a straight left which sent her careening backwards
with Jonas in hot pursuit. Katie used her ring acumen to pivot out of harm’s
way and spin off the ropes, luring Jonas back to open waters where Taylor
initiated her own attack and regained command of the situation. Although the
majority of round two appeared to go Natasha Jonas’ way, the judges scored it
evenly at 5 points apiece.
Katie had weathered the storm and, unbeknownst to her, as
the scoreboard was not visible from her vantage point, put a sizeable lead in
her back pocket going into the penultimate round. Nevertheless, Taylor was
leaving nothing to chance as she came out swinging for the fences in the third
and forced the referee to step in at the halfway point to administer a standing
eight count to Jonas after the Brit took a hard right hand right on the button.
A thunderstrike of a left hook beat Natasha to the punch
when action resumed and a terrific flurry of combinations and ambidextrous body
blows gave Taylor a 9-4 round, putting her ahead by a virtually unreachable
distance with just two minutes remaining.
Desperately needing to rack up points, Jonas worked her way
inside and let her hands go upstairs and down during toe-to-toe exchanges, but
Taylor was simply proving to be too much for her. A right hook by Taylor
crashed home just as Jonas was letting loose with a left of her own,
necessitating a second standing-eight with a half-minute left to go which
essentially sealed the deal for Katie.
Taylor and Jonas embraced at the final bell and Katie
acknowledged the roar of the crowd for the first time by lifting one fist
victoriously with a huge and well-earned smile on her face. “She’s a super
boxer and a fantastic person,” Katie raved about Jonas after their fight. “I
had to work so hard. She wasn’t hurt at all. I am just delighted with the win.”
Natasha was equally laudatory toward her conqueror. “I will
make no excuses. I have come here feeling the fittest, the leanest, the
healthiest, smartest boxer I could be, but she is still the best. I take my hat
off to her,” said a contrite Jonas in defeat, of which she need not hold her
head down. “There was nothing else I could do. I could’ve thrown the kitchen
sink at her or maybe drive a bus into her. I hope she goes on to win it.”
Win it Taylor would, as she turned in a repeat performance
against her World Championship rival Sofya Ochigava in the Olympic lightweight
finals three days later, albeit by a nerve rackingly slim margin of 10-8, to
ascend to the top tier of the medal stand.
Very likely demoralized by a quarrel with her father Peter,
which caused a rift between them which was both professional and personal,
Katie had to settle for a share of the bronze medal at the 2016 World
Championships with Mira Potkonen of Finland, to whom she would lose in the
opening round of the Olympics that same year in Rio de Janeiro.
Three months later, Katie Taylor made her eagerly awaited
professional debut by putting away 24-fight veteran Karina Kopinska in the
third of six scheduled rounds at Wembley Arena. Natasha Jonas was asked to sit
in with the Sky Sports broadcast team to provide color commentary, sparking a
flame which would slowly and, she admits, reluctantly rekindle her passion for
boxing.
She had walked away from the sport nineteen months prior
after a foot injury suffered in the opening round fight of the 2014
Commonwealth Games, which she lost to Shelley Watts of Australia, sidelined her
indefinitely. A surgical procedure kept Jonas from competing in the 2016
Olympic qualifiers, presenting her with the conundrum of extending her amateur
career to make another run at a gold medal in 2020 or turning pro.
Standing at the crossroads at the age of 30 and weighing her
options, neither course of action appealed to her all that much at this point
in her life and Natasha was content to retire, start a family, and perhaps
coach the next generation of female fighters.
Persuaded by Team GB boxing captain Tom Stalker, Jonas laced
up the gloves for the first time in two years and stopped Monika Antonik in
ninety-two seconds on a June 23, 2017 card in Newcastle. She fought three more
times that year, winning each inside the distance, and racked up six straight
victories overall before being battered in shocking fashion by Viviane Obenauf,
who dropped Natasha three times before her corner threw in the towel in the
fourth round. After a layoff of nearly eight months, Jonas rebounded with a
points win over Feriche Mashauri and notched two additional TKOs before the
calendar flipped over on 2019.
Katie Taylor and Natasha Jonas went into Manchester for
their May 1 rematch hot off pick-or-choose 2020 fight of the year candidates
held during the Matchroom Summer Camp Series in Eddie Hearn’s backyard, with
Katie besting Delfine Persoon in their second war of attrition for the undisputed
lightweight title while Natasha dueled to a riveting and controversial
stalemate with WBC and IBO super-featherweight champion Terri Harper two weeks
earlier.
In the film world and fight game alike, sequels rarely live
up to the original. A rare few though, let’s say Bride of Frankenstein
and Rocky Graziano/Tony Zale for example, manage to surpass the expectations
imposed upon them by their predecessors. On May 1 in Manchester, Katie Taylor
and Natasha Jonas would attempt to capture lightning in a bottle for the second
time, conjuring that Olympic magic that made a madhouse of London nine years prior.
Part Two: Muted Mayhem in Manchester
The silence was deafening. Thanks to strictly enforced Covid
restrictions, the contrast in ambience between Katie Taylor and Natasha Jonas’
2012 Olympic quarterfinal in London and their encore performance at Manchester
Arena on May 1, 2021 was dramatic and, for a rematch that carried such significance and was
executed so brilliantly by both parties, quite unfortunate.
Nine years before, both combatants made their ring walks
surrounded by a wall of noise generated by more than 10,000 rowdy supporters. For
their rematch in the paid ranks, only polite applause from the handful of face-masked
staff and spectators permitted inside welcomed world title challenger Natasha
Jonas. Next came Katie Taylor, who had been the first of the pair to appear
before the hysterical crowd within Excel Arena but, as the current reigning and
defending undisputed lightweight champion, customarily stepped through the
ropes second this time around.
With advantages over Katie of three inches in both height
and reach, Jonas was seemingly given a pass on how high her trunks were pulled
up, well past her navel with almost no line of demarcation between her
waistband and the bottom of her tank top. Nevertheless, Taylor didn’t have to
do much more than was necessary to get the better of Natasha in the first two
getting-to-know-you-again type rounds, as opposed to their first fight in
London which, at four two-minute frames, was half over by this point with little
time to waste on the niceties of becoming acquainted.
The pace picked up in the third round as Katie whaled away
at Jonas with a succession of right hands in an attempt to punch her way out of
a clinch with her left arm pinned in the crook of Natasha’s right elbow.
Referee Marcus McDonnell would issue warnings to Jonas on numerous occasions
for holding as well as headbutting, but he never made good on empty threats to
deduct points for future infractions. To be fair, head clashes are common in
bouts between orthodox fighters and southpaws and, anyway, some were clearly
initiated by Taylor, who does tend to lunge forward with her cranium lowered in
battering ram fashion.
Fists started flying when action resumed, but Jonas bought
herself a few moments of respite when she again used her right arm to trap
Katie’s left out of view of the referee. Despite being held behind the head
after breaking free of Jonas’ clutches, Taylor began to work her over with a
variety of body shots and one/two combinations. Natasha, however, snuck in some
well-timed counterpunches and was finding a more consistent home for her right
jab and lead left.
Katie got tagged with a stiff jab in the opening seconds of
the fourth that snapped her head back but pressed ahead regardless until having
her left arm tied up by Jonas once more which resulted in another reprimand
from Marcus McDonell. She walked directly into the path of a Taylor left hook
and was missing most of her return volleys as Katie employed her graceful
footwork to skip out of reach, but Jonas’ jab again caught the champion on the
button. All things considered, the fight was fairly even throughout the first
half with the slight advantage belonging to Taylor.
To take the belts back to Liverpool, Jonas was going to have
to step up the pressure in order to swing the pendulum in her favor. At the
midway point of the sixth round, this was precisely what she did. After ducking
under a trio of errant punches from Taylor, Natasha blasted her with a short
left hook that spun Katie’s head around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
If there had been just a little more space between the two fighters to allow
Jonas to have gotten more momentum behind the punch, Taylor may possibly have
hit the deck.
As it was, even thrown from short range, the blow threw
Taylor off her axis and Jonas nailed her with a straight right. As she bounced
on the balls of her feet to recover her equilibrium, Katie got nailed by
another right jab followed moments later by a hook unleashed with the same
hand. Things had gotten very interesting indeed heading into the latter half of
the contest.
As technically sound a boxer as Katie Taylor is, she never
shies away from mixing it up in close quarters. Just as she proved against
Terri Harper, Natasha Jonas loves a good scrap herself and was not only happy
to oblige a confrontational Taylor without withering under pressure but raised
some eyebrows by bullying the bully as the seventh round ticked down. Katie’s
punches were crisper and more accurate in the eighth as she looked to control
the home stretch and secure a decision, as it could not have been more evident
that Jonas was going nowhere.
Champion and challenger, both sensing that the verdict hung
on their performance in the final two minutes, pushed themselves past the
limits of physical exhaustion and went for broke. Taylor ate a few rights from
Jonas before landing one of her own as Natasha banged away at Katie’s
midsection.
The up-tempo pace in the tenth round favored Taylor, who
unleashed a heavy volume of shots in groups of three and four while an
arm-weary Jonas spent the waning moments of the fight covering up and misfiring
with weak counters.
With Jonas’ back to the ropes, Katie got in one last
two-punch combo as time expired and the two women embraced in a show of mutual
respect after the final bell brought an end to this exciting dustup which was a
more than satisfying sequel to the original despite the conspicuous absence of
audience participation, the mania of which elevated their first fight to almost
mythical status.
The margins of victory were threadbare for Taylor compared
to nine years before, eking out a unanimous decision over her former Olympic
foe by a count of 96-94 on the scorecard of Yury Koptsev while only a single
point separated Katie from Jonas according to the tallies arrived at by both
Michael Alexander and Andreas Stenberg.
Katie Taylor’s selection of her WBC mandatory challenger, Flora
Pili, as her farewell opponent, guaranteed that there will be no often-rumored third
act to her friendly rivalry with Natasha Jonas. And considering the fact that Jonas
has remained inactive since losing to Lauren Price in March 2025, it seems the
last chapter in the careers of both groundbreaking boxers will likely be
written in stone once the 80,000-strong din dies down in Croke Park come
September 5.
Sources:
Jessica Creighton. Natasha Jonas Retires: British Olympic
Boxer Quits Aged 30 (BBC Sport, April 7, 2015)
Kathleen McNamee. Natasha Jonas is Ready for Another Shot
at Katie Taylor Nine Years After Their Record-Breaking Olympic Fight (espn.com,
March 9, 2021)
Kevin Mitchell. Olympic Women’s Boxing: Katie Taylor
Beats Britain’s Natasha Jonas (The Guardian, August 6, 2012)
Katie Taylor with Johnny Watterson. My Olympic Dream: The
Gold Medal Winner’s Astonishing Own Story (Simon & Schuster, 2012)
Katie Taylor vs. Natasha Jonas—London 2012 Olympics
(accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPNp2XG5v7g&t=305)
