ANOTHER big fight week is well underway for Mikaela Mayer.
There is an edge to this one, however. A developing grudge. A war of words with opponent Sandy Ryan over an alleged treachery of a former trainer who has crossed the street to work with her now bitter rival. The WBO world welterweight title you sense is only part of what is on the line tomorrow night in New York.
Mayer comes to life when a camera is turned on or a microphone comes into her vicinity. A promoter’s dream. The fighter with a seemingly never-ending supply of million-dollar quotes.
Over Zoom, I caught up with Mayer just a few hours after she had landed in New York with a full week of media obligations ahead of her. There was an old quote I had seen prior to our interview where she had once described herself as a loose cannon. For once, Mayer paused for thought as I reminded her of what she had said a few years ago.
“I am spontaneous. I am outgoing. I can be unpredictable. I just live life to the full.” Mayer told Boxing News.
I once described Mayer as a teenage rebel who had found a cause when boxing came into her life. Her mother had alcohol issues. Demons to fight. Her father eventually got custody of Mayer and her two sisters when her parents split up when she was only five.
“I pretty much had to look after myself,” Mayer says of those early formative years. “My dad was working all day, and my mum wasn’t around. I grew up quickly. I always needed something, and I am lucky to have found something as extreme as boxing. Something that can hold my attention. Boxing has that extreme factor. That fear factor. It kept me in line because I am such an extremist. Boxing is challenging, and it is scary. It was impossibly hard in the beginning.”
Boxing found Mayer at a time when she needed it the most. A typical teenager who liked to party a little too much. She wouldn’t come home for days. A spell playing bass in an all-female rock band gave her some semblance of stability. She learned to play by repetition.
Black Sabbath’s Iron Man was the first song she learned to play. A risk taker by nature, Mayer has carried that mantra throughout her life.
“I am such an extremist. If something isn’t extremely challenging to me, I get bored. I get sidetracked. I seem to thrive under stress,” Mayer once told me. “I am most comfortable when I am not comfortable.”
Women’s boxing wasn’t in the same place as it is now when Mayer started her boxing journey, especially in the professional ranks. You could argue that she would have been better served seeing how her music life would play out rather than gambling that she could somehow forge a career in boxing at a time when there probably wasn’t a career to forge. A side of the sport that was still viewed with apathy and indifference. But Mayer sensed she was born different. Her unregulated upbringing certainly helped her roll the dice.
“I always admire that thought process in me,” she says. “I always have that in me. I think as you get older, you don’t want to take chances. But as a young person, I had no fear. It was the way my dad raised me. He never tried to impose his rules or his opinions. Literally, never.
“My dad was very laid back. It was a very passive way of raising kids. It gave me so much confidence. He never put me down. Or ever said no or instilled any kind of fear into me. But when boxing seemed impossible, I didn’t have the mindset that a lot of parents instilled in their children.”
Mayer found what she needed in boxing. A seed had been planted. Very quickly, she had dreams of grandeur.
“After just a few weeks of training, I wanted to be the best fighter in the world,” Mayer says. “I wanted to fight Gina Carano. She was a very big name at the time, and I wanted to fight her. That’s what I wanted to do. I knew right away what I wanted to do, and I dedicated everything to it. Looking back now, I had so much determination. I didn’t want to hang out with anyone. I just wanted to train, eat right, and do everything I could to be great.”
Mayer has always oozed extreme confidence. The words carry conviction. They make a believer out of the harshest critic. “I have always had that confidence,” Mayer added. “My mum was very eccentric. She used to make us go out on the dance floor. She would make us perform and party with her. She took us to places and took us to parties to meet people because she liked to party. So we had to fall into it, and she created that social personality. Then my dad got custody, and we had a lot of freedom. We had to make our own decisions. We were pushed into certain circumstances with not a lot of rules to follow.”
Mayer has taken that confidence into this weekend’s fight with Sandy Ryan. After two controversial defeats to Alycia Baumgardner and Natasha Jonas in recent times, Mayer will hope it’s third time lucky against Ryan. A fight that will see the American make her return to home comforts after four straight fights in the UK. Mayer despises the ‘former’ label and beating Ryan will make her a world champion after two years without a world title to her name.
The bookies can’t split them, but Mayer sees it differently. “I am just better. I am just going to do everything I want. There is no way I will lose this fight.”