NEW YORK CITY – Six weeks ago, Cherneka Johnson could only dream of challenging one of the other titleholders for the undisputed bantamweight championship. On Friday night, she was holding all four belts in the 118lbs division.
The New Zealand-born, Australia-raised Johnson put on a dominant performance in her biggest fight to date, stopping Shurretta Metcalf after the eighth round at Madison Square Garden.
Johnson, who entered the fight with the WBA title, picked up Metcalf’s IBF belt and the WBC and WBO belts vacated by Dina Thorslund when she discovered she was pregnant and had to withdraw from her fight with Metcalf. Johnson told BoxingScene that she didn’t hesitate to accept the fight when she got the call in late May.
Johnson, though shorter than Metcalf, pushed Metcalf back with her jab early in the first round, a portent of bad things to come for the Dallas-based Metcalf.
Johnson began to find her target with the right hand early on, landing big shots that repeatedly knocked Metcalf’s head back. Johnson put an exclamation mark on her early success with a pair of right hands that dropped Metcalf in the fourth round. Metcalf debated the call, but to no avail, and found herself taking several more right hands like those later in the round to underline her peril.
Metcalf had still not solved the issue of Johnson’s right hand as the fifth round began, and was wobbled badly by another one. By the middle rounds, Metcalf was speaking as much in between rounds with ringside doctor Nitin Sethi and referee Charlie Fitch as she was with her corner.
After a slower seventh round, Johnson came out aggressively in the eighth, adding left hooks to her arsenal, with similar success to the right hands. Before the beginning of the ninth, Fitch and Dr. Sethi appeared to be in agreement that Metcalf had seen enough, and spared her two more rounds of an unnecessary beating.
With the victory, Johnson is now the first Australian boxer, male or female, to become undisputed champion in the four-belt era (though Kostya Tszyu had accomplished the feat in the three-belt era two decades earlier).
“I envisioned this moment, so I already feel like I’ve been here before,” said Johnson, 18-2 (8 KOs), who was born in Tauranga, New Zealand, but has lived on the Australian Gold Coast since she was 11.
“She was very tough, a great opponent. She had a long jab, but I was listening to my team. Probably if I put on the gas a little more in the fifth or sixth round, I could have stopped her earlier, but we got the job done.”
The win brought Johnson's win streak to three, following a pair of victories over Nina Hughes to win the WBA bantamweight belt, while Metcalf saw her four-fight winning streak snapped in defeat.
The Johnson-Metcalf fight headlined the undercard portion of the Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano III card, which aired live on the YouTube channels of Most Valuable Promotions and Netflix.
An interim title is only as valuable as the champion holding the recognized belt. Given that the undisputed junior welterweight championship is on the line in the main event of the biggest-ever women’s boxing card, the WBC interim title Chantelle Cameron carried into her fight with Jessica Camara held some significance.
Cameron, 21-1 (8 KOs), kept herself on track for another big opportunity with a clear victory over Camara, 14-5-1 (3 KOs). Cameron won a unanimous decision by scores of 99-91 on two cards and 98-92 on the third.
Cameron, of Northampton, England, made good use of her jab in the opening rounds to get a read on the aggression of Camara, a Montreal resident. Camara, who was challenging for a world title for the third time, was able to find Cameron with overhand rights and left hooks at the end of exchanges when Cameron lingered too long, but it was clear by the sixth that the pace was getting to Camara, as she was forced to clinch to slow the action.
Cameron’s greater accuracy became more apparent by the eighth round, as Cameron continued to turn Camara in close, sharpshooting with short uppercuts and hooks while utilizing angles. The exhausted Camara struggled to keep up with Cameron’s footwork as she began to take flush punches for the first time.
Cameron hammered the point home in the final moments of the bout, landing rights and lefts that bounced off Camara’s face and drew “oohs” from the crowd.
Cameron, 34, has won three straight since her only defeat as a pro – a majority decision loss in 2023 to Katie Taylor, who was avenging her own first pro loss from earlier that year.
Ramla Ali cited a philosopher by the name of Mike Tyson when explaining why her bout with Brazilian brawler Lila Furtado was too close for comfort: “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face.”
Ali, a 2020 Olympian from Somalia, took her share of shots from Furtado, but she landed enough in return to win a unanimous decision by the scores of 77-75 on two cards and 78-74 on the third.
Ali, 10-2 (2 KOs), was on the back foot throughout the eight-round junior featherweight fight as Furtado, 11-3 (2 KOs), sought to turn the fight into a street fight. Ali had it her way early on as she moved and picked Furtado off coming in, but the nonstop pressure from Furtado was impossible to slow indefinitely.
The fight was the first for Ali since last June, when she lost a unanimous decision to Yamileth Mercado for the WBC 122lbs title.
“I had a game plan – it didn’t quite work to plan,” said Ali. “She came to win, which was evident, and I’m just glad I got through it.”
The opening bout was a case study in the significance of fighting three-minute rounds as opposed to the two-minute length that has been the standard for women. Tamm Thibeault, a 2020 Olympian and 2022 amateur world champion representing Canada, was fighting for the third time at the three-minute length, while Mary Casamassa – though more experienced as a pro – was fighting for the first time under a three-minute-round format.
Casamassa found herself knocked down in the final minute of the first round on a southpaw left hand and, after fading in the final minute of the fifth, had the fight stopped when her head was knocked back against the ropes by the rangy Thibeault.
The official time of stoppage was 2 minutes, 18 seconds, as Thibeault, of Shawinigan, Quebec, raised her record to 3-0 (1 KO). Casamassa, from Pittsburgh, dropped to 6-1 (1 KO) in defeat.
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.
