Promoter Ben Shalom eyeing ‘special event for women’s boxing’
Dec 3, 2024 • 4:30 AM ET
With Lauren Price and Natasha Jonas meeting in separate fights on Saturday, December 14, attention has already turned to a unified championship fight between them next year.
At the Exhibition Centre in Liverpool, Welsh star Price, a former Olympic gold medallist, fights 7-0 Colombian Bexcy Mateus, while WBC and IBF champion Jonas – in the headline contest in her hometown – meets Croatia’s Ivana Habazin.
Liverpool southpaw Jonas is 15-2-1 (9 KOs). Mateus is 23-5 (7 KOs). Price holds the WBA and Ring titles.
Boxxer promoter Ben Shalom is hoping Jonas and Price come through their respective challenges to set up a unification bout in the first quarter of 2025.
“I am looking at a very, very special event in March for women’s boxing but obviously anything can happen in sport, and I know that Habazin really fancies it against Natasha Jonas, so it’s not going to be an easy fight,” Shalom warned. “But the winners will definitely fight, and assuming Lauren Price beats Bexcy Mateus, which you’d expect, it sets up a big, big unification.”
Shalom will attend the WBC convention in Hamburg later this month to press the case for Caroline Dubois to be given the chance to fight for a vacant lightweight title, should current champion Katie Taylor be stripped or vacate. Gifted Dubois is also in action early in 2025, against Jessica Camara in Sheffield on January 11. Dubois’ stablemate at McGuigan’s Gym, Adam Azim, is slated to box again early in February in London.
However, Jonas is a darling of Liverpool and Price a hero in Wales, so where would a possible fight between them land?
“I think if it was going to be those two, I think you’d see it land in London,” said Shalom.
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
