This Friday (7 March 2025), on the eve of International Women’s Day 2025, the iconic Royal Albert Hall will host a landmark all-female boxing event, ‘Unstoppable’, headlined by the world welterweight title unification bout between Natasha Jonas and Lauren Price.
The event, which features six women that between them have spent more than a decade as part of GB Boxing squad, promises to be a fantastic showcase for women’s boxing that will highlight the vital role it has played in driving the growth of the sport since the IOC announced in 2010 that women’s boxing would be included in the Olympic Games.
It is not that long ago (1998) that the original pioneer of women’s boxing, Jane Couch, took the British Board Boxing of Control (BBBofC) to court to earn the right to compete, so to see an all-female card at the Royal Albert Hall accompanied by a full week of media activity driven by the Sky Sports promotional juggernaut, says a huge amount about how far the sport has come in a short time.
That the show will be headlined by two of GB Boxing’s most successful female boxers – albeit from different eras – is testament to the impact that the World Class Programme (WCP) for boxing has had in inspiring a generation of women and girls.
In 2015, figures from Sport England’s Active People Survey, indicated that the number of women that participated in boxing at least once per week had risen by 50 per cent since the London Olympics in 2012. More recently, data from Our Sporting Life, based on fieldwork in January 2024, claimed that 2.86 per cent of women in the UK intended to participate in boxing at least once per month. Based on a UK female population of 34.49 million, this suggested that nearly one million women (986,414) take part in boxing in some capacity on a monthly basis. At a competitive level, England Boxing reported in 2022 that the number of registered female boxers had increased by 78 per cent (from 1,314 to 2,345) since 2016.
Natasha Jonas, who is bringing WBC, IBF and WBF world titles to the ring on Friday, is one of the pioneers of women’s Olympic-style boxing in Great Britain and a key figure in inspiring this growth.
A European and world medallist, in 2012 she became the first British women in history to compete in boxing at an Olympic Games when she defeated the USA’s Quanitta Underwood in her opening bout at London. Although she did not win a medal, Natasha was part of the female triumvirate – along with Savannah Marshall and the history making gold medallist Nicola Adams – that first put women’s boxing on the map in Great Britain and paved the way for future generations.
Following an initial retirement in 2014 when she gave birth to a daughter, Natasha returned as a professional boxer in 2016 and has gone on to win multiple world titles in a 19-bout career in which she has continued to break down barriers.
In 2022 she was the first woman to win the British Boxing Board of Control’s ‘British Boxer of the Year’ award and in 2023 she became the first Black woman to receive a manager’s license from the BBBofC.
Facing her in the opposite corner on Friday night will be one of GB Boxing’s greatest ever female boxers, Lauren Price.
A former kickboxing world champion and international footballer with 52 caps for Wales, Lauren joined the GB Boxing squad in 2016 and went on to win every title available to her in Olympic-style boxing, culminating at Tokyo in 2021 when she won the gold medal to add to her world, European and Commonwealth titles.
With no worlds left to conquer in the Olympic sphere, Lauren turned professional in 2021 and continues to train, along with fellow Tokyo medallist turned professional boxer Karriss Artingstall, in the GB Boxing gym as part of the Podium2Proprogramme by which GB Boxing trains and manages former boxers that have turned professional.
Lauren won a world title in her seventh bout and remains undefeated as a professional. She is on course to become one of the greatest Welsh boxers of all time – male or female – and on Friday night she will be putting her WBA, IBO, and Ring Magazine world titles on the line as she attempts to unify the welterweight division.
That two such distinguished members of the GB Boxing family are headlining an event is a source of great pride to everyone connected with the World Class Programme.
However, a look at the full card shows that the power of the Olympic programme in inspiring an upsurge in women’s boxing over in recent years, runs deeper and reveals that six of the eight boxers competing in the four bouts are previous members of the GB Boxing squad.
Foremost among these is Karriss Artingstall who spent three years in the GB Boxing squad. A former member of the Royal Horse Artillery in the British Army, Karriss joined the WCP in 2019 where she made an instant impact taking European silver and World bronze in her first year. After qualifying for Tokyo 2020 in dramatic style, via a box-off, she went on to secure Olympic bronze when she won her quarter-final against Australia’s Skye Nicolson, who is now the reigning WBC featherweight world champion. A win for Karriss on Friday night, may well set-up a clash with her old rival for the world title.
Another former GB Boxing Olympian who will be in action on Friday night is Caroline Dubois. Caroline joined the WCP in the latter part of 2019 after she won gold at the Youth Olympics in Azerbaijan. She went on to qualify for Tokyo but narrowly missed out on a medal, losing 3:2 in her quarter final bout. She turned professional in 2021 and on Friday night she will be defending her IBO and WBC world lightweight titles.
Another Olympian, with strong links to GB Boxing, that should have been on the card on Friday night is Cindy Ngamba who emerged as one of the stars of Paris 2024 when she became the first Refugee in history to win an Olympic medal by securing middleweight bronze.
Cindy has trained with GB Boxing for over two years and continues to be based at the gym in Sheffield, from where she planned to launch her professional career. Sadly, this will have to wait a little longer as she has been withdrawn from Friday night’s show with a medical issue.
The final two former members of the GB Boxing squad on Friday night’s undercard are Raven Chapman and Chloe Watson who both spent time as part of the WCP in the Tokyo cycle before going on to find success in the professional ranks. Raven, who held the WBC featherweight international title for two years, will box Karriss for the vacant British featherweight title, while Chloe is the current European flyweight champion.
Beyond the titles, these women have re-shaped and are continuing to re-shape perceptions of women’s sport and have contributed to a boom in female boxing that has lasted for more than a decade.
As we celebrate their achievements on the eve of International Women’s Day 2025, GB Boxing proudly wishes all of the boxers the best of luck ahead of their upcoming bouts.
