Boxer Chantelle Cameron: ‘If we want equal rights, equal pay, we can’t be doing two-minute rounds’

The Northampton fighter on beating Katie Taylor, facing Mikaela Mayer and why women’s boxing needs three-minute rounds

Less than two weeks before her world title unification bout against Mikaela Mayer, in a potential fight of the year for women’s boxing, Chantelle Cameron’s memory carries a quietly shocking force. “I was 14 and doing a psychology GCSE when my teacher spoke to me in front of the whole class,” Cameron says. “I don’t know why because I wasn’t a naughty kid. But he just turned round and said I’m going to end up stacking shelves in Tesco with two kids by the time I’m 16. On the inside I was like: ‘Wow. Did he really say that?’”

Cameron is the only woman to have beaten the great Katie Taylor as a pro and she has become a passionate advocate for elite female boxers and their right to fight three-minute rounds – so much so that, last year, she gave up her WBC world title because the sanctioning body suggested women weren’t strong enough to box more than two-minute rounds. She will now defend her WBO world super-welterweight title a week on Saturday against Mayer, the experienced WBC belt-holder.