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<\/p>\nEmma Dolan: \u201cIt\u2019s My Time.\u201d<\/p>\n
By Garry White <\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThose places smelt of cheap fags and beer. That kind of stale cocktail will always take me back to my early amateur fights,\u201d laughs IBF super-flyweight world title challenger Emma Dolan. In that dilapidated Social Club netherworld of flat Carling, roll-ups and unloved John Smith\u2019s Extra Smooth, she is once again a shy and skinny 12-year-old. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was really nervous,\u201d remembers Dolan, perhaps not surprisingly, of her amateur debut. \u201cI\u2019d never been in a ring with a girl before. I\u2019d only sparred with boys. But before you know it, the bell rings, and you\u2019ve no time to think. What feels like seconds later, they\u2019re raising your\u00a0arm.\u00a0I don\u2019t think I spoke for an hour afterwards. I must have been in shock. But boxing had me hooked from there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was back in 2010 as well,\u201d adds Dolan quizzically. \u201cI was having my first ever proper fight the same year that Irma Garcia was turning pro.\u201d It\u2019s an abrupt nod to the reigning champion, who will be taking her belt on the road for the\u00a0first time next month. Garcia (25-5-1, 5KOs) may lack profile in Europe, but in her native Mexico, she has appeared on top-tier promotions and has won versions of world titles across two weight divisions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At 44 years old, it would be easy to frame this fight as the ageing champion against the young pretender. Or perhaps more pertinently, a champion who works by day as a police officer in the stifling environs of Mexico City, with a limited profile, seeking the opportunity for one last decent payday. Who could blame her? But the Norfolk native is having none of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people are talking about her [Garcia] age and stuff. But I just don\u2019t think it affects women as much. There\u2019s a lot more longevity in women\u2019s boxing \u2013 maybe due to two-minute rounds,\u201d explains Dolan. <\/p>\n
\u201cIrma is very experienced. She\u2019s been there and done ten rounds multiple times. I have full respect for her and have no doubt that she won\u2019t make it easy for me. But, yeah, I do believe this is my time, and I plan to rip the title away from her.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a packed London Olympia on Easter Sunday, Dolan (8-0, 1KO) will get her chance to do just that. With Jake Paul\u2019s promotional outfit, MVP leading the way, she now has the opportunity and shop window that she has craved since becoming the IBF\u2019s number one contender in July last year.<\/p>\n
With Garcia being ordered to defend her belt against Dolan, the purse-bid process moved with predictable slowness. At one point, Dolan\u2019s manager\/trainer Carl Greaves and sponsor, Baz Jordan, were going to put up the money themselves and host it on a small hall show in Norfolk. \u201cIt just shows you the bond we all have,\u201d says the unbeaten 27-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t going to make much money out of it. Probably nothing at all once they\u2019d paid purse bids and all that stuff. They just wanted to do it for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
But they needn\u2019t have worried. When Dolan and her team logged into the Zoom meeting to discuss bids, MVP were already there, ready and waiting. \u201cIt was crazy \u2013 totally mental!\u201d laughs Dolan. \u201cBut now I\u2019m on this massive platform, I hope to get a bit of recognition \u2013 people can finally see what I\u2019m about.\u201d<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t difficult to understand what Dolan means by \u2018recognition\u2019. It is a term she bristles at, and as the inaugural winner of both British and Commonwealth titles at 115 lbs, perhaps it is something that she should no longer be required to search for.<\/p>\n
Despite these accolades, it has been a stop-start career to-date for the Newark-based challenger, who has had to endure her share of downtime. A pro career that kicked off in 2021, with an impressively old-school three fights in as many months, has seen her box just five times since. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t by choice,\u201d she says, and it is symptomatic of the freezeout nature of boxing for fighters outside of a promotional deal and on the fringes of the TV end of the sport.<\/p>\n
Dolan reveres the sports legends and talks knowledgably about fighters all the way from the sepia days of Willie Pep through to the glory days of Hagler, Hearns and co. She lives and breathes the sport, spending her evenings watching old fights on YouTube. No doubt this has driven her onward in the ring, but her fixation on the old school has at times left her adrift in today\u2019s increasingly influential social media stakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dolan is a boxer for the purist and not the casual fan. She doesn\u2019t trash-talk \u2013 \u201cwell, not unless someone has a go at me first!\u201d \u2013 and isn\u2019t interested in the glamour and ravenous self-promotion that, often, by necessity, is pushed through social media. She suffers through press conferences as a means to an end rather than the end in itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t some of them go on and on. Honestly, I think some people enjoy the press conferences more than the actual boxing\u201d she speculates, perhaps not unfairly.<\/p>\n
With the fight due to be shown live on Sky Sports, it will mark only Dolan\u2019s second opportunity to venture out of the narrow confines of the small hall shows and to reach a wider television audience. It is almost two years since she upended boxing\u2019s applecart by outpointing Anthony Joshua-managed and Matchroom-promoted Shannon Ryan at Birmingham\u2019s Live Arena. Following a convincing, up-tempo performance that included a second-round knockdown, Dolan won the spoils. She then expected the phone to ring with promotional opportunities and offers of big fights. It didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Starved of opportunities, it would have been easy to lose heart. But throughout, her mantra has continued to be that \u201ccream will always rise to the top.\u201d A convincing York Hall defence of her belts over former European champion Lauren Parker last time out has kept her busy whilst she has waited in the wings for the big one. \u201cI\u2019ve had to keep patient and believe that it will happen,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though I haven\u2019t been fighting as much as I would like, I\u2019ve been able to get some good sparring in. My lungs are good. I could get out of bed any morning and just be conditioned and ready to fight. We had\u00a0Giordana\u00a0Sorrentino (4-0 unbeaten pro and two-time Olympian) in recently, and I hadn\u2019t sparred since before Christmas. I did ten rounds comfortably.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat gives me confidence. One positive of not fighting regularly is that I don\u2019t have too many miles on the clock,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
Appearing on an all-female card with some of the biggest domestic and international names in women\u2019s boxing isn\u2019t something that daunts Dolan. She doesn\u2019t doubt that she has the tools and desire to share a platform with the likes of Chantelle Cameron, Terri Harper, Caroline Dubois and, most pertinently, Ellie\u00a0Scotney. The charismatic and lavishly talented \u2018Catford Queen\u2019 is positioned to be the youngest British four-belt world champion should she get the job done over WBA belt holder Mayalli Flores.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a dream come true that it has come together for Ellie and me at the same time. We\u2019ve been good mates since we met at an amateur tournament in Sweden more than ten years ago,\u201d reveals Dolan. \u201cWe are very similar people, and I honestly don\u2019t think either of us has changed in the time since.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat I get to fight for a world title on the same card where Ellie fights for an \u2018undisputed\u2019 is fantastic. The stars have really aligned for us on this one!\u201d<\/p>\n
When Dolan does enter the ring at Olympia next month, she will experience the rare feeling of having a home crowd rooting for her. Since her early fights in and around Norwich, she has fought perpetually on the road, compelled to even defend her belts in somebody else\u2019s backyard. The fact that she keeps on winning is a testament to her bloody-mindedness and the purity of her vision to keep progressing in a sport that has given her nothing voluntarily.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, but I\u2019ll still be walking out second. I\u2019m not bothered if everyone cheers for me or they all boo me,\u201d shrugs Dolan, in a nod to her being the perpetual outsider.<\/p>\n
\u201cHome or away? It makes zero difference to me. Irma\u2019s still the champ. But my mindset is that I\u2019m going to rip her to pieces and get that belt. I believe that\u2019s what you have to do if you want to win a world title. What is happening outside of the ring makes no difference to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite previously praising Garcia\u2019s experience and removing age as a potential factor to exploit, the woman nicknamed \u2018Dynamite\u2019 does plan to test the champion\u2019s engine with a customarily up-tempo performance. \u201cI can do two-minute rounds easily, and I\u2019m able to recover very quickly. I plan to make them very hard rounds for Irma. It won\u2019t be one pace, I promise. It\u2019ll be very high-gear, and I plan to test her fully,\u201d reveals Dolan ominously.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to bully her. I\u2019ll box her and use my range, my footwork, my power \u2013 but obviously I\u2019ll be careful because I know what she brings to the table. Irma is well-educated and highly experienced. I need to be mindful of that. But I\u2019m not going in carelessly and getting caught with something \u2013 I\u2019ll box her very cleverly but with plenty of aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the cameras are put away, and it\u2019s just Dolan and the smothering walls of her London hotel room, how does she plan to deal with the silence and expectation? \u201cWell, I\u2019ll be watching Tommy Hearns versus Roberto Duran,\u201d she swiftly counters. \u201cI watched that one before I beat Shannon Ryan, and I dropped her in the second round as well. So, it has to be that one!\u201d<\/p>\n
No doubt the woman nicknamed \u2018Dynamite\u2019 will be aiming to follow \u2018The Hitman\u2019s\u2019 lead again when she steps out at Olympia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Dolan: \u201cIt\u2019s My Time.\u201d By Garry White \u00a0\u201cThose places smelt of cheap fags and beer. That kind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-583580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}