{"id":873052,"date":"2026-08-27T07:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/873052\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T07:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:12:12","slug":"caroline-dubois-is-the-world-champion-who-split-from-her-coach-and-family-and-has-no-regrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/873052\/","title":{"rendered":"Caroline Dubois is the world champion who split from her coach and family \u2013 and has \u2018no regrets\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caroline Dubois may be living in Los Angeles, but do not speak to her about Californian glitz.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s just me or how my mindset is when it comes to camp, but I am an hour away from the beach and I\u2019ve been once for a training day,\u201d says the British world champion lightweight, speaking via a video call.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m about a half-hour away from Beverly Hills as well, but I\u2019ve not seen that yet. I\u2019ve been here six weeks and it is train, home to rest, back to the gym to train, home to rest again. I watch films, some boxing, read. That\u2019s as exciting as it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubois has good reason to be focused. On Saturday, she defends her WBC and WBO titles against American Amelia Moore on Jake Paul\u2019s Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) card in Birmingham, England \u2014 her first fight since a surprise split from her long-time coach Shane McGuigan, who guided her from amateur standout to becoming a unified world champion with 13 wins and one draw. She is now trained by\u00a0American Manny Robles, a switch that caused ripples of shock throughout women\u2019s boxing.<\/p>\n

Why do it?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to get into the reasons too much,\u201d Dubois says. \u201cI think the more important thing is that, one, the training has been so different. Sparring has been really high level. And everything that I\u2019ve been wanting and I\u2019ve been looking for, you know, I\u2019ve been ticking those boxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been saying, \u2018Usually people leave coaches after they\u2019ve lost or after something bad happened.\u2019 And I just think, \u2018You know, I ain\u2019t going to wait for that.\u2019 If I feel like I need something, I\u2019m going to go out there and get it. I don\u2019t need to wait to mess up to make a decision that is already sitting in my head.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing is to continue to develop, not just as an athlete, but as a person. I feel like I\u2019m doing that, I\u2019m very happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Caroline Dubois has split from her former coach Shane McGuigan (Richard Pelham\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Dubois\u2019 split with McGuigan was all the more surprising given he had been a constant in her life during a period of personal turbulence. In 2024, Caroline, one of her brothers and one of her sisters (she comes from a family of 11 children) effectively split from the rest of their family after a breakdown in relations with their father, Stan (who also goes by the name Dave).<\/p>\n

Another of Dubois\u2019 brothers, Daniel, is a heavyweight world champion in his own right, having also been schooled under Stan\u2019s strict, boxing-focused lifestyle which Caroline has previously called \u201coverbearing\u201d<\/a>. Daniel was also coached by McGuigan at the time, but he moved from the gym under his father\u2019s instruction and Caroline stayed put. The siblings are not on speaking terms.<\/p>\n

It feels like a lot for anyone to cope with, let alone a fighter in her early 20s trying to make her way in a notoriously unforgiving profession. Yet Dubois exudes positivity and self-belief, perhaps not surprisingly given this is the same fighter who, as a nine-year-old, tucked her hair into a cap and pretended to be a boy called \u2018Colin\u2019<\/a> so she could train at a males-only gym in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst position to be in at the end of your life is if you\u2019ve got a million regrets,\u201d she says. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be like, \u2018The reason why I\u2019m not happy or satisfied with my career is because of this person or that person\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith my family situation, obviously it\u2019s very personal and very complicated, but I look at the decision and, again, no regrets, a hundred per cent accountability.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Caroline Dubois with her brother Daniel in 2019 (James Chance\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cTo live the life you want to live, you do have to make sacrifices. And these are some of the sacrifices that I make and not just myself, but my brother and my sister as well. And I\u2019m just proud of our journey together and what we\u2019ve achieved. And it is only just the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubois has had no shortage of role models as she seeks to carve her own path in boxing.\u00a0One of them is Claressa Shields, the multi-weight U.S. world champion who Dubois believes shows young women they can speak up and be confident in themselves.<\/p>\n

Shields, 31, came from humble beginnings in Flint, Michigan, to win back-to-back Olympic golds and then world professional titles in five different weight classes. She\u2019s outspoken, brash and labels herself as \u2018GWOAT\u2019 \u2013 the Greatest Woman of All Time.<\/p>\n

Dubois watched Shields\u2019 last fight from her training base in L.A. as she beat Kaye Scott in front of a packed State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Shields is a big fan of Dubois and has attended her fights before.<\/p>\n

\u201cClaressa Shields has been one of my biggest inspirations for a very long time and I\u2019ll always be vocal about that,\u201d said Dubois. \u201cWhat she\u2019s done, where she\u2019s come from, especially, that has inspired me on another level.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just so proud of her. I was watching the card, of course, and seeing the arena slowly fill up, seeing the crowd just get time for a walkout, her energy\u2026 for a woman to do that, an American woman, a woman of colour, I\u2019m just in awe. She\u2019s a legend and has always been very supportive of me. She messages me, checks on how I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe gives me good advice to promote yourself. People are so afraid in the UK to be a little bit outspoken, to come off confident. They\u2019re very afraid of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see someone like Claressa, who has been so successful, it lets you know that you can be confident. You can talk your s\u2014. If you believe it, you can say it.\u00a0Proclaim it before it happens. Speak it into existence. Claressa is the number one for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Caroline Dubois shows off her world title belts with Claressa Shields (Richard Pelham\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Shields is 31, so may not be going anywhere anytime soon, but another superstar is leaving the firmament in the form of Katie Taylor. The Irish fighter is retiring following her September 5 bout against France\u2019s Flora Pili in front of 82,000 fans in Dublin\u2019s Croke Park.<\/p>\n

There will be a void left by Taylor, while Puerto Rican Amanda Serrano, who had three epic bouts with Taylor, is also at the end of her career after her 50th victory recently.<\/p>\n

Dubois, who features on the undercard of American Mikaela Mayer against England\u2019s Chantelle Cameron in a WBO and WBC super-welterweight bout this weekend, feels the women\u2019s sport needs more than one star to carry it forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aim is to become undisputed, to be involved in the biggest fights, the biggest nights, the biggest moments possible in women\u2019s boxing,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to be a face, a trendsetter and pushing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I feel like there can be multiple faces. There doesn\u2019t need to be one unanimous face. It\u2019s a terrible thing when there is, because it means that the sport is dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the men\u2019s sport \u2014\u00a0there\u2019s loads of different stars. Women\u2019s boxing needs to be that. I want to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caroline Dubois may be living in Los Angeles, but do not speak to her about Californian glitz. \u201cI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,9045,82],"class_list":["post-873052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-global-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}