Caroline Dubois added the WBO world lightweight title to her WBC crown with a unanimous points victory over her fellow Briton Terri Harper. The London-born younger sister of heavyweight Daniel Dubois scored a 98-91, 97-92, 98-91 win to see off Harper at London Olympia on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Dubois struggled to get to her opponent initially, but floored her in the sixth round and never looked back as she moved a step closer to unifying the division.<\/p>\n
Asked afterwards if that was now her aim, she told Sky Sports: \u201c100% \u2013 that\u2019s the plan. I only want big fights from now on. I\u2019ve got two more fights this year and I want to make them two of the biggest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fighters had traded verbal exchanges during the buildup to the contest with Harper shoving Dubois in a tense face-off on Wednesday, but she insisted there was nothing in the animosity on her part.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cIt was never personal for me. It was always personal for Terri. I\u2019m a fighter and I\u2019m an entertainer, I put myself out there to show up for you guys, I talk the talk to be entertaining for you guys, and this is why this fight was the most talked about, the most exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a cagey opening round, neither fighter landed a meaningful blow of note with Harper easily sidestepping an expansive left hook from Dubois, although the 29-year-old did get a straight right hand through Dubois in the second.<\/p>\n
Dubois enjoyed the better of the close-quarter action in the third round and as the tempo increased in the fourth, it was she who started to score, delivering a series of body blows and a solid right hook.<\/p>\n
Harper largely managed to keep herself out of range, but was caught with a heavy left which sent her to the canvas with 11 seconds of the sixth round remaining, to Dubois\u2019s clear delight.<\/p>\n
Caroline Dubois shows off her two world heavyweight belts. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge\/Action Images\/Reuters<\/p>\n
Sensing an opportunity, the 25-year-old stepped up a gear and with Harper bleeding heavily after a clash of heads in the eighth, she went toe-to-toe with her opponent knowing she needed something special in the closing rounds.<\/p>\n
Both remained on their feet after an attritional final two minutes, but a confident Dubois ultimately got the verdict she wanted.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Ellie Scotney had unified the super-bantamweight division by beating Mayelli Flores on points to take her WBA belt to go with the WBO, WBC and IBF world titles she already held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caroline Dubois added the WBO world lightweight title to her WBC crown with a unanimous points victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-365813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}