When Tammara Thibeault is on a streak, he scores his thoughts with English phrases that he did not learn to grow in Shawinigan, which.
She could say: “Do you know Woh, I mean?” Just to make sure he knows what he means.
Or will an occasional prayer with “Innit?”, Apart from “Isn’t it?”, That our friends in England use the way in which Canadians use “huh?” The speaker is not really asking a question. Just making an observation.
If you have lost the 28 -year -old Tibault notorgato, since its first round in the Olympic Boxing Tournament in Paris last summer, it has not disappeared. She moved to Sheffield, England to dive into academic work, where she is looking for her mastery in urban design and urban planning.
Before finding urban planning, Thibeault studied linguistics, which means that he is aware of how a transatlantic movement and immersion in a new dialect would shape his spoken English.
And boxing?
The 2023 PAN Games champion is still immersed in sweet science, training daily at the Gym of the city of the Steel in Sheffield while embarked on a professional career that takes her back to Canada this week.
On Friday night at the Toronto Casino Resort, Thibeault faces Sonya Dreiling in a fight of six rounds on the billboard of a light clash between Lucas Bahdi by Niagara Falls and Ryan James Racaza de Filipinas. For Thibeault, the fight is a showcase, a return home and a backward meeting with some other decorated Canadian fans, such as Bahdi and Sara Bailey de Toronto, now chasing professional success.
“I can return home and I am proud to represent Canada in his homeland,” said Thibeault, who is 1-0 as a professional. “I can fight with the old teammates. Lucas Bahdi. Sara Bailey. We all travel together.”
Thibeault is launching his career at a time of deep change for the professional boxing industry.
Look | Why Tibault became pro:
The 2 times Olympic Tammara Thibeault has made the decision to become a professional boxer, and is preparing for his first professional fight on December 13. We talked to her about the decision, which means for her future and how her Olympic experience of Tokyo and Paris led to the decision.
Follow the money
On the side of men, promoters and the best artists have followed the money to Saudi Arabia, where Turki Alalshikh, the richest and richest energy corridor of sport, has financed events full of stars.
Last month, Saul “Canelo” Álvarez, the super medium champion and the largest raffle for vision of sport, signed a four fighting agreement with the Riad season, the Saudi Cultural Festival that pumped its dollars of sponsorship in the boxing, marking another significant change in the balance of sport.
Meanwhile, some American promoters are strongly investing in female boxing, raising the profile and salary scale of the sport, and benefiting several Canadian combatants.
Salita Promotions, based in Michigan, is a good example.
Regardless of the genre, its highest profile interpreter is Classa Shields, the two -time Olympic gold medalist and undefeated Pro World champion. In 2022, Shields defeated Savannah Marshall in a fight for the medium weight title, one of the two female fights in history that offers seven -digit guarantees.
But its promoter, Dmitry Salita, has also matched the shields with the Canadian opponents: Marie-Eve Dicaire in 2021 and Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse in last summer, and in January, Salita added Caroline Veyre de Montreal to her stable.
Another example is the most valuable promotions, the attire founded in 2021 by Jake Paul and Nakisa Berarian, and the company behind the other fight of multimillionaire women, the 2022 confrontation between Amanda Serrano and Katie Taylor in Madison Square Gardens. They signed Thibeault to a promotional contract after the Paris Olympic Games, and are organizing Friday’s fighting card, in collaboration with United Promotions based in Ajax.
Berarian, who grew up in Toronto, says that the Boxing Boxing of the Braintust company identified Thibeault as a future star. Their amateur praise indicated a successful professional career, and their interests outside the ring hints at an attractiveness.
“The ideal world is that you have the skills and you have the skills set to sell the skills,” said Berarian. “A perfect world is that you have them, and You are an incredibly done individual outside the ring. That is what Tamm is. That is what makes me so excited. “
Focus on female boxing
Biarian says that the MVP approach in female boxing comes from his own time as an executive at the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which coincided with Ronda Rousey’s career as the best -selling and highest athlete in the organization. Then, when closing the salary gap between the male and female stars, it is one of the MVP objectives, the promotion is also working to normalize both sets of athletes that use the same rules.
In mixed martial arts, men and women fight against five -minute rounds. But where the rules demand three -minute rounds for men boxers, women generally dispute two -minute rounds. In 2023, MVP introduced three -minute rounds for female fighting, starting with the defense of Serrano’s title against Danila Ramos.
“This is history,” Serrano told ESPN later. “We made history together and I am excited to see the future of female boxing.”
The immediate MVP plans for Thibeault include three -minute rounds, the length of the round used for their professional debut, a four round decision on his partner Natasha Spence Canadian. In the medium term, they intend to present it on the billboard of their greatest profiles, to increase its visibility.
But in the long term, the lack of a middle class among women’s boxers complicates the process of finding appropriate opponents.
Thibeult occupied the sixth
Thibeault, for example, is the sixth medium weight in the world, according to Boxrec, the boxing statistics database. Its opponent, Dreiling, is classified as number 17, but all kinds of weight includes only 40 fighters worldwide.
In contrast, the male medium weight division includes 1,994 registered professionals. A confrontation between the sixth and 17th classified male combatants is a high -risk confrontation with implications of the world title. On the women’s side, it is a poster fight between Thibeault, a perspective with a single professional fight for their credit, and Dreiling, which has a 5-7 record and a loser streak of four fights.
That lack of depth helps to explain why Shields has won world titles in five kinds of weight. She needs to move between categories to find a challenge.
But that configuration also puts the talented perspectives like Thibeault in a difficult position: fattening your record against surpassed challengers, go directly to a fight for the title without the appropriate condiment or find a way to attract other contestants.
“The responsibility of us is to put TAMM in positions where opponents are willing to run that risk,” said Berarian.
And Tibaault’s main challenge these days?
Manage your time and energy to give both your education and your career in boxing the effort they deserve. Thibeault says that he uses a spreadsheet to help her to assign hours to each search, but has also learned that balance also means prioritizing one on the other for stretching.
At this time, she says that boxing is Job One.
But that will change.
“Sometimes you have to put the boxing first,” said Thibeault. “Once this fight ends, I will give you a good impulse for my teachers and put in education first until the next opportunity.”
