Trainer Shane McGuigan is hoping Caroline Dubois and Ellie Scotney will land significant fights as they continue their stellar careers.
Dubois is coming off a resounding victory over Terri Harper, and is the WBC and WBO lightweight titleholder. A gifted southpaw, Dubois is 13-0-1 (5 KOs), while the undisputed junior featherweight champion Scotney is 12-0 after defeating Mayelli Flores over 10 rounds on the same London bill.
There has been intense speculation that Dubois could face unified junior lightweight champion Alycia Baumgardner.
Although McGuigan would like that fight for Dubois, he is not convinced it will happen next.
“Obviously, they’re in different weight divisions at the moment,” McGuigan said. “Of course we want it next. It’s whether or not that they see it as the right business move for MVP.”
Both Dubois and Baumgardner are promoted by Most Valuable Promotions.
“They’ve got a handful of fighters that’s going to fly the flag on from Amanda Serrano,” McGuigan added. “And they’ve at least got a Caroline Dubois, Alycia Baumgardner, so do they want to risk the undefeated record of both, of two of their fighters? Maybe not. But at the same time, you’ve got to be in it as a promoter to make the biggest fights. Because if you can make the biggest fights, then you can’t create traction and attention to the events. And I think that is a fight to make. Obviously there’s a weight difference between [them], but it’s – what? – five pounds. It’s not a lot of weight for Alycia to move up. I don’t think Caroline can go down in weight. I don’t think she'll be able to make 130. But Alycia has a big frame. I think she could move up to it.
“But at the end of the day, it’s what she wants to do. I just think when you come into who’s going to be the next Amanda Serrano, who’s going to be the next Katie Taylor, it’s kind of like a toss-up between those. And you need the right dance partner.”
For McGuigan, Scotney doesn’t have the dance partner she needs yet. That is despite Scotney seemingly being in the crosshairs of Australian star Skye Nicolson.
But there were many in British boxing who were thrilled to see Scotney complete her collection of belts.
“Ellie’s an absolute gem of a person,” McGuigan said. “She’s never going to be one of these people that’s going to be trash-talking and stuff like that. She’s God-fearing. And that’s the way she wants to approach the sport. But at the end of the day, when she gets in there, she doesn’t bark or shout. She puts on fantastic fights and fantastic performances.
“And if you look at that [last] fight, it was by far the fight of the night. It had excitement. Neither of them got dropped, but the amount of punches that they threw, I feel like Ellie hurt Flores a handful of times. It was just an amazing fight to be in the corner of. And she kept her composure in a whirlwind of punches and became undisputed. Ellie was composed and she won the majority of the rounds and boxed to orders and boxed a brilliant fight.”
Scotney now, after just 12 fights, has all of the championship hardware, but still Nicolson – who headlines in Melbourne this week against Mariah Turner – believes she can outbox her if they fight.
“She’s in a different direction with Matchroom,” said McGuigan.
“But I feel like Skye Nicolson had no interest in the fight whenever Ellie was less relevant in the same promoter’s promotional company. And now, obviously, Ellie is getting traction and she’s on a good platform and she’s getting well paid and stuff like that. And suddenly it’s like, ‘Oh, we want to fight Ellie Scotney.’ But there were no talks about that up until Ellie got a good contract.
“If the fight comes about, I’m super-confident that Ellie Scotney would beat her. But it’s also just like, she’s got her own path. She’s got her own journey and she’s not chasing a girl that’s been beaten. Why not box the girl [Tiara Brown] that beat Skye Nicolson? Why not box that? That’s the way Ellie Scotney is thinking. She’s thinking about accomplishing things in the sport, not just chasing a back and forth, chatting shit to one another on a build-up. She’s a purist. If Skye is a world champion and decorated and a unified world champion, she’s got some skin in the game. Of course you’ll fight her. But she’s not the most exciting fighter to watch. I think she’s good at what she does. She’s a good little boxer, but she’s not very exciting. And she’s lost at world level. And I think she would lose in worse fashion against Ellie Scotney.
“But timing’s everything. Ellie’s on her little journey where she’s going to go off and maybe stay at the division. We will see. She might move up or she might stay there. And if she stays there, then it’s definitely a fight that we’ll look into.”
It has been well-documented that Scotney’s promoter, Jake Paul, said he would buy her a G-Wagon if she became undisputed champion, but McGuigan said it was “tongue-in-cheek.”
Scotney, who takes public transport to and from the gym, first needs to pass her driving test.
“I think Jake Paul’s a very generous guy. So is Nakisa [Bidarian],” McGuigan said. “They’re generous people. They really value Ellie Scotney. They value what she’s doing. The fact that she’s their first undisputed world champion – and, yes, Ellie was a unified champion before she got there – but in terms of providing the fights for her to get her defining moment of undisputed, it’s their first fight that they’ve worked with to become undisputed under their banner. So it’s a big moment for them. It’s a big moment for Ellie, and there’s a great relationship between both parties, and I can see it going on for a long time.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
