Kirstie Bavington eyes history and a life-changing moment

Beat Olympic champion Lauren Price at Birmingham’s Resorts World Arena and the PE teacher from Pensnett will make history by becoming boxing’s first-ever professional women’s British champion and quite probably realise her dream of being a full-time athlete.

Bavington knows not many observers are tipping her for victory. Price will enter the ring for their middleweight contest as odds-on favourite.

But then proving people wrong is what Bavington does best. She did it when doctors told her a snapped anterior cruciate ligament meant she would never again play football at a decent level. In the boxing ring, she’s been doing it since first stepping through the ropes of the Lions club gym in Brierley Hill nearly two decades ago, when the notion of a women’s match taking equal billing at the top of a televised bill was pure fantasy.

“I was the only girl in the gym when I started and that was the case for years,” she says. “But it’s never fazed me. “We have always been the minority but it just makes you more motivated to show people you can achieve anything.

“I got all the comments when I was a kid: ‘Are you a boy? You shouldn’t be boxing’. Things like that. All it ever did was drive me on to prove everyone wrong.”

Bavington, a self-confessed sport obsessive, was 13 when Lions club founder Bob Dillon visited Pensnett High School to put on a boxing session. Soon she was making the short walk from home to the gym ever more frequently. What had begun as a means of additional training to aid her ambitions as a footballer was quickly developing into a passion of its own.

“I fell in love with boxing. It became an addiction,” she says. “There weren’t many female boxers anywhere back then.

“I had maybe one fight a year. My first fight was a national final. It was mad. You would have to travel to the other side of the country just to find a fight. But you kept on.

“I enjoy the buzz of boxing. To be honest, I enjoy getting hit. I am always chasing the win and that emotion of when you have won something. There really is nothing better.”

Bavington’s journey means few understand better the significance of Saturday’s fight for the sport. The show is one of the biggest to take place in the Midlands for several years with several of the region’s top male fighters, including Tyler Denny and Olympic silver medallist Ben Whittaker, on a bill topped by Joshua Buatsi’s light-heavyweight contest with Poland’s Pawel Stepien.

But it is the Bavington-Price bout which promises to generate the most headlines. Whatever the outcome, both women will have been involved in a landmark moment for boxing.

Yet it is only victory Bavington craves. Beaten last time out against Canada’s Kandi Wyatt, a defeat which dented her world title aspirations and also saw her controversially stripped of the European crown, the offer to fight Price came as an unexpected chance for swift, sensational redemption.

There are similarities in the backgrounds of both women. Price, who at 28 is two years Bavington’s junior, also enjoyed a career in football, winning two caps for Wales before placing her full focus on boxing.

She now stands as Britain’s most successful-ever amateur female fighter following her Tokyo 2020 gold but tomorrow is just her fourth bout in the professional ranks and her first scheduled for 10 rounds.

“I give Lauren full respect for what she has achieved, representing her country in football and boxing,” says Bavington, for whom tomorrow will be professional bout No.14.

“But she has never come across anyone like me before. She will never have been what I have gone through.

“So I am going to rough her up, give it all I have got. It is my last chance to prove to people I can really get what I want.

“I want to live the dream of being a full-time athlete. I want to change my life, not just for myself but to inspire others. I want to show people that no matter what your record states, you can make it one day.”

Bavington played for Albion, Birmingham, Crystal Palace and Wolves before deciding to call time on her football career six years ago and concentrate fully on boxing.

If she had listened to the doctors, the end would have come three years earlier when she suffered her knee injury.

“I completely snapped my ACL and had a full knee reconstruction,” she says. “I overcame that, even when doctors were saying you will never play to a higher level. I did, I played for Palace. I never let it affect me.

“In the end I had to pick one sport because I was balancing both and not really excelling at either.

“Every single night I was training. Some weekends I would box on the Saturday and play football on the Sunday. I was drained.”

Bavington still fits her boxing around her work teaching at Sedgley’s Beacon Hill Academy, though the school have been supportive of her second career and granted her two weeks off to prepare fully for tomorrow night.

“It’s not easy for the school because they have to get cover in, so I’m so grateful for that,” she says.

“I have been able to get in the sparring I need and all the little bits you miss when you are at work, the strength training and recovery and the sleep, things like that. I’ve been able to focus fully on the fight.”

Her students, meanwhile, remain a major source of inspiration.

“The big thing to me is inspiring kids,” she says. “I haven’t won all my fights. I have failed and I am not afraid to fail.

“I want to show them failure is not the end, you can overcome it and get better.

“I want them to really dream big. Whatever you want, you can have.”