Boxing: Maïva Hamadouche, for a title in Las Vegas
Maïva Hamadouche in Paris in June 2021. AFP - MARTIN BUREAU
Text by: Farid Achache Follow
2 min
On November 5, Maïva Hamadouche will face American Mikaela Mayer in Las Vegas during the World Super Featherweight Unification Championship.
After a failed stint among amateurs during the Tokyo Olympics, here she is back among the professionals.
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Nicknamed "El Veneno" (the venom in Spanish), the French Maïva Hamadouche will play her first fight on American soil, in Las Vegas on November 5th.
She will face the American Mikaela Mayer, world champion of the Super Plume of the World Boxing Organization (WBO) who, at 30, has fifteen victories, including five before the limit, and no defeat.
Contesting this world championship of super-feather unification (-58.967 kg) will be for Hamadouche the opportunity to add a belt to his list of achievements.
Policewoman in civilian life
Professional since 2013 and IBF super featherweight world champion since 2016, Maïva Hamadouche made a detour from the amateur world to compete in the Tokyo Olympics last summer. Eliminated from the start, her first Olympics ended in failure. For two years, she had trained in amateur boxing. “
It's an adventure that I wish everyone
,” she confided in the columns of
La Dépêche du Midi
despite its failure. “
In pro boxing, there is a more personal dimension. Even though I'm French, I box for myself. At the Olympics, I wear the French flag, I am part of a team, of the French camp,
”added the only female representative in Japan.
“
Frustrated
” after her Olympic experience, here she is now on the front of the stage for a new challenge.
Born in Albi, raised by a single mother in a modest family, Maïva Hamadouche, 31, is a civilian police officer.
Savate then English boxing
After trying her hand at soccer, she accidentally turned to boxing at the age of 14. The teenager begins with the savate then practices boxing thereafter. French champion in 2014, she became European lightweight champion in March 2015 then she retained her title in May 2016. In November 2016, she won her first IBF super featherweight world title in Paris against the American Jennifer Salinas. On December 17, 2020 in Milan, she retains her title for
the seventh time in a row.
Maïva Hamadouche, hyperactive woman, teaches boxing as a police officer to women victims of violence.
“
I would like to make myself useful by being closer to people.
For example, dealing with situations of violence against women, which is a real scourge in our society, by helping them, by giving them self-defense lessons, by giving them a little
"confidence"
in themselves.
Or do prevention concerning sexual violence in sport, a subject that really touches me
, ”
she told RFI
in December 2020.
She is now under contract with Matchroom-Italia, the Italian branch of promoter Eddie Hearn who leads in particular the WBA-WBO-IBF heavyweight champion, the Englishman Anthony Joshua.
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