Chantelle Cameron Claims WBA, WBC, and WBO Titles with Win Over Mikaela Mayer

Chantelle Cameron stormed into new territory in Birmingham, adding the WBA, WBC and WBO super-welterweight titles to her collection and tightening her grip on greatness with a unanimous decision win over Mikaela Mayer in a savage, breathless main event at MPW-06.

The scorecards – 97-93, 97-93, 96-94 – told one story. The ring told another. This was a fight fought on the edge, round after round, between two pound-for-pound stars who refused to blink.

Cameron, already the only woman to have beaten Katie Taylor in the pros, walked out of Birmingham with another defining victory and a resume that is starting to look historic.

Bad blood, no brakes

The animosity had been simmering all week, then boiled over at Friday’s weigh-in when the pair had to be split by security after a physical clash and a volley of insults. Mayer talked about stopping Cameron. Cameron promised to “smash her head in”.

The bell rang and they fought exactly like that.

The first round ended with a shoulder bump and a square-up on the way back to their corners, a small spark that matched the fury of the exchanges. Before that flashpoint, Mayer had tried to claim centre ring, stepping in on the front foot, but Cameron’s timing cut through the noise. A sharp left hook landed clean, an early reminder that the home fighter’s counters would be a constant threat.

Cameron looked the heavier-handed operator in the second, lunging in with a right hand that snapped Mayer’s head back. Mayer answered, walking her down into the corner and whipping a right hook to the face. Neither woman wanted to yield ground. Neither woman wanted to take a backward step.

Chess with blood on it

The pattern began to form in the third. Mayer edged forward, still searching for her range, but a short right of her own left her open and Cameron punished the gap with another precise counter. Mayer fired back with a neat two-punch combination. The exchanges were tight, technical, but laced with spite.

Cameron stayed on the back foot by design, setting traps, relying on her reactions and sense of distance to sting Mayer as she came in. The American kept trudging forward, trying to turn the fight into her kind of boxing match, but every misjudged inch was met with leather.

As the distance closed, the finesse gave way to grit. They stood close and let their hands go. Cameron clipped Mayer with a short right hook. Mayer dug to the body, ripping away at the ribs in a bruising exchange that underlined how quickly this had become a battle of will as much as skill.

Mayer finally found a big moment in the fifth, drilling a thumping right hand into Cameron’s face. She bit down on the gumshield and stayed there, trading again on the inside, both women hacking away to the body. The tempo never dipped. Every break in the action lasted just long enough for the referee to step away before the next barrage began.

Cameron turns the screw

The relentless pace rolled into the middle rounds, but the geography of the fight started to change. Cameron, who had been so comfortable drawing Mayer onto shots, began to march forward in the seventh.

Now she jabbed with authority, then drove a right hand over the top. Mayer retreated, forced to give ground she had tried to claim all night. By the end of the round, Cameron was stalking her, cutting the ring, turning the American away from her preferred angles and into heavier exchanges.

Mayer tried to adjust, but the fight no longer looked like hers. The British fighter’s pressure, mixed with that sharp counter-punching, dragged the contest into a trench war that suited Cameron’s instincts.

By the ninth, the toll was written on both faces. Swelling around the eyes, blood trickling – Mayer with a cut, Cameron also marked up. Every jab, every hook, every body shot had left something behind. It had become a pure battle of attrition between two of the sport’s elite, fought at a pace that would have broken most.

They embraced before the final bell’s aftermath turned sour again, a brief flash of respect in a rivalry that had been anything but polite.

“I just wanted to play with her”

When it was over, Cameron knew what she had done – and who she had done it against.

“I just wanted to play with [Mayer],” she said. “If you’re going to say you’ll stop me, beat me easily… talk is so cheap, and I showed that tonight. Don’t talk too much game – you’ve got to back it.

“I want to do this again. It’s up to Mikaela, but I want to do three-minute rounds.

“I’ll speak to my team and see if Mikaela wants it, but – [to Mayer] – didn’t you say you were going to beat me so bad that I wasn’t going to want a rematch?”

Mayer, bruised but defiant, saw it differently.

“I did beat you Chantelle. You are lucky in your little back yard,” she fired back in the ring. “You can have your re-match. Three-minute f****** rounds. If you want to vacate your WBC belt you can do that. It’s your prerogative now. I’ll just kick your ass even harder.

“But it won’t be here. It won’t be in the UK. If you want to come to the US you can.

“I outboxed you. I’ll go back and rewatched it and give an honest evaluation, but I just beat you.

“If the public says I’m wrong you can have that… my initial feeling is I outboxed her.”

The judges disagreed. The belts stayed with Cameron. The argument, though, is far from finished.

A rematch, with three-minute rounds and home advantage flipped across the Atlantic, now hangs in the air. After a fight like this, who wouldn’t want to see them do it all over again?