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How to watch or stream Natasha Jonas v Lauren Price
The Guardian will have round-by-round updates, analysis and instant reaction in this space.
In the UK, Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Action will broadcast the card. Subscribers can use the Sky Go app on compatible devices. The main event ringwalks are expected around 10pm GMT.
In the US, the card will be carried on TrillerTV+. The main event ringwalks are expected around 5pm ET.
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Tonight marks the first night of boxing in four years at the Royal Albert Hall and only the fifth since 1999. But BoxRec’s exhaustive annals show the 154-year-old concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington has a surprisingly rich fistic history, with at least 470 cards staged here down the years going back to 1918 – exactly one month after the end of the first world war.
Speaking of the great man, McRae wrote a piece for Sunday’s Observer on his latest book, The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing, out next week and published by Simon and Schuster.
When I was a boy, living in South Africa, I fell for Muhammad Ali. As graceful as he was provocative, Ali amazed me with his uncanny ability, despite apartheid, to entrance black and white South Africans. He made us laugh and dazzled us with his outrageous skill and courage. I have followed boxing ever since, often obsessively, for more than 50 years.
In 1996, after I spent five years tracking Mike Tyson, James Toney, Roy Jones Jr, Chris Eubank Sr and Naseem Hamed, my book Dark Trade allowed me to become a full-time writer. I owe this gift to boxing but our relationship is not easy. Boxing is as crooked and destructive as it is magnificent and transformative.
I have given so much of my life to thinking and writing about giants of the ring, and thousands of lesser fighters who are often as interesting. But even zealots grow weary. For a while my family and work, as well as books, movies and Arsenal, filled my head as much as boxing. There was fleeting freedom from the ring.
Then, in September 2018, my sister, Heather, died shockingly soon after my mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. My father would endure the same diagnosis less than a year later. I lost all three of them – and then my mother-in-law died on the first anniversary of my mother’s death.
I have spent the past six years working on my fifth and probably final book about boxing. More than just a prop amid the grief, I wanted to remember how boxing made me feel so alive. It has always been a bleak and dirty business but, at its best, boxing is like nothing else. It can be as beautiful as it is brutal, as glorious as it is painful.
To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Donald McRae
Our man at ringside tonight is the inestimable Donald McRae, who’s just checked in with a dispatch from inside the room:
It’s good to be at the Royal Albert Hall on a very different, and significant, night for women’s boxing in the UK. This is a really beautiful venue for boxing – as intimate as it is grand – and it’s currently about two-thirds full. And it’s striking that the crowd features almost as many women as men shouting out their support for the undercard boxers. Some dubious and great fighters have boxed here – including Primo ‘the Ambling Alp’ Carnera, Reggie and Ronnie Kray, Henry Cooper, Muhammad Ali, Frank Bruno, Nigel Benn, Lennox Lewis, Naseem Hamed and Marco Antonio Barrera. It’s great to feel the history – and to look ahead, hopefully, to some decent fights and a really intriguing headline bout between Jonas and Price.
Jasmina Zapotoczna has just won a 10-round split decision over Britain’s Chloe Watson. Two of the ringside judges handed down identical cards of 96-95 in favor of the Poland-born, Yorkshire-based flyweight, overruling a 97-93 score for the Merseysider. Zapotoczna is now the European champion at the 112lb division.
Two more preliminary bouts to go before the main event.
Preamble
Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of a groundbreaking night of boxing at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall. For the first time, an all-women’s card takes center stage at this storied venue, headlined by a high-stakes welterweight title unification clash between Natasha Jonas and Lauren Price.
Tonight’s main event represents a compelling clash of styles and generations. Jonas (16-2-1, 9 KO), the 40-year-old Merseysider who holds the WBC and IBF titles at welterweight, has defied the odds in the later stages of her career, moving up in weight to claim world titles before dropping back down to 147lb in pursuit of undisputed glory. A crisp counterpuncher with knockout power, Jonas’ experience on the biggest stages could be the deciding factor tonight. But will it be enough to overcome the speed, youth and technical brilliance of her undefeated foe?
Lauren Price (8-0, 2 KO) was one of the faces of British boxing even before seeing off Chicago investment banker Jessica McCaskill last year to win the WBA’s version of the welterweight crown. A Tokyo Olympic gold medalist with a deep amateur pedigree, the 30-year-old Welsh southpaw has made a flying start as a professional, relying on her exceptional speed, ring IQ and fluid movement to overwhelm opponents. Despite her relative inexperience in the paying ranks, Price is a fighter on the fast track and determined to make a statement by dethroning a legend.
Beyond the belts, tonight marks another milestone for women’s boxing. The Royal Albert Hall, steeped in sporting and cultural history, plays host to a night dedicated entirely to female fighters – something unthinkable just a decade ago. With the sport’s rapid growth and an increasing appetite for top-tier women’s bouts, this event is both a celebration and a showcase of the elite talent driving the revolution on the eve of International Women’s Day.
And it’s not just Jonas and Price in the spotlight. In the co-feature bout, rising star Caroline Dubois defends her WBC lightweight title, further adding to the significance of the occasion.
The main event ringwalks are expected around 10pm local. Stay with us for round-by-round updates, analysis and reaction.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s a look at tonight’s headliners in action at the media workouts earlier this week.
How to watch or stream Natasha Jonas v Lauren Price
The Guardian will have round-by-round updates, analysis and instant reaction in this space.
In the UK, Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Action will broadcast the card. Subscribers can use the Sky Go app on compatible devices. The main event ringwalks are expected around 10pm GMT.
In the US, the card will be carried on TrillerTV+. The main event ringwalks are expected around 5pm ET.
