"The likes of Claressa Shields, Amanda Serrano, Katie Taylor, these girls lit up the path for us. They showed us how to progress." After starring on the historic bill at the O2 Arena this month, Caroline Dubois plans to follow in those footsteps and continue her rapid progression
Wednesday 26 October 2022 23:38, UK
Caroline Dubois intends to fight for a world title before the end of next year.
The Londoner is only 21 years and just four bouts into her professional career.
But the Tokyo Olympian has stopped three of those opponents inside the distance and starred on the undercard of Claressa Shields' historic bout with Savannah Marshall earlier this month. Dubois showed her propensity for finding ruthless finishes when she halted Milena Koleva inside five rounds.
"She's fought the likes of Katie Taylor, Maiva Hamadouche, Delfine Persoon and others. She's fought loads of world champions and she's challenged for the world title and I felt it would be a good yardstick for me to compare myself. I wanted to beat her differently to how she's been beaten before," Dubois told Sky Sports.
"I like people like Naoya Inoue, people who go out there and perform and try to look for the KO, always try to make a dominant performance. I look up to these people so I want to perform like them.
"It's the entertainment business. We're not just fighting because we love boxing now. We're getting paid and we're asking people to spend their hard-earned money to watch us. We have an obligation to people who are going to spend money on us. So we have to perform and impress you guys."
Finding those finishes in a two-minute round, which the professional fighters box in the women's sport box, is a real challenge.
"It's so hard. The time just goes," Dubois said. "I was so happy with the performance, I watched it back like 50 times."
Boxing in an event that reached over two million viewers was a milestone. "I was blown away. Two million, that's crazy," she said. "It's not even about women's boxing, it's about boxing. We're doing great moves for boxing. We're bringing in a different audience and we're just putting on great fights.
"In men's boxing, there's so many politics, there's so many fights, so many belts, so many chances that people can avoid each other whereas in females, we don't have that depth, we have to fight each other to create good fights. That's what I enjoy. I miss the amateurs because it was the best fighting the best and I want to bring to the pros."
Fighters like Claressa Shields have set out a path for Dubois to follow. "The likes of her, Amanda Serrano, Katie Taylor, these girls lit up the path for us. They showed us how to progress in the boxing world, what pace to move, what kind of fights we should be striving to put on," she explained.
"It's always so much easier when you have someone to go ahead of you and to look towards. It's hard to be the first one. It's easy to be following in somebody's footsteps."
Dubois wants to continue that rapid advance. "I just want to keep progressing. Every fight I want to get better. From this one, I want to get better," she said.
"Obviously with the opposition, that's going to go up as well but I feel like the better fighters I fight, the better I perform.
"Next year I want to step up and I want to start fighting for titles against opponents where it's like 50-50. I want to fight fights that make me scared, make me think I'm going to test myself. That's what it's all about for me.
"I want to be a world champion by the end of next year."
