Shane McGuigan has echoed Ellie Scotney’s calls for a fight with the WBC featherweight champion Skye Nicolson.
Scotney in January impressed when defending her IBF and WBO junior featherweight titles against New Zealand’s Mea Motu, and followed doing so by revealing her desire to challenge Nicolson of Australia.
Nicolson, 29, is scheduled to defend her title on March 22 in Sydney, Australia against an opponent who is still to be confirmed, and though Scotney is recovering from another calf strain suffered against Motu – a previous calf strain had forced their first fight date to be postponed – her trainer is already plotting her next move.
“Skye’s an awkward fighter, because she’s so negative, but I do believe that she can beat her, and where female boxing is now – it’s saturated with champions, but there’s not many names out there,” McGuigan told BoxingScene. “A name like Skye Nicolson, and Ellie, going together – that’s a big fight. That’s what a platform like DAZN wants, or Sky want. They’re happy to pay the money, but they have to generate interest – that’s a fight that generates a lot of interest.
“[Her calf has] flared up again, but it is what it is. She had a great training camp – it didn’t hinder her the whole way through. In an ideal world we would have actually pushed the fight even further back, just so it gives her a chance to properly recover, because calf strains – you’re on your feet all day, every day, and you don’t get a chance to fully repair them. There’ll be a whole rehab structure in place for her.
“It’s not like a rupture, or anything like that. It’s just a strain. Micro tears in your calves – you can repair them. They repair themselves. We’re just doing the right rehab to make sure they don’t go again.”
That Scotney, 26, and Nicolson are both promoted by Matchroom will enhance McGuigan’s confidence that a fight between them can be delivered, and perhaps is another demonstration of the McGuigans’ aggressive matchmaking that was again seen on Saturday at London’s Wembley Arena when the promising Adam Azim stopped Sergey Lipinets at junior welterweight.
The 22-year-old Azim could fight again on April 26 on the undercard of Chris Eubank Jnr-Conor Benn.
“He still needs more tests to become the best version of him,” McGuigan said. “He won’t reach his full peak until he’s 25. He’s 22-and-a-half years of age. I would say by that stage [he’ll be a welterweight], but also he’ll have a huge amount of experience. Boxing at this level at 22 – Amir Khan was like that. Someone like my dad [Barry] was world champion at 24. It’s rare that you get guys who get to world level that young. They’re the ones that have the longer time at world level. The lights, and the exciting fights.
“A lot of fighters turn pro at 24, 25, after an extensive amateur career – then they’re having three or four years to work their way up, and at 29 they’ve got a year, two years, at their peak. They need to make the most out of their athletic ability.
“In against an aggressive, come-forward pressure fighter, and a guy that can punch with either hand. It’s a fight I’d wanted before the Ohara Davies fight [in October 2024], but we couldn’t get it over the line. There’s not many opportunities out there where we’ve got guys – like former world champions – still in good shape that live the life. There’s not many out there we can pick their scalps up before going to world level. These are the guys that you learn from and you get the experience from.
“It works because we’re not in it to just con the fans. We’re in it to create world champions. I don’t want to train guys or girls that aren’t going to become world champion, and also people that don’t believe that they can be world champion. That’s our ethos; that’s our mentality. With that, you’ve got to box all different types of styles; aggressive fighters; boxers; guys that can punch; guys that are volume punchers, not necessarily one-punch knockout artists; guys that are granite; guys that are slick and more reactive. It’s getting all of those styles, because when you’re world champion you can pick and choose once or twice who you want to box, but most of the time you get, ‘There’s your opponent – he’s next, box him’.”