By Eóin Kennedy
WBC female featherweight world champion Skye Nicolson successfully defended her title last weekend in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia but despite being awarded a shut-out win on two of the three judge’s score cards, the accusations that she is a boring fighter still plague the 29-year-old.
Nicolson rarely looked uncomfortable in her unanimous points victory over Raven Chapman and in normal circumstances, defending your world title and shipping little to no punishment would be seen as a flawless performance but Nicolson has been dogged by claims that her style isn’t fan friendly. Does it really matter? Well, it depends. People generally aren’t hasty to use Floyd Mayweather and his uber-defensive style as an argument in favor of Nicolson and other such fighters opting for a slick, safety first approach, but to compare the two fighters is comparing apples and oranges. First of all, by the time Mayweather had transitioned from ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ to ‘Money Mayweather’, he was already a household name within boxing and was on the verge of transcending the sport. Mayweather’s brand had been built and his character was ready to be positioned as the sport’s ultimate bad guy, and he was ready to play the villain. His elusive, or ‘boring’, style would eventually become part of the appeal of his fights; whether anyone could penetrate his defense became one of the sub-plots that fans were invested in.
Nicolson, like Mayweather, has developed a style of boxing that operates on the tenet of hitting and not being hit and when being executed can be a joy to watch. The problem with Nicolson’s style is that while the witnessing of single shots landed from long range is extremely impressive, it tends to happen too infrequently in her fights. Against Chapman last Saturday it felt throughout the ten rounds that Nicolson could have turned the screw a few times and piled more pressure on her opponent but chose not to. Akin to Mayweather, Nicolson deemed that the end justified the means, and the goal was to leave Saudi Arabia as she arrived, WBC world champion. Nicolson did that but in a world where female boxing is growing at an exorbitant rate, it still feels like her displays are not catching fan’s attention in the same way as her peers like Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, Mikaela Mayer and others. Unlike Mayweather, Nicolson will struggle to become a pay-per-view star by assuming the role of villain as it just doesn’t seem like the Queensland boxer has such premediated spite locked away behind such a pleasant and genial personality.
Instead of adopting a branding strategy that involves Nicolson launching foul mouthed tirades against her opponents or a fighting style that centers around engaging in all-out wars, she has just been herself and so far, that method is serving her just fine. Nicolson is an undefeated world champion with the backing of one of the powerhouse promoters in boxing, Matchroom, so it may be wise to drown out the noise about being a dull fighter and not aggressive enough for now. Nicolson only made her professional debut two years ago and although the stages a fighter goes through in the professional game tend to happen faster in the female ranks, we still shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss her as unentertaining. The real acid test that will determine where Nicolson ranks in the current pantheon of female fighters hasn’t been reached yet and there may be a few hurdles to overcome before she does get to throw hands with the elites of the sport. Nicolson is slated to defend her world title against teak-tough American Tiara Brown next and that won’t be an easy night’s work by any means. Brown has won all her seventeen professional fights to date and brings craft and athleticism that may make her the Australian’s toughest fight so far. On top of her natural attributes, Brown is a woman possessed, rallying against a boxing world that she feels has taken too long to give her a shot. She won’t have to wait much longer and if Nicolson can nullify the threat of Brown in the same way she has all her previous twelve opponents, then more respect of her fighting style will surely be earned in some quarters.
But the acid test that we’re referring to is likely not Tiara Brown, but rather a woman that Nicolson has been mentioning quite a bit in recent months, Amanda Serrano. If Serrano comes through her upcoming rematch with Katie Taylor, then it will looking increasingly likely that she and Nicolson are on a collision course. Serrano is a bona-fide icon of female boxing and fights with a ferocity and intensity that virtually guarantees barnstormers of fights. If Skye Nicolson can utilize her patented hit-and-not-be-hit style against the Puerto Rican legend, then we may be going from arguing whether she is boring or brilliant, to whether she is the greatest technical female boxer of all time. Executing her style on a fighter of Serrano’s caliber is the barometer of how we should feel about the unique style of Skye Nicolson. Let’s not be too quick to judge just yet.