Photo: IMAGO
Lauren Price is now a unified world champion, and she barely broke stride doing it. The Welsh Olympic gold medallist outclassed fellow Briton Natasha Jonas over ten rounds at the Royal Albert Hall to add the WBC and IBF welterweight titles to the WBA belt she already held, in a fight that never looked close once it started.
A One-Sided Unification
Price controlled the fight from the opening bell, using sharp counter right hooks to keep Jonas on the back foot and never allowing the Liverpudlian to settle into the rhythm that has served her so well throughout her career. Jonas, fighting with the experience of a boxer well past her amateur days, simply couldn’t find the answers, and the wide unanimous decision reflected a fight Price never looked like losing.
Records That Tell Their Own Story
Price improved to 9-0 with the win, remarkable given how far she has come since her Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold in the middleweight division. Jonas, a durable and well-respected champion in her own right, dropped to 16-3-1 in a career that has taken in world titles across multiple weights. The gap in the ring on the night was bigger than either record suggested going in.
One Belt Still Missing
Price was candid afterwards about what unification still doesn’t get her: undisputed status. The WBO title at welterweight is held by Mikaela Mayer, and Price made a point of flagging it as the fight she still wants. For a fighter who has moved through the sport’s ranks as quickly as she has, it reads less like a throwaway line and more like a target already being circled.
Where This Leaves British Women’s Boxing
The result adds another marquee name to a British women’s scene that already includes Caroline Dubois, who retained her own title on the same Royal Albert Hall card with a majority decision over Bo Mi Re Shin, surviving a tenth-round knockdown scare in the process. Between Price’s unification and Dubois’s title defence, the card underlined just how deep the domestic talent pool has become, and how short the path to a genuinely undisputed champion might now be for Price, if the Mayer fight can be made.
