Shannon Courtenay on the pressure that comes with being earmarked as a future star

In June 2015 Shannon Courtenay reached the final of the Haringey Box Cup, a little under a year after lacing up a pair of gloves for the very first time. She was nervous ahead of her final fight, against the best featherweight in Scotland. “But it was one of the easiest fights I have ever had,” she remembers. Courtenay boxed her opponent’s ears off to win gold. And when she got back to her dressing room, there was a message waiting for her.

“I turned on my phone and I had a message on Twitter from Eddie Hearn,” Courtenay tells The Independent, five years later. “He told me that he had watched my fight on YouTube and that I was an animal. In fact, he said he had never seen a woman fight like that before. Women didn’t turn professional back then, it wasn’t really a thing. But I told him right from the start that that’s what I was going to do. I was going to turn professional with him.”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Having also picked up the Southern Area Featherweight title Courtenay turned professional with Matchroom Boxing in March 2019. She was quickly supplied with a buzzy nickname (“The Baby Face Assassin”) and won her pro debut a canter: a four-round points decision over the Romanian Cristina Busuioc, which was televised live on Sky Sports. Ever since, the hype and expectation has followed her relentlessly.

It’s not difficult to understand her popularity. Courtenay comes forward aggressively, and in all of her professional fights so far has swarmed her opponent, boxing in close range. She is also open and honest, speaking candidly in interviews about everything from her old habit of smoking up to 40 cigarettes a day, to her rapid weight loss, to her childhood friendship with unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. She is, in short, a promoter’s dream.

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But boxing is a tough trade to learn. And it can be all the more difficult when the spotlight is already trained in your direction throughout the formative nights and fights of your career. Is Courtenay aware of the mounting pressure?

Courtenay is a chatterbox and races through her answers with the same rapid pace she maintains in the ring. But she pauses to think.

“It can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing,” she says. “It is kind of like a fire and it depends on how you want to control it. You have people constantly watching you, some people are motivated by you and inspired by you, and others want to see you fail. But that just comes with the territory I think. You have to take each day as it comes and remember that you can only be yourself.”

And, as a successful young woman with an Instagram account, the hateful comments were not far away, even despite a still flawless professional record that shows five fights and five victories.

“I used to get severe anxiety from what people said, at first,” she adds. “Out of 100 comments I would have 98 lovely, encouraging comments. And then I would have two nasty digs. And the digs would be the things that stick in my head for ages.

“Now? I don’t let it get to me. It’s an insecurity on their behalf. Really, if somebody feels the need to sit behind a keyboard slating a young woman, what does that say about them? Should I really be wasting my time over the opinion of somebody like that? Nope. The only opinions that matter are from the people that matter.

“You have to be thick-skinned. Because I have seen a few boxers be impacted by what they see on social media. And I have seen people get sucked into it and believe it all. Either people believe the negativity or they start believing their own hype. So I stay careful.”

But Courtenay may not have to worry too much about the opinion of the sport’s notoriously fickle fans the next time she steps into the ring. Boxing, like every other sport in the country, has been forced into lockdown by the coronavirus pandemic. And because of the unique strain the sport can place on the NHS, the British Boxing Board of Control has already warned fans and fighters alike that it is unlikely to return as soon as the lockdown is lifted.

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Behind-closed-doors fights have been mooted, to a decidedly mixed reception. Courtenay is one of those unworried by the prospect. Instead, she is just itching to resume her fledgling career.

“I’ve boxed as an amateur where you’re boxing in places which are pretty empty,” she says. “I’ve boxed in Sweden, in a huge arena where there was virtually no audience. Maybe the ring walks will be different, and maybe you are not quite as hyped as you are walking to the ring. But once that bell goes I can’t see or hear anything anyway, apart from my opponent. So I don’t think it will effect my performance at all.

“I know some boxers who live off the crowd. Their style lives off the crowd and the cheering and they will be effected. But I genuinely don’t see or hear a single thing other than my opponent. Even as an amateur that’s how it has been for me.”

In the meantime, all Courtenay can do is train at home — “now that I have a punchbag I am completely fine, I am definitely not moping about” — and watch and rewatch some of her favourite Sugar Ray Leonard fights, as she waits impatiently to return to the gym. And while the sport of boxing may have temporarily disappeared, the buzz around her prospects has yet to dissipate.