Amy Broadhurst looks up from the floor from a wrestling match she’s having with her high-lace boxing boots.
“I forgot,” she says apologetically about the appointment. Then more foostering at her feet, yanking and hauling leather and limbs into place. There has been a lot going on. Life has been busy this year. A serial major trophy winner, a Commonwealth Games, European and world champion is slipping into training gear looking towards the Irish championships in January.
But this is not the start. It is the end of an eclipse event, a year in which she shut out everyone, a year in which she couldn’t lose. The beginning was, in its own way, magical too.
While she was moping around in February after “getting the Covid” and thinking about the rest of the Irish team in Bulgaria, an email landed in her inbox. Tomas Rohan was inquiring about her availability.
Rohan works with Brian Peters and Katie Taylor. Part of his job is to find suitable sparring partners for the undisputed lightweight professional world champion, Taylor.
Looking for the right level of boxer to help prepare for the biggest fight in the history of women’s professional boxing in Madison Square Garden against Amanda Serrano, Rohan asked if Broadhurst, an amateur, would accept the invitation. They would bring her out to Taylor’s camp in the US.
“He said, gimme a call,” says Broadhurst. “He said, we’d like you to come over and be one of Katie’s sparring partners. It went from there. We organised dates. I went over. That probably done me the world of good. Yeah, Connecticut, where she lives. They flew me over. They were brilliant to me. I learned a lot.”
There was something about the ability and style of the 25-year-old that found approval in the Taylor camp. Over the years Broadhurst has changed the way she competes, has come down off her toes into a more planted, aggressive, professional pose. She will become professional.
Her punching power and willingness to seek contact is what Taylor would have expected from Serrano. Few amateurs at 60-plus kilos have what Broadhurst has, fewer still to the level Taylor required.
“I was very nervous going over, wondering what the level between us was going to be like,” she says. “You know, was it going to benefit her? The amateur and pro, that difference was something that I was a bit nervous about.
“The pros do 10 twos [10 two-minute rounds] and I didn’t know because I do three threes (three three-minute rounds) would I be able for the 10 twos. The first day I got to maybe the sixth round and then I started feeling it. Then after that I was able to do the 10 twos and we did eight threes some of the days too and it was fine for me. The sparring was unbelievable.
Katie is the type of person who is honest. She’ll tell you what she is thinking and she doesn’t really care if it’s going to hurt you or not
“Some wars in the gym, okay, some of the days. I improved and she said it helped her. Yeah, I managed. Boxing the same level, yeah, which was something confidence-wise. And the feedback from Katie.
“Katie is the type of person who is honest. She’ll tell you what she is thinking and she doesn’t really care if it’s going to hurt you or not. The fact she was able to tell me I was very good... she told me what to work on. I walked away from that whole experience with a lot of confidence.”
It carried her through the year. She hooked up with St Bronagh’s, a boxing club in Rostrevor, across the Border from her home in Dundalk, and qualified for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Lightweight Gold. The world Championships were in Istanbul. Light welterweight gold. The European Championships in Montenegro two months ago closed the year. Light welterweight gold.
Broadhurst changed weights because Olympic champion Kellie Harrington is also a lightweight. The 60kg division for women is busy. It was also Taylor’s weight.
So, she went up a division at world and European level as Harrington was also competing. But 60kg may not be available for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 if Harrington aims to defend her gold medal from Tokyo. The alternative is 66kg. The weight has created a dilemma.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do and that’s the god’s honest truth,” says Broadhurst. “After the Europeans I said I was going to go 66kg, then I said I was going to go 60kg. It’s just an ongoing circle. I just can’t make up my mind.
“I have to do what’s best for me. It’s just a shitty situation because 60kg is my weight. I’d like to do 60kg but I don’t know if Kellie will box or not in the [Irish championships] elites. She’ll enter all right but I don’t know if she’ll box. Even if we box there are going to be assessments and they are behind closed doors. So, it’s a long road.
“For my health, I’m a 60kg boxer. I shouldn’t have to be putting on 12 pounds. It is a difficult decision and it has to be made soon.”
Broadhurst has been boxing since she was five, when her father Tony took her to the local club, Dealgan BC, with three older brothers – the knockabout tomboy childhood was hers if she wanted. It suited her and that, she says, is what she became.
Six years ago the family – Tony, Paul, Stephen and Amy – took part in the RTÉ reality competition Ireland’s Fittest Family and were mentored by former Cork camogie player Anna Geary. They made it to the quarter-finals.
Amy was living in London at the time, working in bars and restaurants. She had been trying to get into the Irish team for the world Championships but wasn’t given a box-off with the incumbent Irish champion Moira McElligott.
“So, I just said ‘here, that’s me, see youse later’ and I took that year out. The whole transition from the youths into the elites was difficult. It worked. I got itchy to come back. I came back for the boxing.”
She says she doesn’t feel any more respected now. Then, maybe she does. She doesn’t know. She feels she is still in the shadow of Harrington. At the European championships, she says it wasn’t “Aoife O’Rourke won” or “Amy Broadhurst won”, it was “Kellie won”.
“That stuff doesn’t bother me. I say it as it is. I think that will stand to me when I go professional. I can’t speak well in front of a camera. I just speak shite really. I’m not boring, is what I’d say.
“I’m not one of these people who are fake in front of camera, say the right thing because I’m in front of a camera. I’ll say it how it is and if people don’t like it, they don’t like it.
“Yeah, it gets me in trouble. I was called into the office and told I shouldn’t be talking to the papers about the public warning at the Worlds in India four years ago. Yeah, you need to be professional but I’m not going to lie about something. That warning was a piss-take, I felt. For me it was a piss-take and I’ll say it was a piss-take. I don’t pussyfoot around anything.”
I quite enjoy it, standing toe to toe. I’m not afraid to get hit. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing
There is another side to Broadhurst which complements her directness. She is not afraid to fight. What Taylor saw, apart from the weight and style, was the hard core. Taylor has it too, the fearless step into a toe-to-toe, the fondness for dogging it out in the ring, take one to land two and not being concerned about the blood or the bruising.
Occasionally that’s what it takes to win. She says again, you have to be true to yourself in making decisions. That might be sticking with 60kg regardless of Harrington, in going to the Paris Olympics, in turning professional, in saying a refereeing decision is a piss-take and now wishing she had never put the nickname “Baby Canelo” on her Instagram. She has comfortably grown into Amy Broadhurst. But “Baby Canelo” won’t leave.
“I quite enjoy it, standing toe to toe. I’m not afraid to get hit. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Over the whole period of Covid my style of boxing changed. I used to be on my toes a lot and in and out. Now I’m more flat-footed and pro-styled... Now you’re going to ask me if I’ll go pro.”
She’s laughing at the thought. Partly because the answer is yes. But the when and the where and the how are still a mystery.
“I would love to go pro. I’d love to. Over the last couple of weeks there’s a part of me that has thought, depending on how the [Irish] elites go, I’ll go pro. Now the Olympics is my main goal. It always has been and I’d feel very, very disappointed in myself for walking away until it was over. But I do see myself eventually going pro and I know what my future is like once I go down that road.”
The 25-year-old just bought her first house, in Dundalk. The $100k for becoming world champion helped. There she is on Twitter holding up the keys. She will be 27 years old for the Olympics, aware of time slipping by. Six years to get to the top of the world – it is more an awareness than panic.
“I said to my mum there are two things I want in life,” she says. “Having children and becoming an Olympic gold medallist. But one of them has to give. You go have a child now and you are not going to go to the Olympics. You continuously go with the boxing you’ll run out of time. There’s no age. But the older it gets, the harder, I suppose.”
But she’ll work it out. Always does.
