Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
In the blue corner,
from east Leeds,
amateur boxer, Nicola Adams.
Come on, Nikki!
When I was a kid,
I was happy just looking at the stars,
thinking about my destiny,
if I had a destiny, can your destiny be changed?
Yes!
I even used to make wishes
and wish that one day I'll be able to be in a better place
and have everything that I've always wanted.
If you haven't come from the kind of place
that I've come from,
you'll never be able to get to that top high level
because you just haven't got that kind of desire
and that drive and determination.
You need to have that hunger.
And it is really, it's just about how much do you want it?
I was fighting for everything.
And I mean, that was the difference between me
and anybody else that was in the room.
I always wanted it more than anybody else did.
I was fighting to survive.
Round one.
What do you think about women in boxing?
Well, I think they're very nice
when they're walking around that ring holding them cards.
Why can't they do something else that ladies do?
That girls do.
I really am against women boxing.
You have swollen eyes, a busted nose,
and you wake up the next day and you're aching,
and I just don't think that woman should do that.
It is a below-average standard
they never achieve the heights that men achieve.
I don't like watching women punching each other.
It will never be mainstream boxing,
there will always be a novelty value
and the novelty will wear off at the end of the day.
Women are not men,
they just won't have the same attraction as men fighting.
In 1994,
women's professional boxing had been banned
and there was no such thing as female amateur boxing.
It just wasn't allowed.
The majority of coaches wouldn't allow girls to train.
Or even in the gym.
The Yorkshire division in particular
were run by ex-miners
and steelworkers from south Yorkshire,
and they were dead set against
any women being involved in boxing.
They were encouraged to stay home
and cook meals for the lads when they got home from work,
and that's their exact words.
I first started boxing when I was 12.
My mom couldn't get a babysitter one night
and she took me and my brother down
to an afterschool boxing class that they had on
at the same time as aerobics.
There wasn't any other girls in the boxing gym.
It was just me.
And when I saw everybody running around
the gym and all the kids on the bags,
and the pads and people sparring in the ring,
I just absolutely loved it.
There was no female boxers on TV.
The only women in the ring were the ring card girls.
I wasn't aware that women didn't box.
I just loved watching boxing.
She told me she wanted to be world champion.
I didn't tell her she couldn't.
I was born in Leeds in 1982.
My parents were from the Caribbean,
which was very rare at the time in Leeds.
When I was a kid, I was really, really sensitive.
I was a little bit of a geek.
I had eczema and I had asthma
and I was pretty much allergic to the whole world.
I was really kind of soft, like,
I never stood up for myself or anything.
I should have been doomed.
I grew up in an estate called eastern park.
Me and my friends, we didn't have money growing up.
And a lot of the time we wouldn't be able to eat.
Some of the times we were just bad.
But a lot of the time, we did stuff
because we were just hungry.
There was kids there that my mom would say,
you're not allowed to hang about with.
And it was the same for me as well.
Their parents used to say,
"you can't hang about with Nicola. She's bad."
But we were just all in the same situation.
We all had the same struggle.
I could have easily gone down a different path.
On my estate, there was a lot of racism as well.
There wasn't many black people or people of color.
So, you would get into quite a few fights
just because of that.
And I remember going home and...
And saying to my mom, like,
"why do the kids call me these names?"
I came out to my mom when I was 13.
And it was the scariest thing that I've ever done.
I thought I was going to be disowned
or kicked out of the house,
so I was so relieved and happy
when she said that she'd known for a long time anyway.
I always knew I was different from a young age.
But boxing gave me the place that I could really belong.
At the gym, Steve never made me feel any different.
He said to me, "I have one rule.
"Everybody listens to me and we're all boxers."
No, no favoritism.
Not at all because she's a girl.
She did everything that they did.
Sometimes she liked it, she just got on with it,
sometimes she didn't.
Boxing has produced many champions.
My dad was a boxing fan,
and I used to watch the boxing with him.
It was probably one of the times
when he was at his happiest.
We'd watch the reruns of Muhammad Ali
and Mike Tyson, sugar ray Robinson.
But he didn't support my boxing at all.
The boxing ring was less dangerous than being at home.
I was very desensitized to all kinds of violence
because I used to see it all the time at home.
Nikki's witnessed a lot of violence in her life.
From the moment she got into the gym
and started boxing at a very young age,
it was one of the aspects she was able to control.
You could always tell
when there was something wrong with Nicola
because she was a happy, smiling kid most of the time.
Apart from if there'd been a problem,
or something like that at home.
And she'd come in with her head down.
Boxing always made me feel safe.
I feel like literally as soon as I was born,
I just had to rely on myself.
That's probably why I only trust myself.
My first fight was when I was 13-years-old
against a girl called Claire newson
in a working men's club in Leeds.
Real old school, had great atmosphere.
I remember running around everywhere
and the coach telling me to sit down and relax
and not to use too much energy.
But I was so excited.
It was my first boxing match
and I just couldn't wait to get in there.
With all the noise and the cheering and shouting
and screaming and bawling going on,
it's a lot for a kid to take in.
She was nervous at first.
It took her maybe 30 seconds to actually settle down,
and do what she could do.
I remember going into the ring and thinking to myself,
"I'm going to do the Ali shuffle,
I'm going to switch hit,
I'm going to do all these little moves in the ring."
And I absolutely, absolutely loved it.
There's some kids at that age are clumsy on the fake.
And some are pretty nimble, you know,
like different between ballet dancing and club dancing.
And she were definitely a ballet dancer.
She wanted to be a boxer regardless.
Male or female, she just wanted to be a boxer.
You've got to live and breathe boxing
if you're going to make it to the top, without a doubt.
And Nicola has... Has that, you know,
Nikki really, really lived and breathed for boxing.
Chin up.
- O Kay. - O Kay?
Now, you can relax now.
When I first started boxing
to find an opponent to be your age and weight
was impossible as a female boxer
to the point where, you know,
sometimes you'd only have one bout a year,
maybe two bouts a year if you're really lucky.
No other gyms in Leeds or the surrounding area
had girls training at that particular time.
They didn't want them in the gym, let alone training.
I were contacting people from Bristol, and cornwall, London.
Did they know anybody who had female boxers in the gym?
There'd be ones that had come up,
but then we'd find out they'd be too old or too heavy.
All the guys were able to fight
because there was a lot more male boxers out there.
Some of the boys would be going out boxing seven-years-old.
So, to keep me occupied and keep me focused,
if the guys went on training camps or anything,
I'd go as well to be able to participate
and join in and just to be able to feel a part of something.
She were ready to box anytime.
If somebody'd come out of the crowd
and offered her a fight, she'd have jumped in the ring.
It was really tough going to support the guys
and not being able to get in the ring myself
and everyday, I'd be saying to Steve,
"is there anybody for me to box, when can I fight?"
And he was like, "we just have to wait."
I found it hard trying to keep her interested
and keep her going.
I couldn't give her a target date
like I could with other boxers.
It did get really frustrating at times
because I just wanted to go out there and... and compete.
Finally, at 17, I got my second fight.
I was super happy.
It had been maybe four or five years since I last fought.
And I'd just been waiting all that time to box.
I was speaking to a coach before I boxed,
and he was like,
"oh, there's women boxing tonight"
and I was like, "yeah, that's me."
And he was like, "why? Why do you want to box?"
Like, "women... Women shouldn't box."
And I remember thinking to myself,
"I'll show you. I'll show you what we can do."
I got into the ring and boxed this girl.
I won by knockout.
And I think that was just purely
because I'd been away for so long.
Winner by ko, Adams in the blue corner.
Let's hear a nice round of applause for.
When I met Nikki, I was 17.
She was just about to turn 19.
She was working in a warehouse at the time.
Then she was like, "oh, I'm a boxer."
And I was like, "oh. Okay."
That's quite... Quite strange for that time.
She was training five days a week.
We'd go out and they'd be like,
"right, I can only have this much to drink.
I have to stop here."
And I remember thinking at the time,
especially around the age, like,
"oh, she's really serious about this."
The training session would happen,
and we'd all be involved in this group session.
And then afterwards she'd be over at the mirror,
looking at herself, watching herself,
watching the angle she's moving and her foot movement.
She'd be doing extra... Extra little bits.
She would always be practicing the all shuffle,
be practicing a special combination
that she's going to do in a tournament.
She would just literally perfect everything.
I think she finds it easy to quiet her mind.
I think it's always active.
And she likes to keep really busy.
Her adhd is very, you know,
it's well, if you spend more than 10 minutes with her.
We used to train three times a day.
So probably, when you weren't training
and if you weren't eating, you would be sleeping.
But Nikki never slept.
That was the thing.
She was either banging about downstairs
and had the music blasting.
She just couldn't... Never switched it off.
Nicola was very competitive.
She had a bit of a war
with one of the traveller boys that we used to train.
She got in with a good shot.
He didn't like it, so he give her a decent shot.
And it hurt her.
She went to war and just beat him up.
Put him through the ropes, out of the ring.
I'd met somebody for the first time
who had ambition and drive.
Even at that young age,
you could see that she wanted to be somewhere else.
Nicola's coach contacted me
and the day, I was going to go to a tournament,
which was in Hungary.
I said, "yeah, I'll take her,"
if they paid all their side of it.
Because we got to finance everything ourselves.
We were getting no support from nobody.
When we actually got there,
we didn't really know what the standard was going to be like
because Nicola and Amanda had only had a few competitions.
They had never boxed internationally.
We were boxing like the European champions.
The reigning champions. We were boxing girls that had,
you know, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 plus bouts.
Teams like Russia and usa
and China already training full time.
They've already got so many coaching staff,
and we didn't have anything of that.
It was just me, Amanda and Paul.
It was like we were here and they were there.
When I was warming her up,
she'd gone from this bubbly "let me get in there"
to basically nearly a nervous wreck.
You know, she was absolutely flapping.
That was the weakest part of Nicola, the confidence.
She needed a confidence building.
But once she got in that ring,
and that bell went, all changed.
Then you could see it.
Lovely.
Give it up Nicola, perfect.
There's no such thing as an easy fight in boxing.
You've got to conquer your own demons before you get in.
Boxing is definitely 60/40.
60 psychological, 40 physical.
You've got to hide away the fears and the doubts
and bring up the confidence and the self-belief.
And she definitely had that about her.
You could see there was something there.
And I think there was a lot of people from other countries
took notice of what was in the ring there.
That was one of the best competitions
or contests I'd seen for a long, long time.
I unfortunately lost my contest 31-32,
and Nikki won a gold medal.
Now, that for me was a massive, massive achievement
for Nikki, and for female boxing.
So that proved to us that we were able,
we were capable of going out there
and performing on the international scene.
As soon as I got back,
I was on the computer and sending an email.
"Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity."
You know, this is the results, you know. What's next?
She was like fists, you know,
she was the one producing the wins, the goods.
And I was more of the brains behind, I suppose,
sending the emails and the letters.
Yes!
Nikki spearheaded that start
of the international success that we had.
Bring in the red corner,
representing Yorkshire and england,
welcome to Nicola Adams.
The next few years was a complete 180.
I went from being a council estate kid with no hope,
no future to travelling the world just because of boxing.
Box.
It was a really big eye-opener for me.
I was doing more and more fights,
I was going to more tournaments.
I was starting to get a bigger reputation
on the boxing scene.
I was starting to win medals.
- Nicola Adams. - Nicola Adams.
Nicola Adams from england.
Go, Nikki!
It was the first time as well,
as me seeing lots of other female boxers
that I've never met before.
I'll be able to train three times a day
and get my studying done as well,
and I'm going to be studying sports
and then Spanish as well.
I was doing everything that I could
to just try and further my boxing
and to get more experience to be able
to be among the best and be the best in the world.
She doesn't copy anybody.
She tried to copy Muhammad Ali and his style
when she were younger.
That were a good base to build on.
But Nicola boxed like Nicola.
Not like somebody else.
She was a switcher, she could do orthodox,
which is right hand out the back,
that was a strong hand then.
Or she'd do southpaw,
where she'd switch and a left hand would be at the back.
She was as powerful with either hand.
You're either one or the other.
Very few become that universal switcher.
Nikki's very light on her feet.
She makes you miss.
She makes you pay.
Jab catches you, she's gone.
That is Nikki's strength.
She'll make you look silly.
She'll pick you off, she'll move.
She's like a fly. You can't SWAT her.
Around this time, I met alwyn belcher.
He's very good with footwork, he's the footwork master.
And that's when I realized
that I didn't have to just use my gloves for defense
or my head movement.
I can use my feet as well.
I think that's when I started to really realize
that my footwork was a big key to... to my victories.
I wanted to prove to him that I can be
the best boxer you've ever seen
and I will be the best boxer that you've ever seen.
She's opened up a fairly impressive lead,
Nicola Adams, and somehow I don't think
this is going to last too long,
good right hand once again byadams.
Two, three, four, five.
And the winner in the red corner, Nicola Adams.
It wasn't until I got older
that I realized that boxing was completely different
for women than it was for the men.
Because we didn't get nowhere near
the same amount of funding.
To get funding, me and the girls,
we wrote letters to mps to UK sport,
we wrote letters to anybody and everybody
to try and get funding.
I sent letters off to the ceo of england boxing.
I sent letters off to sport england,
who were the funding body.
I attended a meeting with the board for england boxing
and part of the response was,
"well, it's invested in boxers, that's male and female."
So I made them aware that, no, it wasn't.
It was just going purely to the men.
I mean, going away with ten girls
and you've got two sets of boxing kit
for everybody to compete in.
It was ridiculous.
We were washing and wearing somebody else's kit.
And if you don't have time to wash that kit,
the next person that needs to wear that
has to just get in the sweaty kit and box.
You could at least give us all our own sets of shorts
and vests each.
Like, I don't think it would have been
that much of an expense to anybody,
especially when you saw the boys go away
and they had their own kit, physios.
They had doctors. They had nutritionists.
They had everything you could think of.
And for us, we were lucky if we even had a kit
to compete in.
As an athlete, you want everything to be right.
You want to feel focused
and not have to worry about everything else.
And we were only ever sent away with two coaches.
That meant that if there was one of the other girls
that was on straight after the next bout,
there was no coach to warm them up.
There was no coach to sit with them to see how they're doing,
if they... if they needed water.
Like anything... anything at all.
We weren't treated like athletes.
We were treated like a nuisance that just wouldn't go away.
And they were hoping if they treated us bad enough
that one day we would.
There was a team of girls out there
that were absolutely dying to get on
the international scene and represent their country.
There was always a barrier being put in front of us.
There was always a door blocking us
and it was really hard tearing down those doors
and fighting our way through.
And just having to do everything ourselves
and funding everything ourselves.
She'd pay for herself to go out to tournament
since she was working full time.
Which was quite hard to do.
Explaining to an employer that, "oh, I need time off
for training or to go to tournaments."
The boys got funding and support,
so they were able to train full time
and just be able to focus on training.
And that's what we wanted to be able to do too.
The men obviously got a lot of the investment
because they were an olympic team.
But because the women didn't have an Olympics at that point,
funding obviously got invested into the men
more than it did the women.
We were down the bottom of the bottom of the list.
They said to us, "if you go away and you win medals,
you'll get more funding and everything will be great."
So I was like, "okay, we'll go away
and we'll get those medals."
We got to go to the world championships in China.
But they were expecting us to go away
two days before a tournament in China,
bearing in mind the jetlag.
Win a medal so you can all get more funding.
I just thought, "I'm not going to complain about it."
I'm just going to do it.
You can put all the odds against me
and I'll still come back and medal.
All the girls went out in the quarterfinals
and I was left in.
I remember sitting down with the girls
and they were like,
"hey, Nik. Like, you need to win this for... for all of us."
We just needed a medal.
Any medal just to secure some type of funding.
I got to the finals.
I managed to get a silver, so I was super, super happy,
especially when I thought back to
how much was against us in the start.
We thought we were going to receive loads of funding.
Everything was going to change.
But when we got back and they were like, "well, no."
I was so heartbroken and so angry.
It was demoralizing.
Especially when we'd see Ireland receive
the world of funding when Katie Taylor was winning
in major tournaments.
They'd tell us that if we win medals in these tournaments,
that we'll get funding,
and then when we finally achieve that goal,
then you just move the line even further away.
At the end of the day,
we're there because we deserve to be there.
Female boxing's there because it deserves to be there.
You know, it's not a case of,
"oh well, we're threatening the men."
We're not here to threaten the men.
We just want to be accepted.
We just want to be given a chance like everybody else,
every other boxer that walks through the door,
regardless of the male or female, you know,
just give us a bit of equality.
There was a few times where I felt,
you know what, maybe boxing's not for me.
There's not enough funding.
There's not enough support.
People just aren't getting with it.
Instead of the struggle getting easier,
it's getting harder.
So, you're just fighting to fight your whole career.
There is so much negativity
in the boxing world towards women
and it just makes the fighting ten times harder.
You're fighting outside the ring as well as in it.
And it does grate and it does...
It does have an effect in the end.
I've had to deal with a lot of criticism
as a female boxer.
And seeing so many successful boxers
who I look up to say such horrible things.
Was really hard to take.
It's just really hurtful to hear
some of the things that they say.
I normally don't do interviews with women
unless I'm fornicating with them.
So, you shouldn't talk anymore.
I think women are there for sex, every night.
Hard sex.
I think they're very nice when they walk around that ring,
holding them cards.
Cleaning, cooking, washing.
When you get two women fighting each other
to beat each other up
it's a bit cruel, but it is a bit tough, isn't it?
When I was hitting him with body punches
I heard him... actually, he was crying in there
and making woman gestures like,
I can't.
Why would I want to see that?
I believe a woman's best place is in the kitchen
and on my back.
And I think once that novelty value has ended,
I don't see it being that successful anyway.
I think all this talk about girls not boxing
is old fashioned.
Girls aren't the delicate flowers they used to be.
Up until 1998,
women's boxing was actually illegal in the UK.
It was women like Jane couch
that were able to make it so women's boxing was legal
and we could fight.
I just went to the local boxing gym
and asked if I could join.
And they said no.
Because it was like the early 90s,
so there was no such thing as women boxing.
"No, you can't come here, you're a woman",
and I just kept on and on.
In the end, they eventually let me join.
I was fighting on the unlicensed circuit,
so I was already an established two-time world champion.
I was boxing abroad.
I was defending my titles,
winning titles successfully in america, in Germany
in the UK
the boxing board didn't want women's boxing.
Well, nobody really wanted it,
the media, they was all against it.
So, I just think it was like the last male bastion
that they just wanted to keep women out of.
And so, I took it to the boxing board of control
to get women's boxing legalized in the UK.
The reason why it was illegal
was when women have their menstrual cycle,
it makes them unstable.
So, we were too emotional to be able to box.
When I found out that reason, I was like,
"what? Are you serious?"
Like, "did you speak to a doctor about this
or is this just your opinion?"
Because I know there was no scientific evidence
that said that.
They just assumed that women were unstable
and would be unfit to get in the boxing ring.
I think it came up in the court case that, well,
if I was on a period and I was getting up the steps
to get into the boxing ring, that I might fall over.
Some of the logic behind some of the decisions,
it just... It really just baffles me.
Like, you just have to take a moment
and actually think, like, "is this for real?"
Like someone said that.
It's going to make you bleed, they could knock you out.
That's the key, what boxing is about.
And to have two young girls,
doing that type of sport as well.
They will quite often hide behind
a perception of care.
What would be nice is, wouldn't it be better
if they just didn't hit each other?
We don't think girls should do this
because they might get hurt.
You know, look at the ban on women's football back in 1921.
It was banned for 50 years
because it was deemed unsuitable for women.
And it might be a health risk
and you want to go, "hang on a second.
You do realize women give birth, don't you?
You do realize women go through the most painful
and potentially dangerous event
to perpetuate the human race. You are aware of that?"
We won the case, but it was just like
everyone was so against it
that it was quite hard to continue the battle
because it was hard enough training to fight
and... and compete without having
all that going through your head as well.
It was a terrible time.
She was called like a monster, a freak, a sicko.
You're a psycho.
It was just nasty and made you feel worthless in yourself.
You're females and you're supposed to be females.
- You know you've got... - Oh, we are females.
You've got nice features.
Despite the fact that I'm a black woman,
I'm a lesbian,
being a female was way more offensive
to the boxing community than anything else.
When I was about 13,
I went to a boxing club in sunderland to spar.
And I remember walking in and the coach pointing at me.
He went to my coach who brought me, "what's that?"
And I just pretended I didn't hear.
And my coach went "oh, a female boxer."
And he went, "nah, no girls allowed in here."
And I literally had to sit in the Van.
I wasn't allowed in the gym.
It was the same thing in the amateur boxing world.
A lot of the male coaches were really sexist
and they used to say some horrible stuff to us.
And it was hard to think
that those people were even in charge of women's boxing.
A lot of them were just really mean to us.
And they made us feel like
we didn't even deserve to be there.
Being treated like that, it's nothing new to me.
My dad always had this rule
that I had to be home before it got dark.
When I'd walk through the door from playing out,
he'd be sat on the sofa just waiting for me to come in.
And if I was late,
I'd be just waiting to see how angry he was going to be.
And hope that he'd just use his hand to beat me
and not anything else.
If you hit an eight or nine-year-old
and you're a grown man, that's going to really hurt.
There was one particular time,
my dad was trying to beat up my mom.
I was only three or four at the time
and I had a little plastic sword
and I tried to get in front of my mom
to try and help and try and stop him.
And he just pushed me out of the way.
It was almost like I just got used to living that way.
Feeling scared. A lot of the time, feeling sad.
I just tried to be as good as I possibly could.
There was nothing I could do about it,
and I wanted to do something about it,
but I didn't know what I could do.
It didn't even cross my mind
to even tell somebody at school
because I was so scared of what would happen
if my dad found out.
I'd been watching a TV show
and the family was in pretty much the same situation
that I was.
And they ended up killing him
and put him in the back garden.
I remember going up to my mom and she was crying.
And I said to her, it was okay
because I've seen the TV show, we can get rid of him.
I just don't know what to do with the body
because we didn't have a garden with grass.
The garden was concrete.
It was at that point where my mum was like,
"something has to change.
Like, I'm going to get out of this situation."
She wanted to be strong physically, mentally.
She wanted to have that self-discipline,
the ability to protect herself, protect her mom.
You know, who she loves dearly.
She's seen her mum being hurt,
and because she's been hurt so bad,
she's just put a massive wall up to protect herself.
When I was at the gym,
I felt stronger and I felt like I could protect myself.
I could protect me, I could protect my mom and my brother.
And sometimes I used to think like,
"if... if my dad was ever to try anything again,
it'd be okay because I'd be strong enough now.
And I'd be able to protect everybody."
We tried to get women's boxing into the 2008 Olympics,
but there was just so many different excuses.
"We don't have the facilities for female boxers."
"The standard of the women's boxing wasn't high enough."
"There wasn't enough female boxers to participate."
So it took the entire community of female boxers
to come together and fight.
We had to get women's boxing into 2012 or we were done.
We really have to act.
This is the time when the decisions are made
and we need to promote women boxing.
We need to tell everyone that women boxing is ready.
I still dreamed of, you know, being like
the top fighters Mohammed Ali and sugar ray Leonard,
you know, they all went to the Olympics
and got gold medals, and I was like, "yeah, one day",
you know, I want that to be me as well.
Boxing is the only sport in the Olympics
that doesn't have a male and female event.
We are training just as much as the guys are,
and we still don't get any money
because it's not an olympic sport.
For women's boxing to be included,
the number of men competing will have to reduce,
and you can imagine the resistance
that will happen then.
Everything I've trained for, all the ups and the downs
and the injuries and the tears, you know,
it'd be like, you know, I'd be able to sit back and think,
"yes, this is this is what I've been fighting for."
This is the thing I've been waiting for all my life.
Things were doing really well,
the campaign for getting women's boxing
into the Olympics was just looking up.
And then all of a sudden, boom, my whole world fell apart.
I was getting ready for a competition.
I was packing my bags,
I'd left my bandages slightly hanging out of my bag
and I've tripped over the bandages,
went falling down the stairs
and it wasn't until a couple of weeks later
that the pain wasn't going in my back
and it was getting worse.
I went for an mri scan
and the doctor told me I'd broken my back.
It was the worst thing that could have possibly happened
at the worse time.
I didn't know how long I'd be out of boxing
if I'd be able to even box again.
Even if she tried to box,
maybe like, she wouldn't have been able
to move as good as she could,
she wouldn't be able to get power and like any injury,
would it keep coming back?
She was so frightened that, she'd never be the same.
Walking was a struggle,
let alone getting back into the ring and boxing.
She struggled to see the end, I suppose, at that point.
I was in bed for three months, just complete bed rest.
Whenever I walked around,
I had to wear a back brace to keep my spine in line.
And it was so hard to think,
"how am I going to get back to where I was before?"
I've gone from being a world silver medalist
to not being able to lift my shoulders off of the floor.
I was just laid there, so sad and depressed.
And I just wanted to do more and I just couldn't.
There were so many times when I thought to myself,
"I'm never going to be able to box again."
I've never been tested mentally and physically
so strongly in my entire life.
For the first time, I was physically weak
and that hasn't happened to me since I was a kid.
I felt like I couldn't protect myself.
That was the moment that really crushed me
and hurt me the most.
Men have been boxing at the Olympics
since the modern games began in 1904.
For the first time ever this summer,
women will step into the ring at the London games.
Oh, man, it was amazing.
I was so happy.
I just can't believe that it's actually in the Olympics.
I'm so happy.
I just, I don't think words could describe
how I'm feeling right now.
All the girls jumped up on the chairs,
clapping and cheering.
You know, it was like, unbelievable.
Well, kind of.
Let us in.
I was so happy I could be going to the Olympics,
and then I was thinking, "but, I have a broken back.
How am I going to go now? What am I supposed to do?"
They started doing the selection
for who was going to be on the gb team
to go to the qualifiers for the Olympics.
There was only three women's weight divisions
and there was ten male,
so that made it twice as hard to qualify.
I'd be there every week and watching the girls training
doing different fitness tests,
and I'd bejust either sat on the sideline
or I was getting physio.
Nik was coming to the assessments
as part of the squad
with a back brace on, you know, completely injured.
She couldn't do anything apart from watch.
They were going through, selecting girls.
Some of the girls weren't making the cut
and it was just getting down to the last few.
Got to the final assessment,
I think her back brace had been taken off
and Rob mccracken, the forms director, was like,
"you know, we're going to have to see you in action here."
Was at the point where, "well, she hasn't trialed.
We don't know if she's good enough.
So how can we have her on the team?"
Up until that point, I hadn't put on any gloves.
And I was like, "all right. What can I do?
What can I do because this is too painful.
Just walking around is just painful.
So, how am I going to start throwing punches?"
And I decided to just stick three or four morphine patches
on both my arms, took some oramorph
and then put my wraps on and I was like,
"right, I'm going to go do some boxing."
She wanted so badly to get back in the ring.
She loved boxing. Boxing was her life.
I couldn't move.
It was really, really painful.
But it paid off.
I got a letter in the post the week after
saying that I'd made the team.
I just remember breaking down in tears and just being like,
"wow, like, I did it. Like, how the hell did I get there?"
How did I manage to do that?
To actually qualify for the Olympics,
I had to go to the world championships in China
From Leeds, 29-year-old Nicola Adams.
The number one and the number two seeds
have come through two sides of the draw
to meet in this final once again.
In the finals, I came up against my Nemesis,
ren cancan from China.
The rivalry was so big because she was the only person
that could even come close to me in terms
of technical skill, speed and power.
Cancan was her achilles heel.
Some people's idea of boxing is
two people standing toe-to-toe,
knocking the lumps out of each other.
Other people say, it is like a game of chess.
Trying to outsmart, out think, outmaneuver.
If you can exploit an opponent's weaknesses
and find an opening, then that's all part of the game.
There's a hell of a lot of thinking goes on
that people don't realize.
Five judges, round one, bout four.
For some people, I can go in there
and think, "right, just power shots all day,"
and I don't need to do anything else.
When I was with her,
she's thinking all the time like I am,
so if I'm catching her with a certain shot
the next round or the next 30 seconds or so
she's going to change what she's doing
and do something completely different.
And that's what made our rivalry
and our matches so intense,
because you never knew which way it was going to go.
I was stood in the middle of the ring,
and then they raised her hand, and I just couldn't believe it.
I just had a sinking, horrible feeling in my stomach.
And I didn't even want my medal.
I just wanted to throw it out the window.
For me, it was just like, yeah,
I'm just the first best loser, like, it's not good enough.
When I was winning all the time, I felt invincible.
And then when I lost,
it was just taken away from me.
There are only few winners,
compared with how many boxers there are.
Some can deal with losing, some can't.
And it can damage them, probably mentally.
Their ambitions weren't fulfilled.
The doubt started to creep in.
It's just that thought of "I'm not good enough."
It's like if she got beat,
then how will she handle it?
It was ten weeks before the olympic games.
The one thing that tournament did do,
it gave me an unreal determination
and motivation to beat cancan.
I literally spent the next ten weeks
just preparing for her.
She's got a fear of losing.
So much so that she'll make sure she does double
in the training beforehand to get it right on the day.
You know, and it's a real drive.
I've seen Nikki lose fights and when she does,
she's a shell of herself, really.
It reverts her back into the past feeling of not being
where she wants to be.
I literally have the guys that I sparred
with mimicking her style.
Alwin was working on my foot position.
She was back in the gym, she was flying.
I remember she was asking the coach for extra work.
I was watching reruns of me and ren cancan boxing.
Her boxing other people.
Watching the styles that work the most on her.
Going through the analysis of her boxing style,
it was almost like an obsession.
To beat her I had to study her,
I had to know everything that she does.
So that I was ready for when I had to see
her again in London.
Welcome to London.
It was incredible, I was so happy to be there.
I was just overwhelmed.
All the fireworks, the crowd,
I couldn't believe it was all for us.
I was walking around with all the other athletes and all
the female boxers were so happy to finally be there.
I'm a part of this now. I'm an olympian.
When the opening ceremony had finished,
the following day, the boxing started.
You could literally almost sense the mood change.
That was it. It was go time.
Going into the olympic games, I didn't care who I faced,
I wasn't bothered as long as I got her in the finals.
She was the only person that I wanted to beat.
I think most people have been like, well,
"she's the world number one."
So if somebody else beats her, then that's cool,
I don't have to deal with her.
But I feel like to be the best, you have to beat the best.
So I wanted to beat her.
I got through the quarter finals.
And then the semi finals.
And then I found out that I was going to face ren.
The night before the finals, I was talking to my coach
and he said to me, "the other two girls
are out of the Olympics, no medals.
And obviously, you now have to get this gold medal
to secure the funding for women's boxing."
When she walked out for her gold medal fight,
that was the first time I'd heard a roar like that,
ever in my life.
You can see in the footage how big the crowds were
and how excited everybody was.
And I just couldn't believe that so many people
had taken to women's boxing in the way that we did.
There wasn't just a gold medal on the line.
There was a place in the history books.
At that point, I knew that I was fighting
for more than myself.
I was fighting for every female boxer in the UK.
Anybody that watched that footage, they'll see,
Nicola oozes confidence going into the ring.
But deep down inside, she's a nervous wreck.
On the outside, you might be the most confident,
self-assu red person in the world.
But actually deep down inside, you're going to be worried.
Her poker face is very good, she's like me.
None of the games, none of the tricks,
they don't work on a seasoned athlete.
This is it. The moment of truth.
Having pressure like that just really
brings out the lioness in me.
The kill or be killed.
If you don't make this hunt, if you don't make this kill,
you might not survive.
We stepped into the center of the ring.
You can see in the footage,
she was throwing some really good shots
and catching me with some good jabs.
My tactics were to stay behind the jab, go first and third.
So I'd throw a punch first, say a jab,
knowing that that's going to fall short.
To try and encourage her to throw, so that I can come
back with a very fast counter to score the points.
That was working really well.
And what I did this time, instead of following her
around the ring, I was just edging more
to my right hand side.
'Cause she always edges around that way, around the ring.
So the game plan was to cut her off
and then catch her as she comes in.
And in the second round, it worked to a t.
She went down.
The crowd was roaring.
You can see in the footage.
I couldn't believe that it happened at first.
This was a type of fighter that likes to sit on the back foot
and move around the ring and have a lot of time to think
'cause you are coming in.
But because she was down on points,
she had to come to me, which completely took her out
of her game plan and played into mine,
so I had all the time in the world.
And I was just waiting for her to come in
so I could pick her off.
I remember going back to the corner and the coach is saying
to me, like, "okay, you're doing really well.
You're just a couple of points off.
Keep focused. Stick to the game plan."
That last round for me was the most focused
that I think I've ever been in any fight.
I was actively trying to stay away from her,
stay around the edges of the ring.
It was like a game of cat and mouse.
I've got to be very smart, agile, light on my feet
and not standing still for a second.
And when the final bell went,
I felt I'd done everything I could.
Think there's a doubt in someone's mind when they come
back to the corner and you don't know
whether you've won or lost.
And you're waiting for the decision to be made,
that anticipation.
All the thoughts going through your mind,
you almost praying, please, please, please give me it,
please give me it.
And I've seen that look on her face before.
I was standing there so nervous,
listening to the announcer.
The winner...
I couldn't stop moving.
By 16 points to 7...
And then it happened.
And olympic champion in the blue corner!
Representing Great Britain, Nicola Adams!
I was just so happy.
And it wasn't until I got to the end of the fight
and I heard the points at the end.
And I was so many points in front.
But they said they did that to keep my focus
all the way through the fight.
Yeah, it was good.
I didn't know about that game plan.
It's hard to put into words how I felt that day.
I just created history.
All those days of tears and crying and setbacks
and injuries and wondering if I've chosen the right career.
Wondering if women's boxing was ever even going
to be an olympic sport?
And then knowing that you've done it and you stood there
and you've got the first ever gold medal.
I felt like I'd been through that much.
It almost felt like it had to be me.
When you look at the medal ceremony and the chanting
is so loud and the cheering is immense.
And Nicola... She steps up onto the podium
before her name is announced.
Nicola Adams!
She's up there and she's like,
"yes, this is my place."
I was just so happy for her.
For how she won that fight.
All them years and everything she'd been working towards,
just fell into place like that
and that was her dream come true.
She told me she were going to be a world champion.
And she did it.
I think it was just destiny.
Everything that she'd worked hard for, everything that
she'd done, all built up for that moment.
She just wouldn't let anyone take it away from her.
Not ren cancan, not anyone.
When I saw her face and her eyes tear up,
I just knew that was it for her.
That moment, she had made it.
And everything she had worked for was for that reason.
It's still, you know, all sinking in.
I just can't believe what I've...
What I've achieved t... today.
It's... it's definitely a childhood dream come true.
After I won the Olympics, my life completely changed.
Everybody knew who I was.
That was it, Nikki was a household name.
She was just everywhere.
I remember my gran was ringing me like,
"that girl's got such a beautiful smile."
Gran didn't say nothing about the boxing.
Nicola Adams, everyone!
I tried to go do a food shop
and literally I just got mobbed.
There was just people wanting autographs and photographs.
The security had to... Had to take me out.
I had to leave my shopping and everything.
Everywhere she went at that point, she was recognized.
You know, people just wanted to stop her
in the street continuously.
And you'll always get that one drunk person that...
Usually a male that kind of wants to,
you know, challenge her.
Me, Nik and chantelle used to share a house.
I remember we were going on a night out and I remember
she got some fan mail, and she just opened it,
and people just sent her their money,
just because of who she was, because what she'd done.
Meant so, so much for female boxing, for boxing,
but for female boxing, more than anything.
There's a lot of boxing fans that didn't even know
that women were in gyms boxing because that would...
All they would ever see is male boxers.
As soon as she won that fight, it was boom.
Female boxer, Nicola Adams.
Seeing Nikki win the olympic gold, erm...
Amateur clubs opened up their doors to women.
And it gave everybody a face, a name, a profile.
It gave role model to...
For the next generation to look up to.
A pathway clear.
I knew I wanted to create a path so girls could follow
and they wouldn't have to struggle.
Mom's like mine wouldn't have to work so hard.
So I worked, and I worked.
The power of representation is so important
for the next generation.
It really changed what people perceive a black woman to be.
Because I'm black and I'm a boxer,
everybody expected me to be very aggressive.
And I'm actually not like that at all.
For me, it was more about people being able to see that
just because of the color of her skin, or her sexuality,
it hasn't stopped her achieving the goals
she wanted to achieve.
The future's female.
Enjoy your drinks!
She is a black woman who is gay, who boxes.
For Nicola, it is an important part of who she is,
but she was always very keen that
it wasn't the one thing that defined her.
That doesn't change the fact that for lots of other people,
she is the pioneer on that stage.
It meant a lot to be recognized for doing what I love.
But it did come with its downfalls.
Everybody wanted to be involved in women's boxing,
everybody wanted a piece of women's boxing.
It was almost like, overnight everybody
had a female boxer that they'd been coaching for years.
And I'm like, "oh, really?
Where did you... where did you find them?"
Nikki is hypervigilant,
just always on the lookout, all the time.
Nicola Adams, the boxer we all know,
she loves the limelight, she loves the attention.
She loves to get in the ring and showboat
and be the best she can be.
Nicola Adams, the person,
I don't necessarily know completely.
She has this boxing and she will talk about boxing
with anybody, you know, 24/7.
But she'll very rarely talk to you about her life
and things that are going on, you know, in her private life.
It's a constant battle with trust for Nikki.
You could be the closest person to her
and you might do something and it'll unsettle her.
She doesn't even trust people close to her completely,
she only trusts herself.
You know, given the fame that she's got now,
that probably, that trust, that faith that you have
in people, probably gets questioned even more so now.
And I'm still fighting for that trust.
She has a little bit of vulnerability about...
I don't mean vulnerable, physically.
She has this grin, a smile.
You can see her, she's on camera, she's talking
and the camera switches off.
And then, you know, she'll glance over at us
and I remember noticing it, it's like I looked over,
she just went from being this bubbly person to sort
of a bit, you know, went... went inside herself.
For me, sometimes I prefer when people don't know
who I am when they first meet me, because I get a true
reflection of who that person really is.
There's been plenty of times like that when someone
hasn't recognized me and I've been sat next to them
and they've moved their purse away.
Or I've been followed around a store by security guards.
They've treated me badly.
And then somebody's told them who I am,
and then all of a sudden, they've changed.
It makes me very protective over her.
I'm always very careful about who she surrounds herself with.
I always second guess everything everyone says,
because I see the hard exterior and I also see all
the pain she has been through
and how it actually impacts her.
I am very cautious of anyone trying to use her
or have ill intent towards her.
Especially her dad, who showed up to the Olympics
to try and basically take credit for all the work
she did without him.
I've always, always loved the boxing.
And from when we used to watch it
at home with my dad and...
I saw my dad at the 2012 Olympics.
That was a big shock because I wasn't expecting
to see him after I had won my medal.
Especially because we didn't really talk,
I didn't really see him.
He never really asked about my boxing.
And he felt that I... I shouldn't even be boxing.
So, um, the fact, that he turned up there,
I was like, "well, that's random."
He came up to me and hugged me and asked for a photograph.
I just remember telling myself to just put on a brave face
and not let him ruin the moment.
After the fight, it might have been maybe
a couple of months also, I spoke to him on the phone.
And I asked him about what he did when we were growing up.
And he said I was crazy
and I didn't know what I was talking about.
He was just in complete denial.
When we moved to ebor gardens, my mum had another boyfriend.
At first, he was really nice.
I thought "oh, great, this... This could be cool, you know,
we'll... I'll have a nice, little family."
And as the relationship built,
he gradually became... became violent.
I just had enough.
I used to sleep with a hammer under my bed.
So I went upstairs and I got the hammer and I said to him,
"you need to leave the house now.
Otherwise, I'm going to use it."
He got into the car and I told him not to come back.
There was a brick on the side of the road.
And I just picked it up, threw it and it went through
his back window as he was driving away.
Being aggressive scares me,
but I was almost forced to be... to protect myself.
Nikki is scared of turning out like her dad.
When she ever gets angry or gets riled up,
um, I think it scares her a little bit.
She's always quite scared to act like him.
I used to say to my mom,
"why would you let people treat you like that?"
We've just left my dad and then you go into these
relationships and it's the exact same thing.
And I used to get so angry.
I'd be like, why, like, why... why... why do you...
Why do you let him do that?
I suffered a lot of abuse with my dad.
And then it's just continued with my mom,
but in a different form.
It's normally on an evening, and then the text messages
will start threatening to expose me to the press
and bring up god knows what.
She'd just say really horrible stuff,
like how much of a horrible person I am.
All of the facts that everybody around me now
doesn't care about me and that they are the only people
that care about me.
So if! Don't have them, then I'll be alone.
Me and my mom both suffered at the hands of my dad.
But my mom is just perpetuating it.
And she just can't seem to find a way out of it.
And it's just ruined our relationship.
I feel like I've lost my mom now.
It just makes me feel alone.
To be a great fighter, you got to have a natural
talent and ability, but talent only gets you that far.
The rest has to be dedication, hard work,
grit and you have to put a blinkers on.
It's a team job up until they get in the ring.
Then you're on your own.
You might be with your team when you're training
and having a bit of a banter and you know,
you are getting switched on.
But as soon as that... that bell goes and you're all alone
in that ring, it's a lonely old place.
I take that loneliness and I focus and it means
that I can completely put everything into my boxing.
I don't see myself as a victim.
I never want to be seen like that.
One, two, one, two.
Good!
Jab!
I'm Nicola Adams, the lioness.
The queen of the north from the UK.
I'm here to do the most, be the best, be number one.
Can't wait to operate, get in that ring.
I don't know what else to say now.
When I decided to turn pro in 2017,
there was very few women in the pro game.
It was like starting female boxing again from scratch.
In the amateur world, I'd conquered everything.
I had won everything there was to win
and then going to the pro game now,
I was a small fish in a very big pond.
I spoke to all the top promoters.
And the surprise for me was actually
getting a call from frank Warren.
I was still pretty much anfl4l
but my kids worked with me in my business now.
And they drove me mad about Nicola.
The reigning olympic champion...
He told me, he watched me win
my second gold medal at rio, 2016.
And he said he was really impressed.
All the cab drivers, that's my litmus test.
You know, when the cab drivers are talking about someone,
everybody was talking about 'er.
You've retained the top, did you realize just how proud
britain is of you?
Yeah, just... I was just literally coming through
the airport and seeing everybody cheering
and wanting to take pictures.
It was... it was amazing.
Now, this is a person that pretty much
the whole time I've been boxing, has been against it.
And now he's ringing me.
And so I was like, okay, you know, I'll let him...
I'll hear him out and see what he's got to say.
And he said when he watched my fight,
he couldn't believe the skill that I had.
And I changed his mind.
Nicola Adams, obe, mbe.
I thought he was completely against
women's boxing, so I just figured, you know,
there would be no point in even speaking to frank.
And then, lo and behold, he ends up being my promoter.
I was the first woman that
frank Warren's team ever signed.
When frank signed Nicola, I mean,
let's be honest, it was just for money, for the TV.
He never signed Nicola because she was a great amateur
and she's a great person and she's a great boxer.
He, in my opinion, signed her just because bt sport said
"we have to have a woman on."
And... and it was just a token gesture.
So she was brave doing that.
But with that and also brought an opportunity.
An opportunity for Nicola to prove that she deserved
to be there, that female boxing deserved
to be on the professional scene.
And that it should be taken as serious as the men's.
My debut fight was against
Virginia from Argentina.
You can see in the footage that I was still
getting used to the pro game.
I'm still throwing a lot of punches
and I'm not focusing on the accuracy.
I was boxing without a head guard for the first time.
And we both caught each other
with some good shots to the head.
Amateur boxing is more about point scoring,
whereas in professional boxing it's more about power shots.
First couple of fights, I struggled in training
to try and slow my work down because I was so used
to just going a 100 miles an hour,
punching nonstop all the time.
In my second fight, I managed to take her
out in the third round.
I was feeling stronger and stronger.
And I felt unbeatable.
When I'm getting ready to fight,
I want my opponent to feel my presence.
I want them to feel that I am so confident and unbeatable
that in the ring, I have the power to do anything I want.
There was a point in my next fight
where I threw a couple of body shots, a left hook to the body,
and you see her just wince down in pain.
After, I found out that I'd actually
broken a couple of her ribs.
Isabella millan was an aggressive,
come forward fighter, but she was also very messy as well.
You can see in the footage that she was throwing
big swinging punches,
but she wasn't landing many of them.
Nicola Adams!
It was a tough fight, but I won.
And I got the wbo interim title.
So that put me in the position where I could challenge
for the world title.
All right.
When I got into the professional boxing world
and I saw how female boxers were being treated,
it was almost like going in a time warp.
And going back to the days of when amateur boxing
on the women's side wasn't accepted.
It was so, so backwards.
I've been in a contract with... With people in the pro world
that, eh, I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw them.
I believe that it's very rare that you come across someone
who wants you to do well.
Nicola was treated so much different when she turned pro
because she was a woman and it was as simple as that.
I mean, had Nicola been a male like Anthony Joshua
won the 2012 Olympics gold medal.
The difference with the promotion for Anthony Joshua
and the difference in promotion for Nicola Adams was massive.
I feel like because I was a female boxer,
I wasn't given as much attention
as some of the male fighters.
Even though I knew that I was bringing in more of a crowd
than some of the top male fighters that they had.
I think there's always been a few issues
blocking women's progress in sport.
And interestingly, if you're lesbian or gay or bisexual,
that has not helped matters.
Historically, you know, martina navratilova,
for example says, she didn't lose sponsors
because she was out.
But she certainly didn't gain new ones.
You've got a double olympic champion right here,
homegrown, they could have literally done the most.
I think this she realized in her career time that it might
not be all the way, a given for women's boxing,
but a step further, a step closer to that goal
to get that same recognition that the males got.
Things didn't change until the likes of me,
Katie Taylor and claressa shields came along.
And then we started speaking out about
the injustices in women's boxing.
Boxing is so sexist and these men are fighting
for mul... multiple millions.
They haven't accomplished half of what I've accomplished.
I think they just put in a... a locker room for the women,
and it was a tiny one in the back.
And the trainers there didn't want
to train any of the females.
They weren't given a proper room to warm up in,
and get changed.
Some of them weren't even getting 5k a fight.
And after you deduct all the training expenses,
you're probably looking at about 500
to a thousand after you've boxed.
Which is ridiculous.
If you don't fight, you don't get paid.
I went a full year without a fight, so I had no income.
One of my fights kept getting pushed back and pushed back
and pushed back and I thought,
"look, am I even going to fight this year?
I've got bills to pay, I got rent to pay."
So I ended up applying for jobs, supermarket jobs.
And I'm a world champion.
I applied for aldi, lidl.
I didn't even get past the application stage.
I failed that.
Nicola had never earned a third of what Anthony Joshua,
probably earned in the first year of his boxing career.
He got all the glory, all the money, all the sponsorships
and it was like, well, she just achieved exactly
what he's achieved.
Nicola won a gold medal as well.
On top of that,
the problem we faced was that female boxers
just weren't getting enough fights.
And I don't think I was active enough in my pro-career.
I think I should've definitely been boxing a lot more.
My sixth pro-fight was my hardest fight yet.
I boxed at flyweight,
and I had a day to get from to 127 to 112.
Normally, for a fight I'd lose ten pounds,
and then just put it back on.
This fight, I lost over a stone in 24 hours.
Sometimes the promoters don't give you enough time
to be able to make that weight
before the fights, so you have to crush it
and that's what I did.
Her nutritionist said he's never known
a fighter to ever be able to lose that much weight.
And it would be impossible, and he would not advise it.
Because I'd lost so much weight,
my body had to restart itself to be able to start taking
in water and start taking in food again.
So I really, really struggled.
Her eyes were sunken in, her skin had gone grey.
You could see all her ribs. Everything was caved in.
She looked emaciated.
When I went to the weigh in,
I couldn't really hear anything because I'd lost
so much fluid around my brain.
It was horrible.
My coaches had to help me get undressed
because I didn't have the energy to even take
my tracksuit off to get on the scales.
Helped me walk over to the stage where the scales were.
I was so scared because I was like, I don't know
if I've even got the energy to hold myself up.
If she was struggling really bad,
maybe you should have been like,
you know, let's do the world title a weight above.
Because in professional boxing, you can go through the weights.
So maybe that communication there, if that was spoken
about that way, it wouldn't have been much of an issue.
I knew my opponent and their coaches knew
exactly what was wrong with me.
And I just tried to put on that front
and pretend that everything was okay.
After the weigh in, I went back to the hotel, tried to eat,
but I couldn't eat anything.
We rang the nutritionist and spoke to him
and he explained it's because her organs
had decided to shut down
because her body was so malnourished.
I think at that point,
everybody was pretty, pretty worried.
There was a couple of times where my coach
and the nutritionist were saying that I should pull out.
But I just wanted to do the fight.
Boxing is a microcosm of life.
It's filled with blood and it is an art form.
Some people are born to fight.
It's a natural instinct for them.
They come alive in the ring.
You might say "is she going to be a winner?"
You know, you feel at the end of the day,
you're unbeatable.
Nicola's mentality is no different.
By the time we got to the arena,
I think it was eight, nine o'clock at night.
You can see in the footage that I just don't look right.
I don't have the same spark or energy that I normally have.
Even walking into the center
of the ring to touch gloves was horrible.
Seconds out, round one!
The bell went, I started okay,
I was doing everything I could.
I was switching southpaw, I was working behind myjab.
I was keeping my defense tight.
Anything I could do to survive the fight.
I felt that night, things weren't right.
She didn't seem to be herself in the ring.
And I actually remember sitting there thinking to myself,
"I wonder she's going to carry on doing this."
I remember saying to the guys,
I said she didn't look comfortable.
Each time I went back to the corner, I was exhausted.
My trainer was trying his best to keep me focused,
telling me what round I was on,
telling me how many rounds there was to go.
I just needed this to be over. I just needed to survive.
There was a lot of talk about, you know,
"she didn't perform as good as she normally does.
It was boring."
The commentators were saying I was moving a lot slower
than normal and I was throwing
a lot less punches than I normally would.
But the whole time, nobody actually knew
why I was performing the way I was,
and what I'd actually been through.
During the first round, I received an eye injury.
My opponent caught me with a form in my eye.
I was seeing two people the whole way
through the rest of the fight.
So to try and focus on my opponent more,
I had to try and close the eye that was injured,
so I just had one person to look at.
But that was really hard to do as well
because I had punches coming from all different angles.
So instead of aiming punches at her head,
you could see in the footage,
I was aiming for the middle of the blur,
for her chest, because it was a bigger target.
I don't know how I did it.
I've never had to dig that deep
in a fight, ever before in my life.
I had some kind of higher power help me through that.
Coach was saying he's never known anybody to lose
that much weight and still perform.
It was very dangerous, but I didn't want to lose my title.
There was points in that fight where I could have easily
just gone back to the corner and just told them like,
"no, just throw in the towel."
But I've got a warrior's heart.
I'd rather go out on my shield.
Ninety five to ninety five, this bout is a split draw.
When the draw was announced and the crowd was booing,
I felt really bad because I know they expected
a lot more from my performance.
I can see now watching back at the footage,
how uncomfortable I looked.
I just wanted to get out of the ring.
Straight after the fight, I ran to the toilet
and I just threw up.
I'd worked so hard in that fight and it just took
a really big toll on my body.
I went to go see an eye specialist,
and that's when he told me that I torn my pupil in two places.
So the main question for me was, well,
is... is it fixable, like, can I keep boxing?
Like, what's the deal?
And he said to me,
there's a chance that if I did get caught like that
again, I could go blind.
It was a risk that I wasn't prepared to take.
She wanted to fight again.
She wasn't ready to retire, she said.
If she would have lost her vision just for the feeling
of coming out on a positive note,
it just wouldn't have been worth it.
And I think she realized it was time to move on.
Boxing for me has always been my safe space,
since I was 13 years old.
So making the decision to retire
wasn't an easy choice for me.
When she decided to retire, I was, you know,
from a financial aspect, you say,
"look, we've put a lot of investment in this, getting it,
getting her into the position where she is."
And which we did, but, um,
at the end of the day, you got to respect her decision.
As I say, she is the person getting in the ring,
and I respected it entirely.
I never, never sat her down
and tried to talk her out of it at all.
You know, I just wished her the best for the future.
I do think that she probably wasn't the best advised
on the pro side, which for me is sickening to watch
because I fought so hard to get women's boxing license.
So that they didn't have to do what I had to do.
I'd see so many female boxers come and go over the years
that could have been really good now that had to just give
it up just to survive.
I just feel with Nick, that she was just badly promoted
she should have been on the same level as Anthony Joshua,
who'd done the same as her at the Olympics.
So why wasn't she? Why wasn't she?
When boxing was taken away,
it meant that I was forced to face
the problems I have with trauma from my childhood.
It was quite overwhelming.
I can feel when my heart starts to race
and I remember saying to Ella, like,
I don't know why I'm feeling like that,
because I've never had to deal
with any of those feelings before.
I'm starting to let my guard down now.
And I don't have to fight to survive anymore.
Last words I actually said to Nicola
before the last training session, it's going to take
off soon because it looks like they're going
to be first to accept female boxing in the Olympics.
And then it's all go from there.
The world is your oyster.
And she just laughed about it.
I said, "no, seriously, it's going to be massive.
It really is going to be massive.
Make sure you're ready for it."
She said, "ready for what?"
I said,
"whatever it is, just ride it till the wheels come off."
First, you have to acknowledge
that she's a winner.
She had a great sense of who she was,
and what she was capable of.
She was the pioneer in the sport.
Whenever I go anywhere and start talking
about boxing, people say "oh, I know that girl,
I remember that girl from Leeds."
She's still in their minds.
Everyone remembers that girl from Leeds.
Her winning those gold medals at the olympic games
have propelled these girls to be inspired to want to,
you know, reach the... the heights that she did.
Her impact on the sport, I think,
would be truthfully felt in the years to come.
The team, now that we've got involved in england boxing,
when I asked them, you know, what inspires them,
you know, why are they boxing?
Quite often Nicola's name comes up.
"I want to be the next Nicola Adams."
The Olympics is a pathway now for girls.
Team gb, there's girls on the team
and there's boys on the team.
The girls got sent away at the tournaments,
the same as the boys get sent away at the tournaments.
And that's because of Nicola's gold medals.
She will continue to change people's view
to what women can be.
Boxing or any fighting sport, it's a completely
different view of what women are perceived to be.
People need to know that it's very empowering.
Every girl should know what it feels like
to feel invincible.
Nikki's fight, it's going to make things a lot easier
for the girls coming through.
It's all been like a path.
And she's always leading the way.
She projects enjoyment and happiness and positivity.
And I think for many, many years, we have struggled
with what felt like a burden, not just the burden
of shame for the lgbtq community.
But a weight we felt dragging us back.
And what I love about Nicola is she powers forward.
I shouldn't be where I am now.
I had so many people telling me,
"no, you'll never be a boxer."
I just didn't want them to project what they see
as a future onto me.
I knew their limitations weren't mine.
If I could tell the eight year old me anything,
I'd tell her to not be afraid,
that life's going to get better.
And I know there's times when it's going to be scary.
But you are so much stronger than you realize.
Okay, we're done.
J“ me again, allow me to pick up where I left off j“
j“ the biggest phenomenon and I'm Picasso with the pen j“
j“ niggas always talk shit 'til I hit them with the realness j“
j“ figured I should say some' j“
j“ but you don't wanna hear me vent j“
j“ you can talk bad all day long I'll never be impressed j“
j“ dunno what I did to make you feel j“
j“ that you be earnin' my respect j“
j“ you do not scare me no, you are not a threat j“
j“ anyone that want it they can get it in a flash, no sweat j“
j“ if you're gonna talk on my name j“
j“ least say it with your chest j“
j“ got my team on deck taking out all pawns j“
j“ and my knight got your queen in check, mate j“
j“ don't get touchy, don't be getting in your feelings I
j“ all I do is kill shit, shit, even when I'm chillin' j“
j“ I'm Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst days j“
j“ never been a punk, trust you can get it in the worst wayj'
j“ fuck it, lemme get a birthday cake j“
j“ and it ain't even my birthday j“
j“ 'cause when lswitch then j“
j“ they wanna say that I'm a bitch I
j“ you're not listening you're not listening j“
j“ I said it with my chest j“
j“ and I don't care who I offend, uh-huh j“
j'hahj'
j“ came through swinging outta gate on a mad one, no fucks j“
j“ steppin' to the kid tryna bring it j“
j“ lpromise you'll have no luck j“
j“ you sold out for a quick buzz honey, you got no love j“
j“ no less than what I know I'm worth and I won't budge j“
j“ in and out of doorways j“
j“ juggin'-juggin' through the Broadway j“
j'Anthony, where would I be now I went done it your way? J“
j“ I been exhausted, man I think I need a tour break j“
j“ might take a trip to the Philippines j'
I with my Spanish boy, Jorge j“
j“ holla my plug like j“
j“ "I'm back in town and I need a ounce gimme more flavs" j“
j“ take mum on a spree like j“
I "get anything you want this is your day" j“
j“ I followed the white rabbit j'
j“ got a couple carrots I know that I got bad habits j“
j“ tryna find the balance j“
j“ I'm in the store like, "I wanna have it gotta have it" j“
j“ you are not the toughest or baddest j“
j“ me pen is the maddest j“
j“ I've probably ended careers and it's never out of malice j“
j“ gas level ain't even on ten and still they can't manage j“
j“ they think I'm a shy one, like, "nah simz won't flip" j“
j“ but when I switch, then they wanna say that I'm a bitch j“
j“ I said it with my chest and I don't care who I offend j“
j' uh-huh, hah! J“
j“ I said it with my chest and I don't care who I offend j“
j' uh-huh, hah! J“