Photo: Matchroom Boxing – April Hunter (7-1) did not mince her words when her June 6th fight against Mary Spencer (8-2, 6 KOs) was announced.
I was shocked when I learned that Mary Spencer was going to face April Hunter at the Montreal Casino in a June 6th WBA Gold title showdown.
‘Hunter will become the hunted,’ said Mary Spencer in the press release.
But then, a few minutes later:
‘The only thing you’re hunting is your pension, you old-age-pensioner,’ April Hunter replied on social media.
Several reasons allow me to write a text and above all to occupy my mind until this intriguing fight.
April Hunter (7-1) is not the classic boxer who arrives beaten in advance at the Casino to act as an opponent and leaves through the noise of the machines with her check in the underground parking lot.
You will also have to keep an eye on her during the press conference. Hunter might try to play in Spencer’s head to make her lose her patience…
Who is April Hunter?
She is a 29-year-old boxer who has only 15 small fights of experience in Olympic boxing and 8 fights among the pros… except that she is extremely popular and her story is far from banal. Think about it. Why did his team agree to cross an ocean and face so many orange cones to come face a boxer as dangerous as Mary Spencer when there is a fight to be made with April Hunter in England?
‘She’s a boxer with an unorthodox style and heavy hands, April Hunter is athletic. A former soccer player, she probably would have been professional if she hadn’t injured her knee. Plus, like all boxers trained by Peter Fury, she has very good upper body movements and her stealthy attacks can be devastating,’ explains Spencer’s trainer, Samuel Décarie-Drolet.
Story of her life
April Hunter was only 9 years old when she was recruited by Newcastle United, a major English club who wanted to take care of her development. At 15, sadly, she destroyed her ACL and after a complex operation, whether she will be able to play soccer, or even properly walk again, wasn’t the safest bet. To complete the nightmare, all the universities she was in talk with dropped their scholarship offers… The world was at her feet, but her knee gave up.
Sixteen is a terrible age for April, alcohol and weight gain, with no pro soccer dreams anymore… A misfortune never happens alone, his best friend died drowned on the evening of his 24th birthday. Anxiety and depression are higher than even in her life.
But like several others, she chose boxing, at the age of 21, to take control of her life again. She fails in love with the sport and eventually met Peter Fury, the uncle and trainer of Tyson Fury, at the start of his career, who decided to teach her boxing.
Since then, she became the first woman from Newcastle to box professionally. She’s now endorsed by footballer Harry Kane, boxer Tyson Fury, and her best friend is Savannah Marshall.
‘Mary Spencer is probably the hardest girl in town to match, but for April Hunter, who has had her fair share of ups and downs in her professional career, this fight is an opportunity to show that she got her boxing to another level. She will appear in front of Mary Spencer confident of being able to surprise the Canadian and show us her progress over the past year. But Mary has also progressed and is much more than a knockout artist. I expect a few more technical rounds on both sides, but I think April could be in difficulty from the 4th round onwards,’ indicates Marie-Ève Albert from the 120 seconds podcast.
April Hunter, the activist
The Maldives is a tropical country in the Indian Ocean made up of 26 ring-shaped atolls comprising more than 1,000 coral islands.
The place is a paradise on earth, but a little stuck in the past. A demonstration of love between two people of the same sex is punishable by 8 years in prison.
April Hunter decided to defy this law and stood up to defend the LGBT+ community by taking a stunning photo with her girlfriend during her vacation.
It was at that moment that I understood what she was doing. April Hunter is not afraid of anything. She started dreaming again thanks to boxing after seeing her career ends in soccer. But if she’s the type to defies the laws of a retrograde country, do you think she’s scared to come here, overseas, in North America to face one of the scariest punchers in women’s boxing?
Absolutely not.
Therefore, things will get interesting on June 6th.
