In a field in Yorkshire, a small woman fights shadows in the fading light of an early spring morning and wonders when she will be able to go back to work.
Terri Harper had the first defence of her WBC super-featherweight title scheduled for the Doncaster Dome on April 24 against Natasha Jonas, as well as a plan for a unification fight by the end of the summer. That bout, along with so many others, has been put on hold after the British Boxing Board of Control suspended domestic fights until the end of May.
Still, Terri trains in isolation, throwing punches, going through arduous circuits in her garden, running in the hills and flicking out jabs in choreographed sessions in the fields surrounding Denaby, Yorkshire where she lives. The fight is off, but the hope remains.
Just one year ago, a lifetime in the land where boxing fairy tales come true, Harper was working extra shifts in a local chippie, peeling a mountain of potatoes each morning before dawn to make some extra money. She was still a novice then, still buying tickets to watch her idol Katie Taylor fight.
Harper fought on the same bill as Taylor in Manchester last November — she had already bought a ticket before being told she was on the bill. The 23-year-old was matched hard in just her ninth professional fight, up against Brazil’s Viviane Obenhauf, who had previously lost on points to Taylor and stopped Jonas.
Harper won in style. She was too clever, too strong and walked away with a wide decision after 10 rounds.
Harper fought again in February, winning the WBC title with a shutout verdict over Finland’s Eva Wahlstrom. The chip-peeling, part-time fighter was world champion — her first defence against Jonas was announced shortly after the win.
The fight would have been a real sell-out — a local idol in a homecoming that storytellers would have struggled to invent six months earlier. It meant even more to Harper. Her most recent victory meant she could buy a house.
“We are still preparing for Natasha,” Stefy Bull, who trains Harper and coaxed her out of a temporary retirement in 2017, said. “Nothing has changed in our minds — we are still preparing for that fight. There is talk of it being switched to a [Anthony] Joshua card. There is a lot of talk at the moment.”
In 2012, Harper was rejected by the GB boxing team in Sheffield after a development week, a trial period to determine if she would be invited to join the team full-time. Meanwhile, Jonas was the golden girl of British boxing during that Olympic year — she later lost a narrow decision over Taylor during the London Games, giving the Irish idol her hardest fight of the tournament.
Harper vanished soon after before Bull pulled her back, helping to lead her to a world title. Now, the pair are in lockdown with the rest of the UK boxing community.
“The fight being off has not been great news,” Bull added. “Terri would have fought in April and with a good win there was always the chance of another big fight, a unification fight in the summer. But we all have to deal with it. She is only 23, so she is not running out of time. She can wait, we all can.
“Before it got serious, I started to do just one-on-one in the gym, but I have now closed the doors. We have gone outdoors, the great outdoors. We live in a village, everybody knows us. We just get on with it. People see us in the fields and on the hills and in the park and that’s normal for us. It’s a small village.”
Bull has a field next to his house where he has circuits ready for Harper and his other fighters. He runs a tiny boxing industry with Harper at its core, but she is by no means the only boxer that he works with.
“I have 30 fighters and they all want to work,” Bull added. “I have journeymen, men that need to fight and can’t just go and get money. It’s not that easy for them. I had my June show pulled and, on June 6, I had Gavin McDonnell fighting for the European title in Spain. That money is gone and it was needed. “I had a show called off just a few days ago. It was meant to be on Friday [March 20] with 10 fights, that is 20 boxers. That’s a lot of people not getting paid. It has cost me a few grand. There is nothing I can do.
“I have lost two shows in May. This is a tough time for boxers and remember, fighters get depressed, they get eating and drinking. I want them all to stay ready or half-ready and waiting for the call. Right now they have nothing to do, the gym is closed. They are not earning.”
Harper and Bull will continue, at a safe distance, to prepare for a fight without a date and a venue in a business without a clue about its future. They are not alone in Britain, where boxers are going about their daily tasks and trying to stay in shape, stay ready for that time when it is all over. It is the long, uncertain wait of every professional athlete in the world.
“I have pencilled in three dates in July, not gone to print yet, but they are there,” Bull added. “Hopefully there will be a big return — there is no big football event this summer and no Olympics. There might be a lot of room for boxing. I hope so, we all need the work.”
Bull will stay in contact with his fighters, especially the vulnerable ones, to give them some positive information. He wishes he could give them dates for fights. Harper’s dream is suspended in the crazy gloom of a pandemic, but for others, their hopes in boxing could be over.
“It is all on hold right now,” Harper said, speaking like a true champion. “It will all return, the dream will be back on, but right now it is all about making sure that everybody is safe and survives.”