Chantelle Cameron Claims Super-Welterweight Titles in Thrilling Fight
Chantelle Cameron ripped through the noise, the bad blood and the pre-fight boasts to walk out of Birmingham as the new queen of the super-welterweights – and with another statement win on a career that keeps stacking historic nights.
Over 10 ferocious rounds at MPW-06, Cameron outworked and outlanded Mikaela Mayer in a high-class war to claim the WBA, WBC and WBO super-welterweight titles by unanimous decision, the judges scoring it 97-93, 97-93 and 96-94. The margins were narrow, the action anything but.
This was billed as a fight-of-the-year contender. It lived up to every word.
Fire from the first bell
The animosity had boiled over 24 hours earlier. A routine weigh-in turned ugly as security stepped in to separate the pair after a physical clash and a volley of insults. Cameron, usually measured, promised to “smash her head in.” Mayer fired back with talk of an easy win and a stoppage.
So when the opening bell rang, there was no feeling-out round, no cautious prodding behind the jab. The tone was set instantly.
Mayer tried to seize centre ring, pushing forward behind a front-foot assault. Cameron, calm amid the storm, waited for her moment. She found it with a beautifully timed left hook that snapped Mayer’s head back and announced the champion’s intent.
The round ended with a bump of shoulders and a cold stare as they walked to their corners, the referee stepping in while both women bristled. The fight had only just begun, but the fuse was already burning.
Cameron’s timing vs Mayer’s pressure
Cameron looked the heavier-handed fighter in the second, stepping into a lunging right hand that crashed home. Mayer refused to give ground, marching her to the corner and answering with a right hook to the face. Every exchange felt like a small argument in a larger, bitter debate about who truly belonged among the pound-for-pound elite.
In the third, Mayer still searched for her range, stretching with her right and leaving just enough space for Cameron to punish her with sharp counters. A short right from Cameron landed clean, only for Mayer to respond with a crisp two-punch combination of her own. The pattern emerged: Mayer pressing, Cameron reading, reacting, and picking her spots off the back foot.
Cameron’s game-plan was clear. She leaned on timing, reflexes and experience, content to let Mayer come to her and pay for every step.
The distance closed in the middle rounds and the contest turned gritty. Both fighters let their hands go on the inside. Cameron clipped Mayer with a short right hook; Mayer dug hard to the body, trying to sap the legs and slow the counter-punching rhythm. The clean, early work from Cameron met Mayer’s stubborn, grinding response.
The fifth brought one of Mayer’s best moments. She crashed home a thumping right hand to Cameron’s face, then bit down on the gumshield as the pair traded vicious body shots at close quarters. Neither gave an inch. Neither wanted to.
Momentum swings and a brutal pace
The tempo never dropped. Each round felt like three compressed into one, both women ripping to the body, snapping heads back with hooks and straight rights, and refusing to let the other settle.
Then the momentum tilted.
By the seventh, Cameron had flipped the script and moved onto the front foot. She drove behind a stiff jab, then threaded a right hand over the top, forcing Mayer back and taking command of the geography of the ring. The American, who had come in vowing to dominate, suddenly found herself being stalked.
By the end of the round, Cameron was walking Mayer down, dictating the pace and the angles. Mayer tried to adjust, but the fight was slipping away from her strengths and into Cameron’s world of relentless pressure layered on top of sharp counters.
Both faces started to tell the story. By the ninth, swelling showed on each woman. Mayer carried a cut by the eye. Blood appeared to trickle from Cameron’s face. It had become a battle of attrition, a test of will as much as skill.
Still, neither backed off. The exchanges stayed fierce, the punches thudding, the crowd sensing they were watching something that would echo beyond the night.
Bad blood, respect – and a dispute
When the final bell sounded, the two fighters embraced. For a brief second, the trash talk, the shoves, the weigh-in chaos all melted into mutual respect between two elite competitors who had just pushed each other to the brink.
Then the scorecards came in, and the temperature rose again.
All three judges sided with Cameron, confirming her as the new unified super-welterweight champion and adding another glittering line to a résumé that already includes the distinction of being the only woman to defeat Katie Taylor in the professional ranks.
Mayer did not accept it quietly.
“I did beat you Chantelle. You are lucky in your little back yard,” she snapped in the ring. She demanded a rematch, insisting on three-minute rounds and vowing to “kick your ass even harder” – but not in the UK. If Cameron wanted to run it back, Mayer said, she should come to the US.
“I outboxed you,” Mayer insisted, promising to rewatch the fight and give an “honest evaluation” but standing firm in her belief that she had done enough.
Cameron, unfazed, fired back with the same edge she had shown all week. “I just wanted to play with [Mayer],” she said. “If you’re going to say you’ll stop me, beat me easily… talk is so cheap, and I showed that tonight. Don’t talk too much game – you’ve got to back it.”
She welcomed the idea of doing it again, and went one further: “I want to do three-minute rounds.”
The rivalry is raw, the arguments unresolved, the stakes now even higher. Cameron leaves Birmingham as a unified champion and a proven big-fight operator once again. Mayer leaves convinced the story isn’t finished.
The only real question now is not whether they fight again – but how long the sport can afford to wait before these two share a ring one more time.
