“Anyone who tells you they’re not nervous is lying.” Caroline Dubois’s words are coloured with a quiet confidence that could be mistaken for shyness. As someone who’s been boxing for fifteen years, she knows better than anyone that the sport is all about pushing through that fear. “Most matches are made in the locker room,” she says. “When you hear the knock on the door, that’s when you think, What am I doing?” But as soon as she begins her ring walk – music blaring, fans chanting her name, the entire room buzzing with anticipation – it all fades away.
Inside her gym in north London, Dubois has just wrapped up an intense training session. Her hair is tied back from her shower and she settles on one of the long wooden benches that rests against the ring. “When I was little, I was a very princessy kind of kid — I would be that girl who would walk around in a tutu or princess outfits,” she remembers. “Boxing is a male-dominated sport. There’s a lot of stereotypes about what that looks like. Which is unfair because there is no one trope.” Over the past year, Dubois has made stylish appearances at fashion events, film premiers and even ringside. This London Fashion Week, she wore loose sunkissed curls and a silky red halterneck designed by Kallee Jackson to Paul Costelloe’s SS26 show. “I like staying in touch with my feminine side. I like looking pretty,” she adds. Case in point? In January 2025 Dubois did her first ring walk as world champion, dressed in black and sparkling purple, to Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman”.
Dubois gestures around the room where we sit, and recalls the same features — the wooden floors, the metal beams, the smell of leather — that she fell in love with in the first gym she ever trained in. She reminisces about getting her first mouthguard, the type you add water to, and being so thrilled to finally have her own — raised by a single father, Dubois had been fascinated with her brothers’ boxing since the age of nine. Subsequently, her dad, keen to get her the best training he could find, enrolled her in the men’s-only Repton Amateur Boxing Club. For six months she had to dress up as a boy named Colin. “It was so exciting,” she recalls. I didn’t care that people thought I was a boy.”
Then, when Dubois watched the female boxing team in the 2012 London Olympics, her world changed. “I was glued to the TV, jaw on the floor, and I was like, That is what I want to do. I want to go to the Olympics and I want to win gold,” she recounts. “From that moment, every day I trained, every day I got up early in the morning, every day I would go to bed tired and sore. I would be thinking and dreaming about the Olympics. I was like a girl possessed.”
After years of dedicated training, struggling to make weight, and facing uncertainty surrounding Covid regulations, Dubois made it to the Olympic Village in 2021. Her match was against Sudaporn Seesondee, a world silver medallist from Thailand, almost nine years older than her. Dubois lost by a single point. “I don’t think I slept properly for about six months after that,” she recalls. “I was just heartbroken.”
Sometimes, on a run, or driving to practice, Dubois still goes over the fight, the mistakes she made, all the ways in which she wishes she’d pushed harder. “It’s been almost four or five years and it still hurts,” she admits. “I grew as an athlete, I grew as a person. But I can’t go back to that feeling again.”
After going pro in February 2022, Dubois currently stands as the undefeated WBC and IBO Lightweight World Champion, defending eleven wins, one draw and no losses. One of Britain’s rising athletes, she was named SportAid One-To-Watch in 2018, BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2019, and was awarded Athlete Of The Year by Ndileka Mandela (Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter) at the 2024 Mandela Awards.
Nonetheless, Dubois strives to remain humble, keenly aware that being undefeated only raises the stakes. “Every single match could be the end, you know? If you lose, then everything you’ve worked for is over.” Witnessing her brother Daniel Dubois’ career, and how his public reception changed after losing a match, was a sobering experience. “In solo sport you’re not just losing,” the twenty-four-year-old explains, “you’re getting beaten.”
In 2024, Dubois publicly split with her brother and father, leaving the family home. “It was either move out, continue with your own career and potentially be great — or stay, stop boxing and become nothing,” Dubois affirms. “It wasn’t a choice, it was a necessity.” Nevertheless, one of eleven children, Dubois sees her large family as a blessing. Despite her breakneck career, one of her favourite forms of downtime is going out for Mediterranean food with her siblings (as well as learning the guitar and listening to Gary Clark Jr.’s “Our Love” on repeat.)
When asked what she would change about boxing culture, Dubois is optimistic. “I think it is changing,” she admits. “I started boxing when I was nine, and I didn’t spar a woman until I was thirteen. I remember walking into a gym and people would look at me funny. It wasn’t until I proved myself — stepped into the ring — that people went, Okay, okay, she’s a real boxer.” Now, though, there’s more female representation than ever before. “You go to an amateur club now and there’s going to be girls in the gym,” Dubois says. “There’s going to be a female coach. I think it’s amazing to see.”
And Dubois herself has been part of that revolution. Only ten months after turning professional, in 2022, she featured on the undercard of Shields vs Marshall, the UK’s first ever ‘all-female’ boxing card — a colossal moment for women’s sport. “As long as men have been fighting, women have been fighting just as hard, if not harder,” Dubois says. “Not every woman is a physical fighter, but every one knows what it is to be treated less than, to defend ourselves, to be in pain.”
When all is said and done, Dubois wants to leave the legacy of an undisputed champion. “I want to be in a fight that gets the world talking, gets people marking their calendar, asking Are you watching this weekend?” Dubois concludes, eyes sparkling. In the past, she has claimed she plans on retiring at thirty. But she points to Natasha Jonas, Kate Taylor, and Savannah Marshall as examples of incredible boxers who keep fighting past their thirties and wonders whether she’ll truly be ready to retire in six years. “There’s so much more I want to do,” she admits. For now, though, Dubois is thankful for her perseverance. “I am proud of the girl that turned up every single day, who fought as hard as she could.” The boxer nods along to her words. “Despite ups and downs, despite everything, I did that by myself.”
- WriterAnna Mahtani
