A Special Throwback To 12-10-2014

Katie Taylor vs Oshin Derieuw @ the UL Arena (Limerick), organized by Ken Moore.

One of the lessons I learned in life is to seize your own opportunities, don’t have fear to take the next step, don’t let fear lead your decisions.

Seeing Katie Taylor proceeding a succesful pro career, it made me think of my time in the ring with her.

On a sunny day, I think it was June 2012, I got the question to box Katie Taylor.

For those who don’t know Katie Taylor, she is a olympic gold winner. A multiple world and european champion… She is the boxer who made me hungry for boxing. The first time I ever saw her boxing it was at a championship. I was amazed by her speed, explosiveness, ring intelligence, footwork … In my eyes she had the total package of what a boxer should be…

So I always trained to be more like my idol…
Until I got to fight her…
It was my first bout with my new french club. So we hit it off with the absolute top level. Since I wasn’t working, I trained for three months in a different regime: I moved to France, trained at noon and evening. I absolutely loved every moment of the training camp. And for my new coaches Mohamed Nichane and Paul Fournier it was kind of a test to see what I had in me… If I was capable of fighting at that level

The prep went really good, getting to weight very easily. It was summer, start of a new season. Most of our competition boxers were training at noon and in the evening, so the atmosphere was high. It was so much fun.

Once we were at Limerick I got the most wam and heartful welcome of Ken Moore. He is such an amazing man. He didn’t not only organize the bout, but everything around the evening was amazing. He made me feel like a star, and I was stunned!

We visited the area the first day and we had to weigh in as well at 62 kg. We got to see each other eye to eye, which was friendly as it should be in sportwomenship. After being introduced I got back to the hotel where my family and friends were, they came to see me all the way from Belgium. I feel blessed to have such support team.

After a good night rest, the day was there! A locker room with my name on it, a choir who was singing my entrance song (how cool is that, and they were singing it so good!!!), I got into the ring. Ready for ‘war’. Every single second of that fight was flying high! I trained so much for this fight, so I wanted to make it a good one…

The winner was Katie, but I felt like winning too. Winning an obstacle, winning on experience, winning on appreciation (not only from my new coaches, but the Irish boxing fans as well). 45 minutes of signing pictures, taking pictures, talking to people…

A weekend to remember…

So thankful for everyone who made it happen.
And it got me into a new start with a new team!

Write to you soon,
Oshin