Former taekwondo star Jones sets sights on professional boxing career

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DOUBLE Olympic taekwondo champion Jade Jones has a professional boxing career in her sights after starting out with two wins in the Misfits ring.

Jones quit taekwondo for boxing 18 months ago and says the buzz of the fight game has left her feeling “like a kid again.”

The 33-year-old from Flint in north Wales meets Hungarian MMA fighter Sheena Bathory for the Misfits super-middleweight title in Newcastle on Saturday.

“It [professional boxing] is definitely on my horizon,” said Jones, who trains under former British champion Stephen Smith in Liverpool and spars with top professionals Rhiannon Dixon and Olivia Holmes.

“I’m trying to take it step by step, because with taekwondo I put so much pressure on myself and it almost didn’t become fun in the end.

“I just had nothing left to give to taekwondo, but I wasn’t quite ready to retire. My body felt in really good shape and I still had that hunger and fire.

“It’s so exciting how good I feel like I’m getting already. I just want to keep testing myself and get better. See how high we can get.”

Jones breezed through her first two bouts, both opponents were delivered brutal knockouts as Jones lived up to her taekwondo nickname “Headhunter.”

Jones won Great Britain’s first-ever Olympic taekwondo gold medal at London 2012 and successfully defended her title at Rio de Janeiro four years later.

But further Olympic success at Tokyo in 2021 and Paris 2024 proved elusive, with Jones eventually realising she had lost her edge.

She said: “In taekwondo, weirdly, 31 (when she retired) is quite old, but in boxing, it’s young. It’s a totally different mentality.

“I’m sure there were 8,000 watching me at the London Olympics, whereas [at] my last fight there were 21,000.

“It shows how crazy boxing is. The whole fight week is carnage and like a circus, but I absolutely just love it and the journey I’m on.”

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