With the age limit for professional boxing set at eighteen-years-old in the United States, we have seen plenty of ‘underage’ prospects make the trip below the border to kickstart their careers in Mexico.
Now, there is a Brit that has made the trip across the Atlantic for a debut at just fifteen-years-old.
Liverpool’s Rianna Doforo trains out of Stefy Bull’s Doncaster gym and is a two-time national amateur champion. Bull has labelled the teenage sensation as the ‘female Canelo’ in the past and now she has emulated the start of the pound-for-pound legend, taking to the professional ring in Mexico at the same age.
Doforo faced Milagros Hernandez Gonzalez (0-6), a woman over twice her age, in Naucalpan on an all-female card on DAZN.
The Year 11 student scored a unanimous decision win over the 39-year-old in the featherweight division and now Bull claims that the prospect will fight in Central American three times a year before returning to the UK when she becomes eighteen, meaning she could be 10-0 on her debut on British soil.
Rianna Doforo with a successful pro debut ❤️
Watch the all female #CalvoCardoza fight card, LIVE on DAZN ? pic.twitter.com/FiEKQjQAkf
— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) November 10, 2023
The astonishing achievement outperforms that of superstars like Devin Haney, Roberto Duran and Manny Pacquiao, who were sixteen when they first stepped through the ropes of a professional ring.
However, it is unlikely that anyone will ever eclipse the reported record of Wales’ Nipper Pat Daly who debuted at the age of nine-years-old back in 1923.
Doforo may well be eyeing up Teddy Baldock’s near-century long record of becoming Britain’s youngest world champion, a feat that the East Ender accomplished at the age of nineteen-years-old in 1927.
Bull believes that the youngster is already prepared to fight world champions and, if she can bring her amateur success into the professional ranks, who is to say that Doforo couldn’t go on to become a force in the world of women’s boxing.
