Trailblazing Olympic refugee boxer Cindy Ngamba set for a pro debut on all-female fight card

Something stood out to Cindy Ngamba as she glanced around when Friday’s all-female boxing event was first announced.

So many world championship belts. Ngamba wants one of her own.

“I saw Natasha Jonas and Lauren Price and Caroline Dubois with their belts, and I remember saying ‘Oh, that looks nice, I would love to have one of them,’” she said.

Achieving goals is kind of Ngamba’s thing. At the Paris Games, she became the first athlete competing as a refugee to earn a medal when she took bronze in the middleweight category.

A decade ago the Cameroon—born Ngamba thought she was about to be deported from Britain. Now she’s set to make her professional debut at Royal Albert Hall. She’s facing veteran Kirstie Bavington in a super welterweight bout in London as part of an all-female card headlined by the Jonas vs. Price welterweight world title unification fight.

“I can see it, that dream of me having a belt and being the world champion,” Ngamba told The Associated Press, “but at the same time you have to be in the present and you have to make sure you get the job done.”

The 26-year-old Ngamba tries not to think ahead too much. That’s because she knows circumstances can change so quickly.

Ngamba had arrived in Britain at age 11 — her father and siblings live here, too — in Bolton, just north of Manchester, and set about learning English and trying to fit in. She picked up boxing at age 15, and it became an escape from the stress of worrying about her residency status.

She described being arrested as a teenager while checking in at an immigration center in Manchester.

“My case was still pending. I applied and they rejected it. When they reject your case, you have to go and re-apply again. I was in a situation where even though I was re-applying every time, they could have arrested me at any moment,” she said. “I visualized that they could arrest me in the street or in my house, in school or with my friends. I never knew it was going to be at an immigration center where I usually (went) every weekend.”

Worried she would be deported, she thought to herself: “’I have no one in Cameroon, no family in Cameroon. Who is going to take care of me?’”

She was held overnight at a detention facility in London before being released.

Ngamba, who came out as gay when she was 18, eventually won her case and was given refugee status. Same-sex relations in Cameroon can result in prison sentences of five years in the country.

Her progress in the boxing ring — Ngamba was an England amateur champion at three different weights — attracted the attention of Britain’s elite development program. Ngamba was brought in to spar the likes of Jonas, Price and others in hopes that she would eventually compete for Britain.

Ngamba, one of the flagbearers for the Olympic refugee team at the opening ceremony in Paris, is still treated as one of their own at “GB Boxing.” After the Olympics, her name was added to the wall of fame at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield, and she joined British Olympians at a Buckingham Palace reception where she meet King Charles III.

The main attraction is a welterweight clash of generations with 40-year-old Natasha Jonas facing 30-year-old Lauren Price.

Both are former Olympians. Welsh boxer Price (8-0) won a gold medal for Britain at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. She is the WBA champion.

Jonas (16-2-1), of Liverpool, competed at the 2012 London Games when women’s boxing made its debut in the Olympic program. She fell just short of a medal when she lost to Ireland’s Katie Taylor in the quarterfinals. Jonas holds the WBC and IBF welterweight titles.

American boxer Mikaela Mayer holds the other major welterweight belt — the WBO championship.

It’s the second all-female event by promotion company Boxxer and Sky Sports following their October 2022 event at a sold-out O2 Arena (20,000 capacity) in London. Sky said that event had a TV audience of more than 2 million in Britain and Ireland. KEN MAGUIRE, LONDON, MDT/AP